Stupid sci-fi question here

Shields work by dispersing energy coming from outside. The simple fact is that weapons don't add power to shields because that's not how they work. Envision an energy version of ablative armor that can regenerate. Some shows have tricks like polarity reversals that allow shields to absorb energy but that interaction is often predicated on configuring the shields to the exact energy profile of the incoming fire and altering the frequency of the weapon fire invalidates that trick.

>anti-energy point defense
i...actually really like that idea for some reason

Personal units would be a backpack with 6 huge capacitors on it, it'll save your life six times. After that you're done.

Lazy fiction and drama, obviously (and better vidya game mechanics). While it'd be a hard trick to create an energy blocking field, and then shunt that energy back into the generator, I can't think of any reason a shield would steadily deplete over time as it absorbed energy. It might be possible to bypass it and heat up the inside with too much energy at once, but I think that'd be about it.

BETTER QUESTION:
Nevermind how or why it works... Can you think of a way to design an anti-energy shield that *would* behave this way?

Brings back childhood memories of this, for some reason:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZdBfRYHCy5k

(Every bit as magi-tech as Star Trek shields in this case though.)

you know what the fi in sci-fi stands for right? FICTION!

Because the energy is in a matter like state meaning it behaves like matter.

Probably so there will be dramatic tension. Otherwise all ships would be invincible, and would be boring to watch.

Well, they wouldn't be invincible. You could only power the shield for so long, and it could only repel so much force, and it might repel some things but not others. There's also always internal sabotage, which makes for plenty of drama.

"The shields draining" is a count-down timer, which is a classic lazy drama device.

In a few sci-fi, though, I suppose you have 'deflectors' that only seem to reduce damage and not mitigate it completely, the ship they are protecting usually being destroyed before they are.

Even in shows with no shields at all though, you usually get another brand of count-down timer, such as "hull integrity" or "armor plating".

Any technical data from Star Wars should be entirely ignored. It manages to be worse than 40K.

I'd think of it like an external armor layer that is held in place with electromagnetic fields. Spray out mass that your electromagnet control system orients and holds relative to the ship. Lasers get scattered, high velocity projectiles disintegrate into plasma (and the electromagnets fill the hole relatively quickly).

Low velocity, high mass projectiles might penetrate the shield with only a small momentum change.

It would work kind of like the shields in Dune, minus the part where lasers make Dune shields explode.

Shields are the HP-bar literary device of Sci-Fi.

Only 10% shield left, we're almost dead! (despite having no internal damage worth mentioning).

>Even in shows with no shields at all though, you usually get another brand of count-down timer, such as "hull integrity" or "armor plating".

this to me is more believable and in line with current technology. flood compartments, armor belts, and double hulls are common in ships, though space ships would probably have more in common with submarines than surface ships. depth charges work by compromising hull integrity and using the water pressure to break up the sub, in space though it would be the internal pressure pushing out.

Yeah and a real life space battle would just be drones and missile swarms, putting humans into a ship would cost too much and make the ship perform worse. A human vessel would get wrecked by drones every time.

You do eventually get to magi-tech levels where the energy you're tossing about would destroy any matter in an instant, sometimes even in a nice chain reactive fashion. At that point, if your shields go down, you are dead.

Granted, maybe Star Trek isn't quite there yet, as every time their shields go down, they manage to take several more punches without even all being terminally irradiated. I suppose they do have a secondary set of shields for holding the ship together and navigation though.

Gotta transport humans around at some point though. (Well, you don't gotta, but ya probably wanna.)

But yeah, drone on drone battles are boring. Though, at least in Star Trek's case, they are often faced with them, and the Enterprise itself has an excuse for having a crew, even if some of its opponents don't.

Hull integrity is worthless when given as a % number, instead it should be system damage.

perhaps one that bent space so that incoming energy is routed around the vessel? i'm thinking something like mass effect's element zero. the energy depletion wouldn't come from the incoming energy exactly, more from the strain of having to keep the shields activated.

but drones wouldn't care about seeing attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

youtube.com/watch?v=IspL2HMT9y8

I always understood that hull integrity is maintained by force fields and electromagnetic currents running through the ship. A failure of hull integrity means the mechanisms in place can just no longer counter the forces at work in the hull, either because they're overwhelmed by damage, or the conduits that allow energy to pass to core sections are destroyed.

In star trek federation ships lack armor plating following from the vulcan doctrine of shields. Klingon ships are mostly armored by contrast and outside of plot holed scenarios like Gorkon's assassination on Kronos One are intended to take several direct hits to the hull and remain in fighting shape. Which Kronos One arguably did after the systems came back online. Compare it to the Reliant in Wrath of Khan where a single photon torpedo ripped through the reliant's saucer section, and the reliant's phasers ripped through the enterprise's engineering section.