I was more mentioning it blatently sarcastically.

As this thread is titled after me, I figure this is more appropriate than starting another thread.

I may have said some things tonight that weren't too diplomatic, or nice, or well thought out. I apologized for being snippy about half an hour ago, but I fear I might have said more things since then. Anyways, I apologize, and submit the reason that I've been a little busier than usual lately handling not just the many threads of TRF but exams and so forth, so again, I apologize if anything I said seemed rude, and ask to double check with me if anything I said or condoned seemed strange (it feels like it's been a long night...).

I'm going to sleep, and I promise I'll be much better in the morning. It's late nights that I go crazy during, so tomorrow should be better. Er, today. It's morning. But not much yet.

Good night.

TRF has always played it as if shields need to be lowered in order to launch fighters. I seem to recall that issue coming up in Hands of the Gods, among other threads.

As for the issue of shields themselves:

Watch RotJ - remember how the Rebel fleet realizes that the Death Star has shields up? And they pull up to avoid hitting them. If ships could pass through shields, why would they bother avoiding them?

Read some of the novels - missiles are intercepted by shields.

The ray shield vs. particle shield debate has always intruiged me, but here's my feelings on it:
RAY shields may as well be called combat shields; they are raised only for battle, because they draw a lot of power. They stop anything - energy or physical. They must be lowered to allow ships to pass through.

PARTICLE shields are always on, but they're not terribly powerful. They prevent dust and small debris from touching the hull, they do not prevent larger objects (i.e. starfighters) from getting through.

Ramming proivdes a good clue- if shields stopped physical attacks, then how did the Corellian Diktat's robot ramships do any damage in the Corellian trilogy (or whatever book they are in?).

I believe, though I am by no means certain, that onboard shields extend only a few inches, if that, from the hull. Why extend shields ten meters? It costs a lot more power to do so... planetary shields are the exception to this, of course.

Therefor, when a massive, heavy ramship hits them, they fail. The shields simply cannot prevent the forward momentum of these ships fast enough to prevent them from physically impacting the hull: it's kind of akin to poking a balloon with a needle; go slowly enough and it won't pop, but you hit it hard and it most certainly will.

In any event, what bothered me was the fighers in ROTJ that destroyed the shield generator for the bridge. I would think that shield generators could umm.. include themselves in their shielding function...

The guys at TF.N's Tech. Commentaries will tell you that the globe destroyed was not a shield generator but rather a communications dish, and poor editing created a different idea of what happened.

*shrug*

I don't know what's true, but do recall that the entire Alliance fleet was firing on the Executor - it's conceivable the the SSD lost its shields at the same moment. Indeed, TF.N has a point: if the SSD has shields up, how did those X-wings destroy that com dish/shield generator? Shields must have been down at that point, right?

I seem to recall that issue coming up

Right. I thought it had come up too... I am just too tired to look for the reference right now.


And good point on ROTJ and DS shields. I forgot about that.

Those were a completely different type of shield around the DS. Being projected from a planet to protect the DS during construction.

Nevertheless, it seems as though the precedent at TRF is that shields must be lowered to allow fighter launches - if it has been agreed upon in the past, it would be for the best to continue with this, as changing the rule now opens the door for all sorts of arguments about how any other battle thus affected could have played out differently.

LOOK, I'm not talking about fighters or ships or missiles going from outside of the shields to inside of the shields, I'm talking about them going from inside of the shields to outside of them. Presumabley shields work to where they only handle energy and solid objects coming from an outwards direction, not an inwards one...

Possibly, yeah, but would that change a precedent of TRF? If so, this might require serious staff consideration and judging.

You need a serious staff? Good fucking luck.

I think Kracken makes a good point:

If weapons can fire out a ship while the shields are on, then why can't fighters exit. If shields are somehow one-way devices then that makes sense.


Even if as Dolash claims, weapons had tiny holes in the shields allowing them to fire, then wouldn't it be easy to open a similiar hole in the shield to allow fighters to exit.





Anyway, I big point of contention here is about "technicalities". Dolash is trying to use a technicality to win a fleeting battle. Tremendously heated arguments have happened in the past over similar situations- notably the "are the shields raised or not" issue.

I understand you are trying to "Win" the thread Dolash, and I am also competing- but does it make sense that my fleet would make such a boneheaded move? No.

The fault is mine as a writer.... but only because I had the "misconception" that you could launch fighters through the shield, or at least while the shields were being raised. I guess you can punish me for being an idiot, but it doesn;t make much IC sense.


Anyway, I still support the idea that you can laucnh fighters through the shield (or through holes in the shield). I can't think of any specific references at the moment, but numerus times in EU novels I can remember ships being ambushed and immediatl raising shields and simultaneously launching fighters.