=/\= please make sence of this =/\=

[Cooper Terance O'Neil 0]

Ok i have a few qs about st, lemme get thist straight when shields are up you can fire but not be fire cant be returned... this makes no logical sense. nobody can transport in or out, well the fire can go out but not in why not transporter. and the tow beam (cant remember the name right now really tired) works when shields are up. the sim is only as real as we make it so can we add some sense to this? or maybe this is a good comment for change. i dont know

[Vuxan Zal 0]

You see the shields are forcefields that protect space vessels from damage by natural hazard or enemy attack. It’s logical to presume that those kind of threats come from outside. So the shield are designed to protect ship from outside attacks and also to be penetrable from other way in case you need, for example to fire and destroy some borg cube. In fact it’s a most common thing in nature. Cell membranes are designed to protect everything that's inside of the cell in exactly the same way. Something goes in, something goes out, and something can’t penetrate at all. So I think that’s a good analogy.

 

And the transporters are very tricky thing. They don’t work in a hostile environments too. And there are all sort of things that can affect transporters so they can’t work.

[Sendai Riko 0]

And the transporters are very tricky thing. They don’t work in a hostile environments too. And there are all sort of things that can affect transporters so they can’t work.

 

When you're tearing a person apart, molecule by molecule, you'd expect some sensitivity in the operation of them. Bones isn't the only one that doesn't want his molecules scattered around the galaxy. :D

[Nicolas Lepage 0]

In the case of a cell membrane it's simply charges and the size of particles that prevents them from getting in or out.

 

If I remeber correctly, however, you can fire through the shields as if they were not there if you know the shield frequency of a ship. So, if you set your phasers to the right frequency you'd be able to fire through your own ships' shields while an enemy ship, not knowing the frequency, would not be able to penetrate them.

 

I'm not 100% sure whether my explanation is right but to me it sure sounds like a good one. :D

[LoAmi 0]

If I remeber correctly, however, you can fire through the shields as if they were not there if you know the shield frequency of a ship.

I'm not 100% sure whether my explanation is right but to me it sure sounds like a good one. :D

 

This sounds like a good explanation to me. Incidentally, an analogous system was in place on on old propeller planes. The problem was that if you fire your gun straight ahead of you, there is some chance that you will hit the propeller of your own plane, and shoot yourself down. It was solved by the invention of Synchronized fire, wherein the gun's firing timing was synchronized to the propeller's frequency so no bullet would ever hit the propeller. The phaser/torpedo frequencies and the shields are similar.

 

As for transporters, there was at least one TNG episode where knowledge of the shield timing was used to beam through the shields of another ship. In the 24th century, it is still considered a dangerous operation.

[HyperDrive 0]

So, why not just stick some type of device on your ship to determine the frequency of the phaser blast that just hit you, and then shoot back on the same frequency? If the shield frequency wasn't being rotated, then the return fire would be able to penetrate the shields without any problem. :D

 

As for transporters, they're designed to keep out intrusions, which could include people trying to beam aboard during a battle. So not being able to beam through shields would be a definate plus in a situation like that.

[LoAmi 0]

The shield frequency is presumably randomly rotated. A ship's own computer would know of it, and, could therefore change the phaser fire frequency on the fly. In the case of two Federation starships, one ship's computer might have an uplink (via command codes) into the others' and can query the current shield frequency.

 

This also explains why it's harder to beam through two ships' shields than one (as would be the necessity in a real battle situation): You have to find a common hole in both shield timings, and the co-occurrence of both of those low-power times would be much less frequent than either one individually.

[Cooper Terance O'Neil 0]

then why cant you change the frequency of the transporter so you can transport out

[Vuxan Zal 0]

then why cant you change the frequency of the transporter so you can transport out

 

Because the transporter is not phaser, or torpedo. We are talking about totaly diffrent things here. If transporter could hear you now he would probably say:"I'm a transporter, not an energy wepon!"

[LoAmi 0]

then why cant you change the frequency of the transporter so you can transport out

You can. See this link for a number of examples of places where it was done. Presumably, though, transporter technology is more compilicated than a phaser beam, and it's considered a very risky thing to do. That's why it's not done routinely.

 

You can imagine that the transporter beam requires a number of high energy signals to pass through the shields, including the payload and the rematerialization signal. If any of those are off, you lose your transport and whoever is in it.

 

A phaser beam or a torpedo just has to pass by the shields.

 

You can also assume that shield technology is improving with advancing time and is closing holes to transporter beams (if you can beam out, it gives someone else a chance to beam in). So, it might be possible for a 24th century ship to beam through 23rd century shields pretty easily. On the other hand, the same ship probably could not beam a payload through another equally good shield technology.

[MisterSmith 0]

 

As for transporters, there was at least one TNG episode where knowledge of the shield timing was used to beam through the shields of another ship. In the 24th century, it is still considered a dangerous operation.

 

I believe there was an episode where Chief O'Brien explained that as long as the ships were both at the same speed, and the shields were extended to the other ship, you could transport. So...basically..if ship A and and ship B are at the same speed, and ship A extends it's shields around ship B, then crew can transport between the two.

 

This would presumeably work in a tractor situation, because usually tractored ships (esp. during a rescue) have shields extended to it.

[Gallus 0]

Yello, I'm new here, hut I'd like to think that I have a good awareness of what Star Trek technology was meant to be and the reasons behind this.

 

In response to your query, it seems that the reason that transporters would be blocked by shields is to balance the Star Trek universe, to allow for drama and entertainment to persist without having to break down the transporter every two seconds. Although it admittedly did happen often.

 

If you wanted me to explain this discreprancy in terms of real world physics I would submit to you the fact that phasers, torpedoes, and any other weapon system is precisley calibrated to the frequency of a shield 'hole' the nuation of this hole is controled by the ship in order to allow a small window from which they can fire. this can be likened to a bunker, a small slit for outgoing fire alows the blocking of most incoming fire except for what happens to spill through. for transporters to be synchronized with this shield 'hole' they would have to be frequency shifted to the precise wavelength of the window, unfortunately this would not allow for the materialization of the subject at the destination point. if the window was changed to the frequency of the transporter, the enemy would be able to penetrate the shields easily as transporters operate at the same frequency as all matter in the universe, as stipulated in a TNG episode (cannot recall which one, had leah bhrames in it).

 

So, allowing a transporter beam to penetrate the shields in this manner would be inadvisable, because it would basically disabgle the shields completely, by allowing all manner of weapons fire and radiation to penetrate the bubble.

 

I hope this reply answers your questions, if not, or if there is anything innaccurate here, I'd like some feedback to broaden the extent of my knowledge of this subject.

[Sam_SemaJ 0]

Two words,

 

suspended

 

disbelief

 

 

The REAL reason why all this stuff works and doesn't work at the time it does and doesn't is because its COOL and FUN to watch.

 

-Sam