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McAvoy wrote:E-E in Nemesis...it could be Movie-era ships with that type of shield.

We saw a bunch of ships getting blown up or at least getting holed with the exception of the Defiant and Valiant indicating shield status. We do not if the shields were down or the weapons were really that powerful to punch through the shields. We also do not know specifically if it's class wide thing either. For example, E-D had bubble shields but the USS Galaxy herself got holed up in Chintaka. But her shields could have been down for all we know. We have seen the USS Excelsior use conformable shields along with possibly other Excelsior class ships in the DS9 fleet, and same goes for the Miranda class.

Honestly, the conformal vs bubbles shields seems to be rather randomized. In an annoying sort of way.

Problem is that even if its annoying, its still canon.

Yeah which is why I was asking about the conformable shields on Movie era ships vs. DS9 ships. Conformable shields in the movies left scortch marks on the hull or none at all in the case of the Excelsior. Unless it was the Defiant, weapons fired at the fleet hit the hull like the shields were not even there.

Thats more likely due to OOU budget and not being able to afford the model replacement for every battle.

Deepcrush wrote:Thats more likely due to OOU budget and not being able to afford the model replacement for every battle.

All the DS9 battles were CGI, not models, although I agree that the budget was the most likely reason for not depicting them.

McAvoy wrote:Yeah which is why I was asking about the conformable shields on Movie era ships vs. DS9 ships.

You mean like the DS9-era E-E, which you specifically mentioned as having conformal shields.

Conformable shields in the movies left scortch marks on the hull or none at all in the case of the Excelsior. Unless it was the Defiant, weapons fired at the fleet hit the hull like the shields were not even there.

So, your argument is that impacts on conformal shields leave scorch marks except where they don't. Very helpful.

stitch626 wrote:Honestly, the conformal vs bubbles shields seems to be rather randomized. In an annoying sort of way.

Not really. All TOS ships had conformal shields under all conditions - we never saw them until TNG came along. Once we got to TNG/DS9, we usually saw bubble shields, with the exception of the fleet battles and the E-E in Nemesis. I propose that bubble shields were initially introduced as a technological improvement - the idea being that since there's always a degree of bleed-through (ships suffering damage before shield failure), to hold the shields as far away from the hull as possible, to minimise the effect, at the cost of being a bigger target and requiring more power to sustain a greater shield surface area. Once the war came along, with tight-packed fleet formations, they had to pull the shields in closer to avoid getting in each others way. The E-E can probably best be explained as post-battle analysis demonstrating that conformal shields were actually superior to bubble shields (perhaps due to technological improvements during the war), hence the switch back.

Not really. All TOS ships had conformal shields under all conditions - we never saw them until TNG came along. Once we got to TNG/DS9, we usually saw bubble shields, with the exception of the fleet battles and the E-E in Nemesis. I propose that bubble shields were initially introduced as a technological improvement - the idea being that since there's always a degree of bleed-through (ships suffering damage before shield failure), to hold the shields as far away from the hull as possible, to minimise the effect, at the cost of being a bigger target and requiring more power to sustain a greater shield surface area. Once the war came along, with tight-packed fleet formations, they had to pull the shields in closer to avoid getting in each others way. The E-E can probably best be explained as post-battle analysis demonstrating that conformal shields were actually superior to bubble shields (perhaps due to technological improvements during the war), hence the switch back.

I agree with this. Makes sense.

You mean like the DS9-era E-E, which you specifically mentioned as having conformal shields.

Actually E-E has a different type of conformal shield. E-E is the only time I can think of where we see the shield flashing. But you could just strike that off as improved SFX.

Did we see bubble shields on other races ships that didn't have them previously? I seem to remember bubble shields on the Klingon ships in Yesterdays Enterprise.

The vast majority of the random aliens in VOY used bubble's. Hirogen etc. However, the Borg always used conformal. Dominion used..bubble I think.

Really, it seems that OOU whoever was the CGI engineer at the time decided to do one or the other. IIU...well its so hard to explain since they are so randomized in terms of class, series, time period and race.

The Dominion didn't use bubble shields. But yeah it is random in what and who uses what kind of shields. At least Voyager was consistent about at least Voyager herself using bubble shields.

Yeah you're right; stand corrected. Interestingly enough, the Chin'Toka platforms used Bubbles.

Purely personal choice, I always liked the ship hugging shields rather then the bubble shields. Bit more naval and less Sci Fi.

kostmayer wrote:Purely personal choice, I always liked the ship hugging shields rather then the bubble shields. Bit more naval and less Sci Fi.

I concur, I preferred the hull-conformal shields.

Captain Seafort wrote:Not really. All TOS ships had conformal shields under all conditions - we never saw them until TNG came along. Once we got to TNG/DS9, we usually saw bubble shields, with the exception of the fleet battles and the E-E in Nemesis. I propose that bubble shields were initially introduced as a technological improvement - the idea being that since there's always a degree of bleed-through (ships suffering damage before shield failure), to hold the shields as far away from the hull as possible, to minimise the effect, at the cost of being a bigger target and requiring more power to sustain a greater shield surface area. Once the war came along, with tight-packed fleet formations, they had to pull the shields in closer to avoid getting in each others way. The E-E can probably best be explained as post-battle analysis demonstrating that conformal shields were actually superior to bubble shields (perhaps due to technological improvements during the war), hence the switch back.

This also makes a lot more sense to me.

Tinadrin Chelnor wrote:

kostmayer wrote:Purely personal choice, I always liked the ship hugging shields rather then the bubble shields. Bit more naval and less Sci Fi.

I concur, I preferred the hull-conformal shields.

I agree too. The conformal ones seemed more 24th century.