Editing FederalSpace:Technology (section)

==== Armor and Defenses ====

I imagine that even a single infantryman has a lot of electronic defenses, built into his helmet or carried with his kit, but we can handwave all that. Say that his automatic systems cancel out the enemy's automatic systems, and boil things down to a contest between each squad's EW man to get momentary advantage. 

Your basic ship uniform can seal for use as a light, limited-duty spacesuit; pull up a hood and pocket airmask, and hurry to a spacesuit locker. Battledress and protective suits can be sealed against NBC, and ablates when struck by high-energy blasts. 

There probably are powered battlesuits, but they seem to be a special-purpose, given how powerful hand weapons are. Say that they're like ''Appleseed'''s landmates, essentially very expensive and delicate armored infantry, used for close assault. Any star cruisers probably has a couple of them in storage, just in case. The rest of the time, just use normal troops. I'm tending towards a setting where armor is only helpful against casual violence—when the shit hits the fan, ''no one'' is safe. 

===== Commentary =====
'''s/LaSH:''' I can contribute a little to the concepts of shield and fields, however. Consider that modern technology has already produced the plasma window and electrically charged armour. Neither will look exactly like original Trek, however: plasma windows are likely only useful for high-energy applications like starship engines (they are extremely power-hungry), and ECA is most effective against physical penetrators, although a variation that squirts a cloud of beam-dissipative plasma would have its uses in reducing the impact of an energy weapon, and magnetic fields of all kinds are useful against charged particle beams if such weapons are ever used.</small>

['''Shadowjack:''' I suppose this means that a starship's "shields" are actually ''several'' devices, working in concert. Magnetic fields for anti-particle defense, sandscreens for anti-laser, the phasers themselves for anti-missile defense and sensor jamming, armor and energy absorbers as the final line of defense.

<s>Warp bubble as shields does conveniently connect technologies—come to think of it, Honor Harrington did the same deal—but it might be putting too much onto that one technology. 
Another idea that did intrigue me: using a ship-wide forcefield as a sensor lens, turning the entire ship into a sensor dish as big as itself. You can get a similar effect with a big-enough sensor network and computing tricks.</s> I've decided to keep the warpdrive for transport only.]

…can you charge one's perimeter with ionised plasma or some such in order to make it harder to collapse, or just cause diffraction in beams passing through it, such that the energy is distributed over a larger portion of the ship's armour? This is very important: a beam weapon works by destructive heating of a small area. The same energy spread out over a ship's entire hull will be much milder, and the heat sinks can deal with it at their leisure. Heat sinks are another kettle of fish, however, and if you want to go that far I'd advise you to just go to Atomic Rocket and weep silently as you learn about Hohmann transfer orbits and brehmstrauling radiation and other things I can't even spell, let alone see as relevant to Star Trek.</small>

['''Shadowjack:''' I agree; heat sinks are as frustrating to space adventure as relativity, and just as quick to be jettisoned. :) 

The warp bubble itself collapses under attack, but the dispersal idea is worth considering… if only there was a decent physical way to achieve it.]

'''Myth:''' You have superconductors, don't you?  A network of superconductive wires on the ship's skin would disperse the heat all over the ship, making it near-impossible to melt through.  (Probably a net, though, for cost reasons.  That leave the possibility of hitting a gap, either one built-in or one created by a prior physical attack.)