Deflector shield/Legends

"Have you noticed the shields are still up?"

- Obi-Wan Kenobi

A shield (also known as a deflector or energy shield) was a translucent (sometimes with a purple or bluish hue) force of energy produced by Shield Generators. These generators could be placed on planets, droids, starships, space stations and individual buildings. The primary purpose of the shield was to block or deflect projectiles and lasers from hitting the object under protection.

The Gungan shields used during the Battle of Naboo blocked lasers, but droids could pass through because of their relative slow movement in comparison to the laser bolts. Some shields only held back anything with a high-energy output, allowing sentients to pass through unharmed. Others were deadly to anything upon contact. Some Trade Federation droids, notably the droideka, were equipped with shields making them almost invincible in infantry combat.

Shields used in starships could handle massive amounts of energy or punishment. However it was possible to disable a shield by cencentrating fire on a specific location. This was demonstrated in the Battle of Endor when Admiral Ackbar ordered a concentrated bombardment of Executor, which disabled its shields. Once the shields were down, the starship could be attacked. However, by diverting other shipboard energy reserves to the shields, it could be regenerated.



Shield generators projected either "ray shields" or "particle shields". Ray shields could block only lasers or energy, while particle shields stopped physical projectiles. Sometimes, particle shields were referred to as "ray shields"&mdash;the shields used as capture devices onboard the Invisible Hand to trap Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker were called "ray shields", although they were used to stop physical objects. However, contact with a shield can result in severe burns for biological beings, so the duo may have been unable to pass the "ray shields", even though they would not stop them.

Shields worked in a layered defense fashion: A volumetric field effect extended out from the surface of the shield projector, attempting to reduce the coherency of any beam attacks and deflect physical objects. The shield itself behaved in a manner similar to that of a thermally conductive material&mdash;energy applied was quickly diffused and re-radiated back into the environment, but the shield itself could also absorb some of the energy. The absorbed energy was shunted into heat sinks, and re-radiated at a lesser rate by the shield and neutrino radiators.



The strength of a shield was a factor depending on how close the shield was to the projector, the efficiency of the projector, the power applied, and the surface area of the shield.



Aside from the standard defensive shields carried by most ships, there were other variants:


 * Shift shields: These shields protected any ship traveling in hyperspace from collisions with interstellar atoms, dust, or dark matter. An unprotected collision would destroy the ship. Failure of the shift shields in a meteor shower was how Darth Vader explained the loss of Tantive IV to the Imperial Senate prior to its dissolution.


 * Relativistic shields: Not shields in the classic sense, but relativistic shields still protected the user from outside forces, thus justifying their name. As time dilated so that the traveler would experience less time to the observer in normal relativistic movement, the opposite would occur when traveling at greater than c velocities. The traveler experienced time flowing at a greater rate, with this rate increasing the faster they went. As a result, anyone traveling at faster-than-lightspeeds would experience thousands of years in what would seem to the observer to be seconds. These devices retarded the flow of local time to prevent this from occurring. See also: stasis fields.


 * Ablative shields: These protected some starfighters. Not yet directly observed, their characteristics cannot yet be described.

Personal shields
From the era of the Jedi Civil War, personal shielding for individual units was common place. There were melee shields, energy shields, Verpine shields.

By the time of the Battle of Naboo, personal shields that covered an entire being existed, but produced radiation and magnetic fields that were dangerous for sustained use.

During the Galactic Civil War through the Yuuzhan Vong War, however, personal shield tech was all but lost. Very few armies equipped their soldiers with personal shielding, due to the craft being lost for many years. Notable exceptions are the Trade Federation Droidekas, the mercenary Kyle Katarn and his student Jaden Korr, and possibly the bounty hunters Boba Fett and Jango Fett.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Outbound Flight
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars: Battlefront
 * Star Wars: Battlefront II
 * Empire at War
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi