Underrated GM Custom wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:09 pm
Haha! You know I never realized there was a specific term for that pose.
So if a beam shield is just a beam saber with a different I-Field lattice, what was the explanation given for why they were developed so late in the Universal Century? Power supply issues I'm guessing?
Have we ever seen interactions between beam shields and heat or physical weapons?
Yeah, I don't know anyone other than the Japanese made a term for that pose. Actually, the Japanese seems to like to give terms to different poses, there is even a tag in Pixiv "What's the name of that pose?"(Or more like "Want to know the name of this pose" ポースの名は知りたい), and no, don't go searching for that tag on Pixiv, you can search for it on Google, but don't do it on Pixiv before you turn off the 18+ results.(yeah, no surprise in people being interested in knowing the pose name of their favourite sex poses)
I wouldn't say the lattice is different, its like the salt lattice is still the same cubic no matter you cut it in rod shape or as rock salt. The shape difference of the beam sabre and shield is more like water coming out of a hose and water spray on your lawn(where you have the opening facing up with a stopper on top so water sprays in all 360 degrees)
I'd say they appeared late because nobody thought about it. It is one of those concept problems where it does not need a scientific or technological breakthrough to make, just that no one had the concept at the time. I mean, I thought of utilising multiple beam sabres to be placed on top of the armour in parallel as a shielding, but it seems like nobody thought of using that in the official material yet.
MS-14S already have a primitive beam shield by spinning the beam naginata, RX-93's FF Field is also a primitive beam shield(in terms of trapping high energy M particle plasma in a weak I-Field, here being the barrel I-Field of the Fin Funnels)
With such a petty power output from the early model like MS-14S and the Fin Funnel. I'd guess power isn't really an issue.
Another reason they don't do it is likely because there are no data stating the beam sabre can block beam shots. It would be pretty useless and risky if you hold up a bright shield in space telling everyone you are there, and it cannot block beam shots fired at it. And I assume no one really want to test that on the field, and even if they are willing to, very little people have the skills to pull it off. I wonder how many MS-14S returned to be able to pass the data to the engineers to tell them it worked. Probably none.(not all sortied blocked beam shots as well), so AE probably don't have the data until maybe RX-93's return, and that data is also likely very limited(system collapsed pretty fast and with all the NT nonsense going on, how much concern and eyes goes on this small set of data is doubtful)
There is also possibly the focus in minimising the I-Field barrier onto MS that made efforts put elsewhere. We can see that AE was partially successful in putting an I-Field barrier onto Ex-S and I've seen people trying to present sources about the Full Armour ZZ with an I-Field barrier.(don't see it in the MG Manual and the old setting book (Z & ZZ perfect collection edition). RX-0's shield also has a limited ability as an I-Field barrier(that split second during the transformation) and RX-104XX, RX-105 had virtual tips which are essentially I-Fields slicing through air to make the MSs more aerodynamic. So things are likely doing well enough with that and people didn't really put too much though in the beam shield until after 0105, but that was way after the major conflicts and the isn't too much need. So it was until the major competition between AE and SNRI that trigger the new arms race that made the beam shield concept float up in the minds of engineers, because the next generation of simplified, smaller MS made installing an I-Field barrier harder again and they might have hit some kind of tech border they cannot over come and just switched to another technology path.
I don't recall any interactions between those. I mean, surely there are physical bullets shot against a beam shield and doesn't work? (but can't think of a specific scene) but I assume you want to ask about melee weapons and they don't seem to have a lot of those after OYW and none came in mind in late UC.
Arsarcana wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 1:46 pm
Yeah, it's explained as a power supply thing. Presumably the main reasoning behind this is that a beam shield needs to have enough power to actually
stop an incoming solid projectile completely (instead of just melting some of it away and leaving the rest to impact the suit) which isn't really a concern that beam sabers have to deal with, and the plane of a shield isn't terribly thick so it has to vaporize those incoming projectiles in a very short span of time. There's probably a source somewhere that says as much, I'm just basing this on intuition.
Nothing about that in the settings I can recall, but real life calculations do show that it would be pretty impossible to melt the whole bullet with even a pretty thick plasma wall. But that is mainly because the heat capacity of a low density gas is too small and any larger projectile going through it will be vaporised on the outside first and not heated up and melt as a whole. M particle plasma are fictional and we are always shown that they have an ultra high heat capacity and melts/vaporise through almost anything in a quick slice through action and the only time someone survives near it is Ramba Ral and the Shiro couple going in to a hot bath heated by a weakened beam sabre.