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In SciFi great ship tech, what is the general lore behind why shields start at 100% and lower when confronted with any type of weapon or physical blow? Most shields deflect objects (not electrify/torch them) in SciFi. This infers more of a mag field or gravity. If that were so, a mag field wouldn't weaken when a non-mag force is applied.
It's fiction...I know...but so many ships have been needlessly blown up.
@steaphan I've never thought about it much, but my guess would be to instill urgency and drama. If the ship is invincible, it would be hard to have drama. Maybe?
@mpax @steaphan
I’m sure there’s some #technobabble like:
“The shield generators degrade under repeated attacks so it overloads their ability to withstand such powerful blows, in easily measured incremental amounts” 
#StarTrek #SciFi
@AccordionBruce @mpax @steaphan someone reversed the polarity of the neutron flow.
@PetterOfCats @AccordionBruce @steaphan that's always the answer
@mpax hahaha.... Yeah
@steaphan I assume that the shield's energy reservoir is finite and can only deflect so much before being overwhelmed.
Often in Trek you'll here "Shields Holding" which I always assumed meant that the energy output of the ship was enough to keep the shields 100% powered, without consuming energy from it's reservoir.
@steaphan "Shields" are usually portrayed as you describe -- an energy field of some sort, which I'd think would either be enough to deflect a projectile, or not. Wouldn't seem to be something that should degrade when confronted.
There's at least one Star Trek reference, though, that explains shields as a replicated super-alloy projected into the space surrounding the vehicle. It might make sense for this to weaken or dissipate under impact and require time and energy to re-fortify.
or something, and have the tiny particles of the shields replicate to replace any mouldy hotdogs to distract the enemy while you made your escape?
True. I guess shields are a brittle tech. Lasers and missiles and torpedoes can go out, but shields block all other types of matter from coming in. Well, except for certain other random things depending on the fictional universes.
Snarky, yes but I try hard to craft my fake science to make sense. It just hit me that In all my space scenes so far, my ships have never had shields!
@toddz hmmmmm....
A vaporous alloy you say.....held together by a field that weakens when objects/explosions are deflected/absorbed. The energy it takes to hold the alloy's particles together could explain why shields weaken.
@steaphan Turns out there's quite a lot written on the interwebs about the mechanics of fictional deflector shields...
Another Trek-specific version is that shields are an envelope of localized spatial distortion, which is actively concentrated on inbound objects/energies to sort of... shunt them slightly elsewhere, I guess?
Bombardment could eventually overstretch the capacity to keep up -- like a goalie fending off an increasing number of balls.
But in Star Wars, shields seem to just do their thing at a constant level as long as the generator is working. More like a light bulb.
@toddz
Thanks for educating me! 
After kicking off this thread, It's clear that I am not truly 
Trek-worthy. But I'm learning a lot.
Force Shields starting at 100% and being gradually worn down by hostile weapons fire is a standard feature of scifi, I'm not sure who originated it. The repulsors and Ray screens of Doc Smith's Skylark series do not operate this way.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php#id--Force_Fields--Considerations
The current standard is the Langston Field that originated in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. It was invented by Dr. Dan Alderson as per spec the limits desired by Niven & Pournelle. It was specifically designed in order to allow dramatic space opera combat scenes in scifi stories, but with interesting rules making interesting limitations.
For that reason it is also used in some scifi war games.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php#langston
Fascinating... this is making me want to re-read Mote, as I didn't recall this element of the story.
I did remember the term "Alderson Drive" though!
Apparently Dan Alderson appears in-world as the discoverer of the "Alderson force" that enables the interstellar drive: https://fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Alderson_Drive
I am trying to remember my sources. Some of this is in the essay "Building the Mote in God's eye"
https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v37n01_1976-01/page/n95/mode/1up?view=theater
Some is in the short story "Reflex", the original first chapter of Mote in God's Eye that was removed during editing, and later published as a short story.
Some is in "The Science and Technology of Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium/Empire of Man Universe" by Doug McElwain