Originally posted by Fry_Day
One problem I thought of in planetary incursions would be that shields don't work. Shields (are supposed to) convert matter or energy that impacts them into diffused photongs (light), which is what causes the nice flash every time you hit something with a shield. Think that in the atmosphere, a shield would constantly be draning it's energy on the molecules in the air that are impacting it, which would make shields ineffecitve.
Of course, in FS, shields are selective - they stop weapons, yet ignore other ships, asteroids, and beams, but who said FS was realistic?
Nice idea but I doubt very much that FS shields work by total conversion of matter to energy. If they did you wouldn`t have bombers. The energy release from being shot would more than that of a nuclear weapon. You`d just fly close to an enemy cruiser and get a friendly ship to shoot you once with a maxim. The resultant blast would blow away any ship you wanted it to.
More likely shields work by bouncing whatever hits them away from the protected ship. I also doubt that would work in an atmosphere though.
As for why other ships etc go through a shield perhaps a shield works only if the hit is on only one face at a time. Other ships are large enough to disrupt the shield allowing a direct collission
