TRF has
always played it as if shields need to be lowered in order to launch fighters. I seem to recall that issue coming up in Hands of the Gods, among other threads.
As for the issue of shields themselves:
Watch RotJ - remember how the Rebel fleet realizes that the Death Star has shields up? And they
pull up to avoid hitting them. If ships could pass through shields, why would they bother avoiding them?
Read some of the novels - missiles are intercepted by shields.
The ray shield vs. particle shield debate has always intruiged me, but here's my feelings on it:
RAY shields may as well be called combat shields; they are raised only for battle, because they draw a lot of power. They stop anything - energy or physical. They must be lowered to allow ships to pass through.
PARTICLE shields are always on, but they're not terribly powerful. They prevent dust and small debris from touching the hull, they do not prevent larger objects (i.e. starfighters) from getting through.
Ramming proivdes a good clue- if shields stopped physical attacks, then how did the Corellian Diktat's robot ramships do any damage in the Corellian trilogy (or whatever book they are in?).
I believe, though I am by no means certain, that onboard shields extend only a few inches, if that, from the hull. Why extend shields ten meters? It costs a lot more power to do so... planetary shields are the exception to this, of course.
Therefor, when a massive, heavy ramship hits them, they fail. The shields simply cannot prevent the forward momentum of these ships fast enough to prevent them from physically impacting the hull: it's kind of akin to poking a balloon with a needle; go slowly enough and it won't pop, but you hit it hard and it most certainly will.
In any event, what bothered me was the fighers in ROTJ that destroyed the shield generator for the bridge. I would think that shield generators could umm.. include themselves in their shielding function...
The guys at TF.N's Tech. Commentaries will tell you that the globe destroyed was not a shield generator but rather a communications dish, and poor editing created a different idea of what happened.
*shrug*
I don't know what's true, but do recall that the entire Alliance fleet
was firing on the
Executor - it's conceivable the the SSD lost its shields at the same moment. Indeed, TF.N has a point: if the SSD has shields up, how did those X-wings destroy that com dish/shield generator? Shields must have been down at that point, right?
[size=1]"So the woman asked me what I wanted on the sandwich and I said I do not care it is for a duck, and she was like oh then it's free. I was not aware that ducks eat for free at Subway. It's like give me a chicken fajita sub, but don't worry about ringing it up, it is for a duck.”
-Mitch Hedberg
[/size]
