Shield Types
In the world of Earthfleet (and other story worlds too), there are a variety of shield technologies that are both employed, and used, by the various factions, groups, and individuals, that are seen in each of these worlds. Below is a list of the most commonly seen types in use.
Monolithic
Monolithic shielding is any shield that is one continuous, contiguous bubble, or layer of shield energy with no grids, sections, etc. It's all one solid piece. The advantage of this is that, attacks, and stresses against one part of the shields can be spread across the entirety of the shield, thus improving its strength and longevity in a fight, or critical situation. The disadvantage of such shielding, however, is that it doesn't scale well. It works really well for small applications such as fighters, small freighters, and the like. But as it scales up, keeping the shield stable, and strong, begins to become a major issue. As such, most larger vessels, stations, and so on, tend not to use this kind of shield technology. This kind of technology is also very commonly used in warp cores, singularity cores, and other technologies where the monogamous nature of the shielding is an advantage, preventing energy leakage that might damage the object in which it's used to achieve containment of an object or material.
Gridded
Gridded shields are any shield system that employs or deploys its shield defense in a gridwork pattern. The advantage of this is that there is no upper limit to how large of an object this kind of shield can protect. The disadvantage is that it has great difficulty in protecting objects of unusual shape, such as starships, space stations, and so on. Generally gridded shields are best employed in a wide area defensive application such as the Oort Perimeter and other large scale shield systems. A very critical, and useful advantage of gridded shields, however, is that they can be linked together to create one massive, monolithic shield, thus gaining the advantage of both systems in one package.
A unique branch of the gridded shield system is Reactive Shielding. This system employs single, either square, or hexagonal shield grids, in a "rapid response" configuration for situations where an "oops" event happens that is so sudden as to catch the crew off guard. These shields, while weak, in comparison to the ship's main shields, can be deployed instantly, and brought to full power much faster than main shields can. So they are good in buying the crew, and the main computer, the time necessary to get main shields online in an emergency situation. They can also be deployed in specialty situations to defend other ships, block or move materials, and so on, where other methods of doing so are not available, or applicable.
Sectioned
A sectioned shield is essentially a series of monolithic shields deployed in a very similar way to how gridded shields are. The advantage of this is that it works well in applications where the object being protected is of an unusual, or complex shape that would be difficult to protect using the structured nature of gridded shieldsm. However, sectioned shields, due to their very nature, cannot be blended together like gridded shields can. The reason for this is that it's very difficult to blend shield sections together when each one is essentially being asked to perform a different task than its neighbors, thus creating unique variations between each of the individual sections that cannot be reconciled. So, if one shield section falls, that section of the ship, station, or object is left unprotected, while shield protection is maintained in other areas.
Hybrid
A hybrid shield is any shield system that combines any two of the above shield types together in one application. This does not include layering shields as that is simply a unique, or complex way of deploying any one of the above three shield types.
