Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth
What makes that not viable in space?
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My original thought was that you can't dump the heat into vacuum readily enough to generate enough energy to bother with. Given only the shield generator would heat up, however, I now realize you should certainly be able to dump the heat into your vessel. So, the revised version (because I don't
want this to be a powerplant option for spacecraft) is that the shield generators output very little energy for their size (the planetside ones have to be fairly massive) and at the size a spacecraft needs its generator to be, keeping the shields on the edge of collapsing would only generate a relative trickle of energy (perhaps roughly comparable to the standard small retractable solar panels at around the 1.11 AU mark, which is within the system's habitable zone). It's an option for recharging, but certainly not something to rely on as it makes you a sitting duck for pirates and the like (and you can't use the boost function of your drive while the shield is active, restricting you to a crawl if you're trying to move around while charging). I'll mull it over in my head to see if instead allowing this to be used for quick charging might work for the type of setting I'm aiming for.