I thought about putting this in the Star Wars versus Star Trek thread, but since it's not a funny meme or video I'd put it here. In the real world, if a new invention is created, someone is going to try to adapt the new invention to everything. Both Star Wars and Star Trek have some kind of deflector shield for their ships. You rarely ever see a deflector shield protecting troops on the ground. The Gungans had some weird ass shields they carried like medieval shields and the Federation had those Droid Decals or whatever they were called but for the most part you don't see personal deflectors in Star Wars. Star Trek has containment forcefields around their prison cells where Star Wars seems to use mostly solid prison cells. Star Trek has walls of forcefield that are used for security and also to seal emergency hull breaches. I remember similar inconsistent room based forced fields during the fight between Darth Maul and Qui Gon but I don't recall them in much else on Star Wars. I played quite a few Star Wars and Star Trek video games, a tiny fraction of what is available, but one thing I noticed a lot of is personal deflector. It's handy in a video game, because it's common for a single video game protagonist to tank through dozens or hundreds of enemies. Would the inclusion of personal deflectors make Star Wars or Star better or would it just make it more boring as the various sides tank a bunch of hits before eventually falling? For ship combat, deflector shields in Stars Wars are either impenetrable or near worthless. In Star Trek there is a whole lot "Shields at 73%" "Shields at 52%" "Shields at 17%" occasionally with the ship rocking or a control panel exploding. I'm not sure either of these approaches when translate into an infantry fight.
Star Wars also had force fields of a sort keeping their hanger bays with oxygen and atmosphere intact, while letting ships go in and out. I think they should have it. A bit like the old Dune movies where some people had their own personal forcefield. Or at least armour to deflect laser blasts. Aside from the Mandalorians, NO-ONE has armour that deflects laser blasts and everyone is on one-hit-equals-kill (the trooper armour seems to magnify the blast rather than resist as there are sparks all the time). You'd think at least elite troops would have this.
The Borg in Star Trek also have some kind of personal shield. IMO it should be a thing in Star Trek. In Star Wars Legends there was once an explanation for why personal shields are mostly used by droids IIRC. It was that newer blaster technology interacts with shields in a way that causes harmful radiation inside the shield. Not a problem in a space ship or for droids, but for personal shields unless you can heal or are especially radiation resistant, or wear equipment under the shield that is resistant, such as armor. In Star Wars Canon we see personal shields being used. At least I vaguely remember seeing one in one of the new Vader comics. And I also recall Battlefront2 being canon, so there you have them as well. The Droideka (that's the way they are spelled btw. ) style shields would be a bit weird though, for personal shields. Bubbles force you to think about interaction with stuff you pass. Not a huge problem for ships, but for individuals.
Agreed on the bubble thing being impractical. I think they depicted it quite well in Mass Effect, where people have a energy layer over their armour. They don't get into the science of how this works, but probably the armour has a generator and protects the wearer inside.
Not if they were small in-built Ray Shields, which purely deflect energy weapons like blasters while solid things can pass through them. Star Wars Shield technology is divided between Ray Shields and Particle Shields, which deflect solid shots. It would make sense if the Droidekas only had energy shields so that they could move past ranks of Battle Droids without needing to worry about that, and it would also explain why they were easily killed when Anakin fired starship-grade torpedoes at them (which are solid missiles).
Actually they are described as Ray Shields and that makes things even worse. When solid matter you move past creates a shield opening then you are easy to kill. (And there are actually quite a lot of weapons in Star Wars that fire solid objects) I never understood why Qui Gon and Obi-Wan ran away in that scene on the ship in Ep1. They could just have destroyed the Droidekas by either pushing them over or throwing something at them.
The old 90s first person Star Wars shooter gave the protagonist an energy shield that could deflect energy weapons (up to a point) but was useless against physical attacks (which were fairly rare in the game). Star Trek Online has the same thing, both for the protagonist and the enemies. Personal deflector shields can be bypassed with direct physical attacks. (That's why in the video game, rushing with a batleth is not as stupid as it sounds).
The response to the Borg's personal shield was always a bit puzzling to me. The Star Fleet crew in question would always try to modify their phasers, knowing full well that it will only buy them half a dozen shots at best. If the Borg can so easily adapt to energy weapons, why not employ close range physical attacks. We see Worf cut up a Borg drone with his blade and we also see Data kill a Borg in hand-to-hand combat. I believe Borg drones are also successfully bashed with other objects throughout the shows/movies. I get that the Borg are significantly stronger than a human being, but they are always depicted as being rather slow. It seems like it would be rather easy to piece them up with a sword, spear, axe, glaive or other close combat weapon. The counter argument would be that the Borg could eventually adapt to physical attacks as well, but I don't believe we ever seen evidence of that (at least as far as I can remember, correct me if I am wrong). Adapting to something like a blade should protect them from any blunt object or other physical attack, but I don't believe this ever occurs. You would imagine that through all their fights, conquests and assimilations, the Borg would have encountered and adapted to such attacks long ago (if they could). As such, it seems like something they are unable to overcome. It obviously won't help in a ship to ship battle, but the Star Trek characters frequently find themselves in close quarter skirmishes with the borg, whether because their ship has been boarded or they have boarded a Borg vessel. Also, what about regular gun? The closest we see is a holographic bullet, which was successful, but if the Borg can only adapt to energy based weapons, why not try a projectile based one? I don't know, it seems like the Borg do fairly well against Star Fleet, but would quickly have their cybernetically enhanced asses handed to them by a group of Spartans or Texans!
Star Trek Online covers fairly well. The Borg are challenging foes but not impossible to beat. Each time the Borg recalibrate their deflector shields, in the video game you can recalibrate your energy weapons to counter their recalibration. Basically it means every 5-10 shots, you have to break off a few seconds to recalibrate your teams weapons, but yeah, physical attacks are not deflected but they do less raw damage on the whole. I don't see how how you can adapt to physical attacks and still be an organic being. The Borg are cyborgs, not robots. My biggest issue with the Borg is that they never assimilated how lying. "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated." Why announce your intentions to your foes. Of the hundreds of species the Borg encountered, how often did one of their victims hear that and think "Resistance is futile, I guess I will stop trying to fight back or run away and just surrender." That's another topic though. My main concern addressed by this thread is that. 1) If Star Wars and Star Trek characters do not have personal deflectors, combat is unrealistic. 2) If Star Wars and Star Trek characters do have personal deflectors, combat is uncinematic and kind of boring to watch.
Yeah, I wonder why they didn't just use physical projectiles and/or more melee weapons. Maybe it was mainly a stylistic decision. Klingons use blades, Starfleet doesn't. Or maybe they underestimated how well (some) melee weapons work, even in the hands of much weaker and/or untrained people. Many of them require far less strength than popular media often suggest (swords being the most striking example). I wouldn't want to fight a 14 year old girl if she was carrying a longsword (or even worse: a spear) and had two hours of training. The recalibration thing is also kinda silly. Why wouldn't you shoot with wildly differently calibrated phasers all the time, or have the phaser recalibrate itself each 200 milliseconds? Btw. such a weapon exists in the "Star Trek: Elite Force" video games, developed by 7of9 IIRC. It was called the I-Mod. It does however make fighting Borg a bit too boring, I understand that the need to pause and switch weapons/recalibrate makes combat more interesting, and it also fits the narrative better. I think it is worth trying, if there are some visual effects to show shield strength. I don't think there is any harm in weapons not being instant killing. Fights are much more interesting if multiple hits are required.
I think option #1 is the lesser of two evils. The primary purpose of the show (other than to make money ) is to entertain.