Armor and Shielding

Armor

Armor is a near necessity when traveling in space. Acquiring armor is not expensive either. A well equipped Nanoconstruction bay can create multiple sets or armor fairly quickly. It is best to have sets on hand ready to go and not wait for your set to be finished compiling. Most ships have armor as well. The bulk of a star faring ship's mass comes from the armor it uses. It's not just for protecting from weapons fire, it's crucial to protecting from micrometeorites, radiation, and other random issues that arise from interstellar travel. Though the differences between what a freighter uses and the military grade neoshunt armor are night and day.

Shielding

Armor is the last defense against weapons fire and stellar hazards. Hopefully the danger will be either deflected or absorbed by shielding. Shields, also called force fields, or energy screens, are a defensive field of energy that surrounds the ship, space station, or person. There are different types of force fields, most utilizing a combination or plasma and electromagnetic energy. A good shield can both repel material and absorb excess energy. The primary function of a shield, aside from protecting the user, is heat dissipation. The act of deflection and absorption builds heat along the thin frontier of the field. The shield generator needs to bleed the excess energy out of the system before it can feed back into the generator and cause it to overheat and short out. Naturally, larger shield emplacements for ships and stations can handle orders of magnitude more heat than smaller personal shields.