Background:

The Inertial Damping field is one of several types of forcefield, which makes space flight practical. Essentially, a modern inertial damping system is a network of variable symmetry force fields which serve to absorb the inertial forces involved in space flight; even interplanetary craft routinely accelerate at hundreds of gees, and without this protection a person within such a ship would experience an apparent weight equivalent to many tons. For interstellar flight the problem is compounded, as a ship jumping to warp speed experiences an acceleration approximately 30 million times one standard gee. Without the IDF fields such an acceleration would instantly kill every living thing on board.

Most damping systems operate under the direct control of the ships main computer systems, which allow it to anticipate the forces which will result from use of the engines. The degree of fine control which this allows is such that it is virtually impossible to tell from within that a vessel is accelerating at all, let alone to feel any discomfort.

However, when the forces on a vessel are generated by an external source - such as weapons fire for example - it is a slightly different story. In this case the system can only react rather than anticipate, and this leads to a small lag between the action and reaction. This is manifested by a certain leakage through the IDF field, resulting in a noticeable effect on the passengers. Ensuring that this effect remains within safe limits is one of the primary concerns of all Starship designers.