I don't really follow Star Trek, but isn't Star Trek solely based around shields during combat? Meaning that if your shields are down completely, you're going to get blown up within 10 seconds (aka pre SHP update ^^)?
I've already seen plenty of ships that have just a basic amount of shields, but the rest was high trust and thick armor. Losing the shield on those ships would not be the same as on a ship that exists out of 60% shield blocks. In fact, I think players on those ships would not even care about it.
Almost bang on regarding star trek shields, though they do work significantly different from starmade for the most part.
Shielding in star trek generally reduces and disperses damage if it cant deflect or absorb it, which is why you get scorch and pot marks on the outer hull even with minor encounters.
As stupendously powerful as startrek shielding is, it becomes less effective as it absorbs damage until it collapses.
Luckily the folks in engineering are already dead from a core breach, half the command staff are in the infirmary for 3rd degree burns and all the red shirts have already been ejected through convenient hull breaches as distractions, so they don't care or need to worry about it.
The reason they need to drop shielding however is because shields are basically a localised field of gravitons, and at higher levels warped space quite significantly.
Pretty much anything involving gravitons and transporters in canon usually results in bad news.