I enjoy designing games, and in one that I'm working on the ships have shields, similar to the shields in Star Trek. They are created via some kind of force field projection mechanism and are spheroidical (that is, they take the shape of a spheroid). I would expect that those shields have strength relative to:

* The power used (more is better)
* The distance from the emitter (less is better)
* The curvature of the shield (more is better - which implies smaller)

Now, on a small fighter or shuttlecraft, the second and third criteria imply that the shield would be stronger. I would naïvely expect both power and distance to scale the strength of the shield with the third power - but power generation capabilities also scale with the cube of size, so those two things are about a wash. But the fighter, being smaller, would have a more curved shield, so it would be stronger.

Moreover, with less space dedicated to other things (like hydroponics or living space) and more justification for having as much power as possible, a fighter would likely have more power per cubic metre, and thus an even stronger shield.

Why wouldn't this be the case? The justification doesn't need to be short and pithy; I need the explanation so I can feel good about the system more than I need to have players understand why it works the way it does.