Suggested amount of shields?

[hakkarin]

What are good rules of thumbs for shields? I know it depends on size but assuming we are talking figthers for example?

 

[Mork2]

I would actually suggest Anti missile turrets as a higher priority then shields. Cause its the homing missiles that is going to cause you the biggest grief. Scanners break your jamming.... Then as usually fill in the unused gaps in your ship with shield capacitor and recharge.... Also a layer of advanced armour on the front facing the enemy....

 

[kulbolen]

well theres not really a rule and stats vary WILDLY depending on your ships design... seen a capable 500 mass ship with 8k shields and one with 120k shields

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, depends on the ship. Against Isanths, about 300k shields with 20-40k regen is generally enough to make you immune to them (as long as you don't have a dozen of them on your butt at the same time). I usually consider a million shields to be minimum for any sizeable ship.

I've got a mining drone up on CC that has about 3k shields that I consider to be just about shielded enough to be able to stand up against Isanths long enough to be recalled to their carrier.

But yeah, it totally depends on size and what you plan on doing with it. A ship built for pirate farming and one built for going up against other players is going to be DRASTICALLY different.

 

[Panpiper]

I would venture to state that 20% is a basic compliment for shields. If less than 20% of your ship blocks are shields, you are light on shields. If substantially more than that of your ship is shield blocks, then you are starting to get shield heavy.

Of course as others have pointed out, it is not as simple as that. A ship with heavy armor, with multiple spaced layers in the front, running maximum pierce and punch protection, could easily get away with 20% in shields and still be considered an extremely survivable ship. On the other hand, if your ship has little to no such advanced armor mass, you would probably want to go for as much as 40% of your ship blocks in shields, if you are building a combat ship.

What ratio of shield capacitors to shield regenerators you should go for within those percentages depends largely on whether you expect the ship you are building to have to deal with PvP or not. If you are going up against players, you probably want to emphasize shield capacitors as the damage output of their attack will likely be far more than anything shield regenerators could cope with, going for an 80% capacitor to 20% regenerator ratio. If you expect instead to be largely dealing with pirates and NPC ships, where you could find yourself up against larger numbers and successive waves of less potent ships, then you would probably want to go for an even mix of capacitors to regenerators.

 

[MacThule]

Keep in mind one other shield alernative. Shields are expensive, and no amount is "enough" on multiplayer, because there's always someone with a bigger gunship.

So there's always the option to go low on the shields, save a ton of money, and just make sure your more fragile ship is Blueprinted/saved. Compared to loading up with tons of shields, just respawning your ship when damaged or destroyed can be a faster, easier option.

If your mainly concerned about avoiding pirates as you travel and mine, my recommendations would be a good jammer and just enough shields to give you a chance to flee if things go wrong (10K-30K).

 

[Panpiper]

Keep in mind one other shield alernative. Shields are expensive, and no amount is "enough" on multiplayer, because there's always someone with a bigger gunship.

So there's always the option to go low on the shields, save a ton of money, and just make sure your more fragile ship is Blueprinted/saved. Compared to loading up with tons of shields, just respawning your ship when damaged or destroyed can be a faster, easier option.

If your mainly concerned about avoiding pirates as you travel and mine, my recommendations would be a good jammer and just enough shields to give you a chance to flee if things go wrong (10K-30K).

Just so you know there are lots of viewpoints and strategems... I disagree with MacThule. Going by trade prices, shields are half the cost of weapon system blocks. The asteroids from which you can manufacture shields are plentiful. If I am going to go through the trouble of putting together a half million weapon blocks, along with a half million other support blocks, I will throw in some extra ultra-cheap thrusters and then NOT skimp on the shields. Putting together an investment of a million blocks worth of weapons and systems and then not bothering with much of an additional half million is just asking for trouble in my opinion. Glass cannons that can be destroyed by much smaller forces is the result.

 

[Az14el]

Shields are an insurance policy, and just like in real life they're either not very comprehensive, or just too expensive.

Which is to say, if you reach a point where your ship is just shields shielding shields you might need to rethink things, insurance is meant to protect something other than itself.

Glass cannons that can be destroyed by much smaller forces is the result.

Yet those 1 million shield blocks you could otherwise use are probably not an issue to the much smaller Glass Cannon the other guys flying (or spamming in fleet), it's not good vs better its rock paper scissors

 

[MacThule]

Panpiper is completely right. I didn't give my comment any context, and if the ship represents a large investment on its own (before shields), that is where I would deck the ship out with tank shields, because there is definitely a place and time for very heavy shields, and in my opinion that's on something that already costs a fortune even undefended, like a ship with a super weapon, or even a gunship that already has heavy armor (because that stuff is expensive, you definitely want to protect that).

So there is no right amount. If the ship is all thrust and storage and salvage - relatively cheap, generic stuff, use a jammer and keep shields low. If you're investing a lot in it already, add as a many shields as you can realistically afford. Maybe think of it in time, like how many minutes does it take you in your miner to mine enought Larimer to shield this thing, am I willing to spend that much time defending it and is it worth it, or is it just an experimental ship that I need to rebuild anyway.

 

[Tamren Shade]

I usually run 20-25% total block count as shields and I've been told on many occasions my ships are drastically under shielded and I should be aiming for at least 40% TBC shields.

I've just never gotten or seen a ship that high with a Thrust/Mass ratio higher than .4 or .5 which I consider completely unacceptable for what I'm building most of my ships to do. I like controlling the range, and to do that I usually take that extra 15% TBC I'm supposed to put into shields and I put it into thrust and the power systems to use that thrust while simultaneously keeping up a near max rate of fire on the ship's weapon systems.

Secondly, until the fleet AI is smart enough to use jump drives, I can't see building a warship with a really low T/M ratio if I'm ever going to use it in a fleet. Both for attacking or defending a system, if the ship doesn't show up until after the fight is over, or it can't move to intercept an aggressor on the defense, it doesn't really do one any good .

I also don't share in the view that if your ship takes any damage, one should consider that engagement a horrible defeat. If I'm going to take a ship into a situation where I'm shooting at someone and they're shooting back, taking damage is just part of the cost of doing business. If I have to return to friendly space to repair, or decommission a ship for parts and respawn from a BP so be it.

Personally, I think It's kind of fun to patch a ship's hull with blocks that are deliberately off color to keep the ship's history visible. Being able to tell if a ship has seen a lot of action adds a lot of character.