I feel like I'm missing something, because as far as I can tell, there seems to be a terrible imbalance between shields and hull plating.

From what I can tell, a ship with shield modules can have for example 5k shield, and a certain percentage of energy damage is mitigated to shields, and the rest hits the Hull for a minimal damage reduction. 

However, once that 5k shield is depleted, as far as I can tell, all of the energy damage hits the hull with only a slight reduction, meaning those shield modules are now essentially useless.

On the other hand, hull plating provides a permanent damage mitigation, meaning all projectile damage will be reduced by a percentage no matter what. On top of this, the hull plating actually gives an increase to energy weapon damage mitigation, albeit a relatively small one.

It seems to me that hull plating should be the defensive module of choice, even when facing energy weapons, as the small (but permanent) damage mitigation might actually be higher than whatever the shield modules could do.

Am I missing something here or does this just seem very wrong?

Dragar wrote:

Whytee wrote:

I feel like I'm missing something, because as far as I can tell, there seems to be a terrible imbalance between shields and hull plating.

From what I can tell, a ship with shield modules can have for example 5k shield, and a certain percentage of energy damage is mitigated to shields, and the rest hits the Hull for a minimal damage reduction. 

However, once that 5k shield is depleted, as far as I can tell, all of the energy damage hits the hull with only a slight reduction, meaning those shield modules are now essentially useless.

On the other hand, hull plating provides a permanent damage mitigation, meaning all projectile damage will be reduced by a percentage no matter what. On top of this, the hull plating actually gives an increase to energy weapon damage mitigation, albeit a relatively small one.

It seems to me that hull plating should be the defensive module of choice, even when facing energy weapons, as the small (but permanent) damage mitigation might actually be higher than whatever the shield modules could do.

Am I missing something here or does this just seem very wrong?

Basically, yes. Shields function as 'extra' HP that buffers your real hp when facing mainly energy weapons, while hull provides extra HP (less) and genuine damage mitigation. 

Whether that's balanced or not is up for debate, but defenses scale pretty poorly compared to weapons anyway.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forums/68-game-help/threads/29219-space-battle-guide-explanation-of-game-mechanics

Put it this way

Shield modules give a HP buffer and no damage mitigation

Hull plating modules give a HP buffer and damage mitigation

I dont think theres any debate to be had, its imbalanced.

Sublustris wrote:

Whytee wrote:

Shield modules give a HP buffer and no damage mitigation

What are you talking about, energy weapons have 10% penetration against shields and shields provide about two-three times higher defense values, then projectile defense counterparts. Shields provide HIGH damage mitigation vs energy weapons and medicore to low against projectiles.

Any damage shields mitigate is removed from the shield HP. In that sense, it's not mitigation - it's a pool of bonus HP that 90% of energy damage/10% of projectile damage (or whatever) is done to, rather than 'real' HP. 

That doesn't mean it's imbalanced. That depends on the exact numbers, weapon ranges, etc.

Given crits ignore all defenses, many players just stack hull because it adds real HP, which cannot be ignored by critical hits.

Nothing wrong with that analysis. What you 'want' depends on enemy weapon loadouts, but (ignoring crits) you ideally want to have maximum shields (because they provide the most hp) with the caveat that you want your shields to deplete before your hull explodes. When facing nothing but lasers/beams, it's easy to see stacking shields is ideal, as they will happily absorb the damage and deplete long before your hull goes down. When facing kinetics or mixed weapon types, it's much more difficult to work out.

Or tactics/hero skills that give huge values of shield penetration...

Hyperium Shields are a special case, as their reduction of crits is hugely important.

How to do the calculations (I think):

1. "Stacking [hull] to the maximum of 3 modules on this ship type leads to the plating modules providing 984 hitpoints and 61% damage reduction."

2. "...shield modules provide 2229 shield hitpoints, 180 hitpoints, 85% shield absorption and 50% reduced critical damage intake." 

3. "The best defensive results seem to occur when putting two shield modules and one plating module on the ship, providing 1486 shield hitpoints, 448 hitpoints, 80% shield absorption, 35% damage reduction and 50% reduced critical damage intake. "

To be clear about case 1, it's not damge reduction but hull mitigation. Assuming lasers are firing with 80% hull penetration, that means that 61% is reduced to 12% damage mititation. So the effective hp of ship 1 is (2000 + 984) * 1.12 = 3342.

The effective hp in case 2 is easier to work out: 4409.

The effective hp in case 3 is harder to work out. I think it's roughly (2000+448 ) * 1.07 + 1486 = 4105 (the raw hp, times 1.07 for the hull damage mitigation, plus the shield HP which has no damage reduction effects).

So really, you probably want to stack shields against lasers. On the other hand, a single hull module helps a ton vs any missiles or kinetics that might be there, and barely reduces your effective hp.

Sublustris wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Any damage shields mitigate is removed from the shield HP. In that sense, it's not mitigation - it's a pool of bonus HP that 90% of energy damage/10% of projectile damage (or whatever) is done to, rather than 'real' HP. 

It IS mitigation, because anything it doesn't mitigate goes through plating and to 'real' HP. Shields give not a bonus HP, but a temporary parallel HP buffer, that soaks part of the damage.

I think you're arguing on exactly what words to use, and I'm not really interested in that argument. The broad point the OP was discussing is that it functions considerably differently to hull armour. 

Dragar wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Any damage shields mitigate is removed from the shield HP. In that sense, it's not mitigation - it's a pool of bonus HP that 90% of energy damage/10% of projectile damage (or whatever) is done to, rather than 'real' HP. 

It IS mitigation, because anything it doesn't mitigate goes through plating and to 'real' HP. Shields give not a bonus HP, but a temporary parallel HP buffer, that soaks part of the damage.

I think you're arguing on exactly what words to use, and I'm not really interested in that argument. The broad point the OP was discussing is that it functions considerably differently to hull armour. 

Exactly. I'm not talking about which defensive module to use against which weapon type - more about which modules gave the best defense strictly in terms of damage mitigation/absorbsion vs their preferred damage type. 

I'll try to explain better why I feel there is a massive imbalance, since it appears there is some confusion about the point I was trying to make. 

Lets take a carrier, with some rough numbers. I'll use the Hissho carrier for this example since I'm at endgame on my current playthrough.

A Hissho carrier has a base of 30,000 HP. With no defensive modules whatsoever, its effective HP is 30,000. Fairly straightforward.

With maxed out hyperium shield modules, the carrier has a HP pool of 31440 and a shield HP pool of 17832. This gives a total HP pool of 49272. Assuming that the shields deplete before the HP pool, this essentially gives you an effective HP of 49272 vs laser/beam weaponry.

With titanium hull plating modules, your HP pool is increased to 37872. However, this hull plating provides a straight 68% damage reduction from projectile weaponry, meaning your effective HP isnt a measly 37872, but actually a whopping 83052 EHP vs kinetic and 97608 EHP vs missiles. This is almost double the effective HP provided to hull plating, when compared to shielding. 

To put it another way, this means that shields are almost half as effective against energy weapons as hull plating is against projectile weapons.

I hope this clears up any confusion about the point I was intending to make.

Edit: as a final note, using maxed titanium hull plating vs laser weaponry gives you a EHP of 43833, and vs beam weaponry an EHP of 40635. Hyperium shielding provides an EHP of 49272 to laser/beams, so while maxed shields are technically better against energy weapons, the difference is still quite marginal. Again, this has nothing to do with the point made above, but still seems to have relevance to the topic.

aerothgow wrote:

an impenetrable shield would be imbalanced.

Add 3/4 of these to any ship type.

Congrats, you are now practically invincible to all projectile weaponry.