Hairgeek wrote:

I'm not an expert at this game. But it seems the thread is comparing defensive modules without looking at the weapons those modules defend against. You don't need to defend against missiles much if you are using kinetic weapons or can close to short range. You don't need to defend against kinetic weapons much if you can hit at range. If you compare the modules with no context you'll see an imbalance that I haven't struggled with in the game.

I know you probably don't mean to, but you're making my point even stronger. My point being that it's already very easy to defend against projectile weaponry, even when only considering the defensive properties of the modules themselves, while it's very difficult to defend against energy weaponry, since energy defensive modules are comparatively incredibly weak. This becomes even more true in practice, since projectile weaponry has some simple counter play options, yet energy, and beam weaponry in particular is 100% effective at all ranges, with very little counter-play available.

In fact, shield modules can be disabled entirely with this:

Making an already very weak defensive module even weaker. Is there anything even remotely close to this as a counter to hull plating?

The answer is no and the imbalance continues. Projectile weaponry and shield modules are simply the worst options to use in the vast majority of situations, to the point where you really, really have to have a very specific and valid reason for using them at all.

Whytee wrote:

The answer is no and the imbalance continues. Projectile weaponry and shield modules are simply the worst options to use in the vast majority of situations, to the point where you really, really have to have a very specific and valid reason for using them at all.

Well, one valid reason to use shields is that you want to put *something* in a defensive slot, and given everyone uses energy weapons, you may as well put shields in most of them.

Projectile weaponry is harder to justify using, I agree.

Dragar wrote:

Whytee wrote:

The answer is no and the imbalance continues. Projectile weaponry and shield modules are simply the worst options to use in the vast majority of situations, to the point where you really, really have to have a very specific and valid reason for using them at all.

Well, one valid reason to use shields is that you want to put *something* in a defensive slot, and given everyone uses energy weapons, you may as well put shields in most of them.

The problem really starts to show when specific Hull Plating modules essentially give equivalent or greater EHP (tier 3 hull plating module in particular) than shields.

Yes, I think there is some scaling at higher tiers that goes wrong. 

Maybe @Valadeus would be good enough to present those numbers for comparison?

I'd be happy to once I'm back home in front of my computer and can pull them up for you. I'll update later once I"ve had the chance to do that. 

Dragar wrote:

Valadeus wrote:

I'd be happy to once I'm back home in front of my computer and can pull them up for you. I'll update later once I"ve had the chance to do that. 

Excellent! I will do my best to work through the calculations transparently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi_3v-FpKFg

Sorry it took so long, had to get home from work. So, for this exercise I decided I would take the base models of an Attacker, Hunter and Carrier and compare each tier of armor and shields on each one to see how the stacking worked at each tier as well as whether or not mod multipliers magnified or reduced any effect. To keep things consistent I will display the base value followed by three stacks of plating and then three stacks of shielding. I will do this categorized by ship size, sub-categorized by resource type. 

It's also important to remember that shields add "shield hitpoints" on top of the ship's hitpoints which are used first when the shield absorbs damage, this should be considered when calculating EHP. 

Attacker (Base):

Attacker (Titanium/Hyperium): (Armor grants XP bonus, Shields grant -50% critical camage received)

Attacker (Adamantian/Antimatter): (Armor grants crew defense, shields grant evasion)

Attacker (Orichalcix/Quardrinix): (Armor grants 0.5 HP per damage absorbed, shiels grant 450 shield recharging each phase)

Hunter (Base): 

Hunter (Titanium/Hyperium): 

Hunter (Adamantian/Antimatter): 

Hunter (Orichalcix/Quadrinix):

Carrier (Base): 

Carrier (Titanium/Hyperium): 

Carrier (Adamantian/Antimatter):

Carrier (Orichalcix/Quadrinix):

Defensive ships get +10% to all plating and shields which, based on observation, applies to their Hull Plating Absorbtion and Shield Absorbtion attributes not the hitpoints they confer. 

I don't see why everyone doesn't throw a bit of shielding on top of plenty of armour, and fight with long range tactics, energy weapons, shield penetration (or interference beams!) and lots of crit (none of which does anything to armour, given it hardly prevents any damage from energy anyway). As far as I understand the competitive meta, this roughly what people do, perhaps even skipping shields. 

Seems like its best to use two Improved Uniform Shielding for the 100% crit reduction, -even if an EMP is used- (unless stacking, etc., has been changed) and the rest various Plating then supplement your fleet with Protectors loaded with Fleet Shield enhancements for some extra shielding if needed.

I think you're arguing on exactly what words to use, and I'm not really interested in that argument. 

But seriously, there is a difference between a barely scratched ship with depleted shield (that will be recharged in the next battle/phase), and half wounded ship with half depleted shield.

Sublustris wrote:

But seriously, there is a difference between a barely scratched ship with depleted shield (that will be recharged in the next battle/phase), and half wounded ship with half depleted shield.

Sure, there's a niche case that shields by default fully recharge between battles (they don't, without special effects, recharge between phases). Most players use repair modules for the same effect.

Dragar wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

But seriously, there is a difference between a barely scratched ship with depleted shield (that will be recharged in the next battle/phase), and half wounded ship with half depleted shield.

Sure, there's a niche case that shields by default fully recharge between battles (they don't, without special effects, recharge between phases). Most players use repair modules for the same effect.

It's considerably easier to replenish 100% hull for the entire fleet, than it is to replenish 100% shields for a single ship. Again, in general, repairing fleet hull is a percentage based module, meaning you can stack 5-6 repair modules on a basic support ship for 75-90% hull repair per phase for the entire fleet. The shield regen modules are limited to the ship with the shields, as far as I can tell there are no fleet/flotilla based support modules for regenerating shields. They also  regenerate a flat bonus rather than a percentage, meaning while a single basic support ship can repair 90% of a carrier hull per phase, the carrier will no way be able to replenish its own shields, and in attempting to do so will lose a lot of defensive capability. a support ship repairing hull it loses none, and can even afford to lose some defensive modules because of it.

Dragar wrote:

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.

I just want to make one last point to counter this point, because at a basic level it's wrong.

Missiles have 60% shield penetration. That means 60% of the damage goes to the hull (where it's mitigated by armour) and 40% to the shield (until the shield runs out).

Even with three stacks of shields and no armour (or experience bonus to hull hp), the hunter above has 7950 of and 5400 of shields. Even at 60% shield penetration and zero armour on the hull, when you've inflicted 7950 damage to the hull, you've also inflicted 5300 to the shields. Unless you destroy the ship before the shields fail, shields are just as good at 'mitigating' projectile damage as energy damage.

If you want to 'counter' shields, you need to do the above, and destroy hull before shields. That's maybe easier with kinetics, but hardly a given unless you stack crit and shield penetration effects and your opponent ignores armour totally (and have some way of avoiding the inherent range probelms with those weapons).

I think you are misunderstanding, maybe we should be saying 'damage reduction' rather than 'damage mitigation'.

Shield modules simply increase your HP pool, and if 60% damage goes to hull and 40% to shields, I am still taking 100% of damage. There is no damage reduction.

Dragar wrote:

Let's do this for hunters.

Armour

Three stacks (?) of adamantium armour:

Since beams punch through 90% of armour, the armour only reduces 64%/10 = 6.4% of beam damage. The effective HP is just 10236 * 1.064 = 10,891 EHP.

Shields

Three stacks(?) of antimatter shields.

Only 10% of beam damage gets through the shields; the 7950 hull is nowhere near going to be depleted before the 5400 of shield is. The effective HP is just 7950 + 5400 = 13,350 EHP.

So in this tier, it sure seems like shields are better even before considering the additional evasion.

What about carriers?

These have a much bigger pool of HP, so the additional shield HP might be less useful compared to the raw shield hp. 

Again, same tier:

Armour: 1.06 * 35472 = 37,600

Shields: 10800 + 30900  = 41,700

This is starting to look a bit troubling for shields, given armour is almost as good. What if we go to the next tier? 

Armour: 1.067 * 35760 = 38,156

Shields: 11664 + 31080 = 42,744

Including special bonuses (three stacks assumed): "Armor grants 0.5 HP per damage absorbed, shiels grant 450 shield recharging each phase"

Armour absorbs 0.067 * 35760 = 2396 damage, so 3 lots of 0.5 HP for that gives 3594 extra HP is added. Meanwhile, shields grant an extra 2700 (3*450 * 2) . That puts the two really neck and neck.

My conclusions

Shields are a bit better than armour against pure beams. Hunters get about 26% more EHP. That's the best case scenario, and there are a lot of factors pushing the other way. In more realistic scenarios, it's not pure beams (even lasers would tip it a bit closer to armour) and, importantly, crits, bonus-to-shield, EMP and shield penetration exists. If the hull is ever destroyed before the shields go down (and I don't think this is hard given shield penetration or crit levels available), all that extra HP is wasted. It seems worse for later tiers than earlier ones. 

I don't see why everyone doesn't throw a bit of shielding on top of plenty of armour, and fight with long range tactics, energy weapons, shield penetration (or interference beams!) and lots of crit (none of which does anything to armour, given it hardly prevents any damage from energy anyway). As far as I understand the competitive meta, this roughly what people do, perhaps even skipping shields. 

The reason is that this seems a pretty dominant strategy: you can ignore kinetics, as you long as you can fight at long range. If you are worried about missiles, you can stack armour - and you may as well do that anyway, as the it's almost as good as shields even in the worst case of facing beams, and far better when shield-piercing/crit/not-pure-beams is against you. 

Question, how are you getting the detailed stats up?

In the ship designer, toggle 'advanced stats'.