Are Bi-weaves stronger than they ought to be? Are they broken?

Miko

M
OK, so this could be way off base, but I've taken notice of engagements lately where I seem to do far more damage to Prismatic foes in FDL's sporting 3000+ shields, than I do against chieftain or krait players sporting a bi-weave no greater than 800mj or so. How is it that my dual huge plasma landing clean hits barely does the damage they ought to, when an absolute yielding volley of my plasma damage combined does over 400mj of damage?

Now I am aware only 60% of this is absolute, so resistances take effect, but I am also constantly firing every other hardpoint at the target, either long range lasers or multicannons, leaving them no time for recharge advantage, so what gives?

Has anybody else felt curious about these shields, as if maybe the recharge rate is somehow effecting the overall shield strength multiplier with full pips? I know I'm likely wrong, but I just find these foes take a lot more firepower than those I know to have very strong prismatics.

You'd think 2 volleys would wreck their shield, not 20.
 

ForeverN00b

ForeverN00b
The nominal shield value is without any bonuses offered by pips. This is true of BW, Pris or any shield. IIRC the modifier is 2.5ish between 0 pips and 4, so a 800MJ shield would be 2000ish with 4 pips.

Like other shields, biweaves pause their active (nonbroken) charging for 5 seconds after taking a shot then begin/resume recharging. Are you hitting your opponents on a fairly fast and consistent basis with your PA volleys? If not, that recharge really stacks up. Being able to get in a lick or 'pip check' in with a rail or secondary weapon when you cant line up a good PA shot can help stun their recharge rate.

Having both BW and prismatic ships, it seems to be working as intended (although my only real BW pvp ship is my FGS with high resistance and 390MJ or so of shield).
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Biweaves are fine. Engineering is questionably not.

With the right combination of resistance and heavy duty booster blue prints and a number of guardian shield boosters, the actual shield health difference between Biweaves and standard shields might be a few hundred hit points but the difference in regen times is vast.

The more extreme the setup, the more the correlation fails.

Biweaves conda: 7.8k thermal health and 4:53 recharge.
Standard: 9.2k thermal health and 12:16 recharge.

That's +1.4k health at a cost of 7 minutes. Or 18% boost for 140% cost recharge.

Are those extra 1.4k health points worth it? Only if you're interested in alpha strike single engagement pvp I guess. Definitely not for PvE though.
 

Brrokk

Brrokk
Ydiss said:
Biweaves are fine. Engineering is questionably not.

With the right combination of resistance and heavy duty booster blue prints and a number of guardian shield boosters, the actual shield health difference between Biweaves and standard shields might be a few hundred hit points but the difference in regen times is vast.

The more extreme the setup, the more the correlation fails.

Biweaves conda: 7.8k thermal health and 4:53 recharge.
Standard: 9.2k thermal health and 12:16 recharge.

That's +1.4k health at a cost of 7 minutes. Or 18% boost for 140% cost recharge.

Are those extra 1.4k health points worth it? Only if you're interested in alpha strike single engagement pvp I guess. Definitely not for PvE though.
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Yes, in PvE I use A-standard shields on any hauler ship (which intends to have only one facetank fight on the way in to a station) but bi-weave on anything meant for combat. My rule of thumb is thermal resist with fast recharge mod, first three SBs resist augmented, any more SBs heavy duty, although there are possible variations with the SBs.
 

Miko

M
Ydiss said:
Biweaves are fine. Engineering is questionably not.

With the right combination of resistance and heavy duty booster blue prints and a number of guardian shield boosters, the actual shield health difference between Biweaves and standard shields might be a few hundred hit points but the difference in regen times is vast.

The more extreme the setup, the more the correlation fails.

Biweaves conda: 7.8k thermal health and 4:53 recharge.
Standard: 9.2k thermal health and 12:16 recharge.

That's +1.4k health at a cost of 7 minutes. Or 18% boost for 140% cost recharge.

Are those extra 1.4k health points worth it? Only if you're interested in alpha strike single engagement pvp I guess. Definitely not for PvE though.
Click to expand...

Recharge shouldn't factor in when under sustained incoming. It shouldn't recharge live whilst under fire at all.

I do feel my post is baseless, I just always felt curious why bi-weaves seem to hold up better than they should when striking them with plasma in particular. I remember a duel I had between Kraits, and I had 5 plasma hitting this guy who told me he only had around 400mj. It made no sense why even a couple of volleys didn't almost drop, if not pop the shield outright. Sometimes you're shooting a shield that miniscule and thinking "How the hell is this thing holding up!"
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Brrokk said:
Yes, in PvE I use A-standard shields on any hauler ship (which intends to have only one facetank fight on the way in to a station) but bi-weave on anything meant for combat. My rule of thumb is thermal resist with fast recharge mod, first three SBs resist augmented, any more SBs heavy duty, although there are possible variations with the SBs.
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That's a good point, standard or prismatic are better for survival rather than combat.
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Miko said:
Recharge shouldn't factor in when under sustained incoming. It shouldn't recharge live whilst under fire at all.
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No, but in PvE you're in full control over that. I'd rather have shields that don't take ages to regen naturally than have that extra strength. In PvE, where you can control your regen down time mostly at will, engineering makes BW shields pretty much a no brainer for me, particularly bigger shields.

That doesn't make sense. But that's how it is for me anyway.
 
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Dragsham

Dragsham
After much mucking around with all kinds of weps shields modules blah blah..my corvette which l think is duel purpose pvp/pve just grew out of experience.
Firstly Ops thing about biweaves. No I did not notice this. They drain as quick as any other shields but regen a damn sight quicker.
Perhaps that throws you. Prismatics do not regen at all in combat apart from an insignificant trickle. So they appear to drop quicker.
Where as biweave regen whilst being shot at quickly offsetting current dps.
A corvette can run really really hot.
So she's equipped with 2 huge rapid fire incendiary multicannons x3 high capacity multicannons size large n medium all incendiary apart from one which is corrosive.The Belly one is turreted cos of the crap blind position it's in.
The 2 small points have long range thermally vented beams turreted.
And 6k prismatics.
And she fights permanently with 4 pips in shields that's what this build is centred round. The 4 pips.
X2 size 7 scbs top em up.
That's like over 20k shields hehehe.
 

Ytterium

Y
Miko said:
Recharge shouldn't factor in when under sustained incoming. It shouldn't recharge live whilst under fire at all.
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Except it doesn't. You just need to get a hit in every 5 seconds. (Easier with stuff like beams and a spare gun if you aren't in a fast agile ship), which is probably why your corvette is struggling. If you can't break them, your TOT struggles so much that they can control the engagement and recharge.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Ytterium said:
Except it doesn't. You just need to get a hit in every 5 seconds. (Easier with stuff like beams and a spare gun if you aren't in a fast agile ship), which is probably why your corvette is struggling. If you can't break them, your TOT struggles so much that they can control the engagement and recharge.
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This.

Reason why I have a LR pulse turret on many builds, actively countering biweave regen.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Ydiss said:
That's a good point, standard or prismatic are better for survival rather than combat.
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The bar for simple survival is usually pretty low.

The main disadvantage in bi-weaves is during sustained incoming fire, due the ability to interrupt active regent. Collapsed regen rate can make up for this in some cases, but without cover, or under heavy enough focus, the shields will never come back up before the internals are trashed, no matter how competent hull/module protections are.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Chances are that anybody who's flying a Cutter with a gazillion mj of shields has just piled on the HD SBs, rather than looking at specific resistances.

People flying things like FdLs and tank-ships with bi-weaves tend to have a better idea what they're doing.

The little DBS I've been playing with, for example, has 590mj of shield but the SBs I fitted mean it has 1350mj of thermal resistance, cos I know it's mostly going to take laser fire.
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Morbad said:
The bar for simple survival is usually pretty low.

The main disadvantage in bi-weaves is during sustained incoming fire, due the ability to interrupt active regent. Collapsed regen rate can make up for this in some cases, but without cover, or under heavy enough focus, the shields will never come back up before the internals are trashed, no matter how competent hull/module protections are.
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I definitely don't bother using them as a hull tank if that's what you mean. I just stack them up.
 
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