Newcomer / Intro Bi-Weave Shield Generators

[L M P]

I have been looking at builds and noticed that many people use Bi-Weave Shield Generators and Shield Boosters with thermal resistant engineering on the shields and boosters.

I have Bi-Weave Shields on one of my ships they are 5C Reinforced Grade 3 shield with the Hi-Capacity experimental effect. My Shield Boosters are Grade 1 Heavy-Duty with the Super Capacitors experimental effect. I setup my shields this way purely because it gave me the highest shield strength number in Coriolis which is probably NOT the best way to decide what to do.

I know lasers use heat energy so it sounds like it would make sense, but I would like to know a bit more about how it works.

 

[Faded Glory]

Well, the main advantage of bi-weaves is their fast recharge and broken recharge rate, which come at a cost of shield strength and distributor draw. So putting the reinforced modification on it works against that, although yes, it will give an overall stronger shield, but then you're probably better off with a standard shield which would be stronger.

Thermal resistant modification makes the shield stronger against thermal weapons such as lasers at the expense of a bit less strength against kinetic and explosive weapons, which are weaker against shields anyway. So bumping up the bi-weaves thermal resistance makes them quite a potent and fast charging shield as thermal resistance doesn't slow down recharge. Then chuck a resistance augmented SB on it to bump all the resistances (including thermal) at the expense of a bit of power draw.

I use bi-weaves on one or two ships that I might use for RES type combat where having the shields recharge faster is useful. I don't do that much anyway. For assassination missions, where I'll be up against a single, stronger opponent I use standard stronger shields (usually with thermal resistance mod) because I only need the shield to stand up in one battle, then have all the time in the world to let them recharge.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Biweaves are special because they have significantly increased regeneration rates compared to regular shields, although their capacity isn't as good as standard A-grades or prismatics. This means that they rely upon their regeneration in combat to be effective rather than simply having a load of capacity behind them.

Because regeneration is a flat MJ/second based upon shield generator size, stacking more capacity doesn't really work. Sure, you have more capacity, but your overall shield potential isn't increased that much because you haven't increased your regeneration rate which is what Biweaves rely upon.

However, combining resistances with Biweaves is quite strong. This is because increasing resistances gives more protection per MJ of shield, effectively multiplying both the protection provided by your shield capacity and the extra shield provided by your shield regeneration. If you are at 50% resistance, it takes 2 points of damage to strip off 1MJ of shield, while 0% resistance is only 1 damage per MJ of shield. Thermal resistant engineering is done on shields to flatten out the resistances, shield are naturally resistant to explosive and kinetic but weak to thermal attacks and thermal resistant engineering makes the shield equally resistant to all three types. NPCs tend to use a great variety of weapons, so there's little point specialising against certain damage types, you need to protect against all of them effectively - any weakness will result in the random barrage of NPC fire stripping away your shields.

So generally speaking, Biweaves like lots of resistances backed up with a touch of extra capacity, while prismatics and A-grades work best with lots of capacity and a bit of resistances.

 

[aRJay]

I tend to use Bi-Weave shields on my combat ships because they recover faster and I anticipate that if all goes well there will be many fights in a relatively short time so the quicker the better for shield recovery, non combat ships get standard pattern shields as I don't anticipate frequent damage.
Boosters will usually get resistance augmented with thermal block special, though given the slots I will use a heavy duty one as well.
Many of my shields are engineered with the efficient low-draw blue print which gives a useful boost to the strength while using less power I tend to use the fast charge special effect which brings the shields up much quicker.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Biweaves are good for extended combat sessions when you want your shields to come back quickly between engagements. Think RES work, for example.

High shield capacity with heavy duty boosters is good for single engagements against opponents that can put out a lot of damage, the kind of combat you find tends to happen during missions with the "incoming enemy" wrinkles.

Much, of course, depends on context - ships with low base shield multipliers won't benefit nearly as much from reinforced shields, so thermal resistant shields may be more appropriate.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I fly mostly hybrid builds lately, since I actually love the whole process of having my biweaves go down entirely, taking some hull damage and then having them come back on again!
It's even better with PVP, knowing my opponent is seeing that final circle complete too!
You can almost hear the Flight of the Valkyries start up.

 

[Bacalao]

Agree with the above, to be specific I would suggest this:

• Mod your biweaves to be thermal resist.
• Stack as many resistance boosters as possible.
  • 1 or more kinetic resist to compensate for the loss of kinetic resistance from your thermal resist mod.
  • The rest as resistance augmented.
  • If you get your resistances to ~60% stack heavy duty boosters, you will start to get severe diminishing returns much beyond that.
• You can view your resistance and shield strength in the right hand panel in the statistics section.
• EDshipyard and Coriolis.io both let you tinker with setups and will display absolute and effective hit points for your shields.

This is very effective in RES sites and conflict zones where you have lots of little breaks from taking damage, the high resistances means every hit point counts for more, the biweave charges hitpoints back up fast.

Keep an eye out for plasma accelerators, they do absolute damage so ignore resistances, make sure to knock them down first because they'll chew through your smaller HP pool quickly if they start landing shots.

Be sure to keep an eye on your sys capacitor, the biweaves suck capacitor like there is no tomorrow.

 

[L M P]

Thanks for the help all, I appreciate it.

I notice on some builds that people don't use an experimental effect with thermal resistant bi-weave shields, why is that?

What experimental effect would work well with thermal resistant bi-weave shields?

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

What experimental effect would work well with thermal resistant bi-weave shields?

For bi-weaves, play to its strengths and use fast charge.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Thanks for the help all, I appreciate it.

I notice on some builds that people don't use an experimental effect with thermal resistant bi-weave shields, why is that?

What experimental effect would work well with thermal resistant bi-weave shields?

I go with lo-draw unless I have distributor/power to spare (eg Krait, Python) and then I use fast charge.
The amount of MJs/sec you gain with fast charge isn't much but the power/dist difference with lo-draw is pretty significant.

 

[Dommarraa]

All experimentals have a downside and when it something like increased mass or a bit of extra power draw, you can normally accept it as irrelevant. With shields the downsides normally hit something important, so it ends up being a compromise. Unless you are going for an extreme build in 1 aspect, choosing NO experimental is a perfectly good choice.

 

[L M P]

My Bi-Weave Shields are working great, thanks all. I have had them go down and come back up while still in the same dogfight several times, never had that happen before.

I'd like to ask about the numbers below the blue bar at the top of the page in Coriolis. Is there any way that I can use that information to design better shields? I often misinterpret the numbers in the game and in Coriolis, it seems that there is always more to it than I think there is.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

My Bi-Weave Shields are working great, thanks all. I have had them go down and come back up while still in the same dogfight several times, never had that happen before.

I'd like to ask about the numbers below the blue bar at the top of the page in Coriolis. Is there any way that I can use that information to design better shields? I often misinterpret the numbers in the game and in Coriolis, it seems that there is always more to it than I think there is.

The defense tab down below might be easier to understand.
Changing the attacking ship and playing with distributor pips is helpful.

 

[ArchAngelofDeath]

I use Bioweaves when I'm spending time in a Hazres or compromised NAV Beacon so I have more staying power and less runs to a station. Same reason my loadout for those things includes lasers instead of multicannons.
Otherwise its regular shields with boosters on most and Prismatics on my Corvette and FDL for PvP or assasination/terrorist kill missions as the higher mjs seem to matter more. If your shields go down vs. a tough foe you're seldom going to have time to wait for them to regen.

 

[Mxpower76]

I fly mostly hybrid builds lately, since I actually love the whole process of having my biweaves go down entirely, taking some hull damage and then having them come back on again!
It's even better with PVP, knowing my opponent is seeing that final circle complete too!
You can almost hear the Flight of the Valkyries start up.

That's what I've got going on with my hybrid Chief. Thermal Biweave with fast charge. Then 3 boosters. 2 resist and 1 HD. For some reason I have super cap on the resists but they work. Got about 2400 on the hull and 475 shields. Great for RES work. My shields come back in less then a minute.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

That's what I've got going on with my hybrid Chief. Thermal Biweave with fast charge. Then 3 boosters. 2 resist and 1 HD. For some reason I have super cap on the resists but they work. Got about 2400 on the hull and 475 shields. Great for RES work. My shields come back in less then a minute.

I had a fun fight with another Cmdr (while in my FGS) who got too excited when my shields went down, which led to his demise.
Chatting later, I didn't have the heart to tell him that my shields are only ~500, but my hull is over 4k.

 

[L M P]

The defense tab down below might be easier to understand.
Changing the attacking ship and playing with distributor pips is helpful.

I looked at the defense tab, but I have the same problem, I don't know what to shoot for. Which bars should be tall and what bars should be lower? What forms of damage need to be high priority and which should not? I'm searching on Google right now to learn more about how shields and shield boosters work.

I use Bioweaves when I'm spending time in a Hazres or compromised NAV Beacon so I have more staying power and less runs to a station. Same reason my loadout for those things includes lasers instead of multicannons.
Otherwise its regular shields with boosters on most and Prismatics on my Corvette and FDL for PvP or assasination/terrorist kill missions as the higher mjs seem to matter more. If your shields go down vs. a tough foe you're seldom going to have time to wait for them to regen.

I have an FDL with regular 5A shields and I've never had them go down after I engineered them so I don't plan on changing them to Bi-Weave. The ship I'm using the Bi-Weave shields on is a FAS. It looks like each different ship need shields designed for that ship. The FAS when using the same shields as I use on my FDL go down a lot faster on the FAS then they do on the FDL, is this the case?

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I looked at the defense tab, but I have the same problem, I don't know what to shoot for. Which bars should be tall and what bars should be lower? What forms of damage need to be high priority and which should not? I'm searching on Google right now to learn more about how shields and shield boosters work.

Depends how you're getting damaged most often.
Since shields are already weak to lasers it makes sense to build that thermal up a bit, especially for PVE.
Shooting for fairly even resistances around 50% is a pretty common approach, then adding as much MJs as possible.
The absolute bar will be smaller.
PVP sees more kinetic and absolute damage in my experience, and builds favoring that tend to be more common.
But you are limited by what engineers you have so get on that asap.

 

[Shir]

For all pve, bi weaves were the best shields for me. Thermal resistant and fast charge, then resistance boosters to bring resistances close to 50% and the rest heavy duty boosters.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I looked at the defense tab, but I have the same problem, I don't know what to shoot for. Which bars should be tall and what bars should be lower? What forms of damage need to be high priority and which should not? I'm searching on Google right now to learn more about how shields and shield boosters work.




I have an FDL with regular 5A shields and I've never had them go down after I engineered them so I don't plan on changing them to Bi-Weave. The ship I'm using the Bi-Weave shields on is a FAS. It looks like each different ship need shields designed for that ship. The FAS when using the same shields as I use on my FDL go down a lot faster on the FAS then they do on the FDL, is this the case?

On the FDL, it's the recharge that makes bi-weaves popular.
The FDL is very fast and maneuverable, so if you can avoid getting hit too much, the recharge rate of the biweaves will eventually outpace the A class for total MJ/time.