Engineering Shields - how are people getting them so good?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I've been pondering this...

I've read many posts where Commanders have engineered their shields, and associated components, to extreme levels. So much so that they claim they're largely "immune" to NPC's and that their shields can hold out for ages against multiple attackers, all the while they watch "Netflix" and let their turrets do the work lol. I never doubted these reports and always thought it'd be a great goal to aim for... one day.

So, that day came about last week. I finally did some Materials grind to enable me to G5 Engineer shields & boosters as well as power plant and distributor to support them. I've not totally maxed every item, but I've a solid G5 in most things.

The stats on the Bi-weaves (for the recharge) are as follows - rough from memory:

About 1,500 raw shield health
Just over 60% Thermal resistance
mid 50's for both Kinetic and Explosive - possibly a bit higher

I rolled the Shields for Thermal resistances, and a total of six boosters with a mix of general resistance, additional Thermal resistance and strength. Not maxed rolls but solid I thought, though I did hit major diminishing returns with a +3% roll increase (for example) barely giving over a 1% increase over the prior roll.

I have a C7 Shield Cell bank - not engineered yet - for emergencies. Of course I also have Heat Sinks

Oh, this is on a Corvette btw

I was actually quite pleased with the resistance results, considering I couldn't quite max everything out. I expected my shields to be pretty robust now. Maybe not PvP robust, but ample vs NPC's.

However, this doesn't appear to be the case!

Firstly, post Engineering, I seem to be facing a new class of NPC's. They both hit harder and seem VERY resistant to my mildly (G3) Engineered lasers. They really are in a different league to the NPC's I faced before. The most surprising was an Asp Explorer, which was easy to hit and keep targetted (two C4 Fixed beams on my Corvette) yet it took a long time to bring his shields down...and even then his hull was tough. It was a fun fight though, and my shields held well.

My next fight, well, I didn't even have time to identify the exact ships I was against, but they seemed small and nimble - I'm thinking Python / Krait but not 100% sure. Well, I say next fight but it was actually the one after that... I was in a USS and I'd just defeated two Pirate Vultures quite easily, there were four in total, I took the first two solo but some local authority/security ships turned up and helped with the third one and took the fourth out themselves. I'd just paused to collect some dropped materials when three new hostile blips jumped in to the instance. I checked quickly before shooting and it's a good job I did as these guys were bugged sector security ships which attacked me, despite me being clean. As this was a bug I decided to flee.

Good job I did! Despite having near full shields, and an extra PiP to SYS at the time, I was down to my last - very pink - shield bar in a handful of seconds. Thankfully I managed to low-wake away - Corvette difficult to mass-lock I guess - and dock at a station.

So, sure, I experienced a bug with the sector security NPC's - I never was wanted and didn't return fire - but I was surprised how little time my Engineered shields lasted vs. just three medium ships. Have NPC's been majorly buffed since I was reading about people "NPC immune" Engineered shields? It was a while ago, before 3.0 I think.

I guess I just wanted to hear more experienced players thoughts when it comes to shield Engineering. I thought I'd gotten a pretty good result, but like my third fight saw my shields in the red in mere seconds. Perhaps I got unlucky and the bugged sector security NPC's were heavily buffed (aka Engineered) and that's why my shields fell so quickly. I have encountered normal (pirate / otherwise "wanted") NPC's whose weapons do special damage like damaging my hull though shields are up, so I know things have been tweaked, I just don't know to what extent.

Any input is welcome. Did I just engineer my shields "wrong", perhaps there's an accepted way to do it for best effectiveness vs. NPC's. Maybe I was just expecting too much, or NPC's are that much better equipped in general now. I guess I just expected my resistant shields to better resist laser hits due to their 60%+ thermal resistance.

Oh, one final question... What are the maximum obtainable resistance values in 3.1? Also, is there a way to calculate diminishing returns? I'm using six shield boosters - all engineered - but I wonder if I need that many to get the best results on a Corvette.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[Sylveria]

Good questions and points raised. Repped.

I'll be keeping an eye on the responses in this thread, because I've had a lot of similar questions myself.

I've always thought that those ships with the most base MJ available have clear advantage in using SCB's and the only thing they'd need to engineer would be thermal resistance, but it's not definitively the case.

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

I'm a FDL pilot but know (and shoot) Corvette pilots. Based on my experience the general rule of thumb for massive shields are as follows:

Thermal Resistant Generator, two Resistant Augmented Boosters, then as many Heavy Duty Boosters as you can manage. Prismatic Shields are generally considered best for this (though I imagine regular shields do fine depending on the mission). You're a big, slow target so the regeneration of the Bi-weave will be of limited utility when under heavy fire. Most Corvette pilots I know rely on the 'Double Bank' method (fire SCB and Heat Sink, count to five, fire second SCB) running two class 7 SCBs and a High Capacity Heat Sink. As per usual the number of pips you have in SYS plus how much ramming/plasma (that sweet absolute damage) will have an impact.

Hope that helps. I'm sure some Corvette pilots will be along shortly to correct or elaborate on anything I've said here (paging Dr. Morbad, paging Dr. M-o-r-bad).

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

I have a vette with 7A normal shield. Reinforced mod and 6 boosters. 4200 MJ with 71% explosion 65%kinetic and 28% thermal resistance. It doesn't drop. The old wing assassin missions might make me use an SCB charge if I made mistakes doing it solo. Haven't played much recently so I don't know anything about these uber NPCs that others are reporting.

 

[Stealthie]

I've seen some people fit big ships with 8 SBs to really tank the shield.
Personally, I always stick 1 or more PDs on my big ships - the logic being that if I can shoot down missiles I don't have to worry as much about making my shields immune to explosive damage.

Also, it depends how you configure the SBs you fit.
Fit a bunch of Heavy Duty SBs and you'll end up with a really big number but poor resistances whereas Resistance Augmented SBs don't give your shield the same raw power but they improve the resistances.

A while back I decided to strip all the SBs off all my ships and take them and get them ALL G5 engineered - something like 130-odd SBs altogether.

After I got finished, for the yucks, I stuck 8 x HD SBs on my Corvette to see what'd happen. The result was around 8,500MJ of shield.

In use, I was surprised that it wasn't that great.
Regular attacks didn't dent the shield but if I got attacked by a ship using PAs or a couple of fed ships spamming missiles it wouldn't be that long before the outer ring started to fade.

Just finished building a new Corvette.
It's got a 7A prismatic shield c/w G5 thermal resist and the multiweave XFX.
Also fitted 6 x SBs, 3 with G5 Resistance Augmented and 3 with G5 Heavy Duty, all with the Flow Control XFX, to save a bit of juice.
Added to that, it's got a pair of 7A SCBs to recharge the shields and a pair of PDs to shoot at missiles.

It's "only" got around 3,200MJ of shield but it's also got roughly 60%-70% resistances too.

Basically, I can hang around in CZs and RESs and it takes about half an hour of regular combat before I need to think about charging my shield.
At that point I'll either charge if from an SCB or, if I've let it run down further, I'll slope off, do a re-boot and then top it up with a couple of SCB charges.

I know the common belief is that bi-weaves are better than other shields cos they pump more energy into the shield over time.
The flaw in this is, you don't get to decide how and when your shield gets depleted. Other ships do that by attacking you.
As a result of this, it's just not worth the effort (to me) of trying to create a "self-healing" shield.
I just want the strongest possible shield and then, when it starts to get depleted, I'll decide when to pump more energy into it... or run away.

 

[Sylveria]

I'd assume the reason for stacking more than 4 SB's would be stacking engineered resistances, due to the nature of diminishing returns for the SB effect itself?

 

[V'larr]

Resistances can be overrated too, by the by. I recommend playing with modding on coriolis or edshipyard - the results measured in Effective HP of sticking with the 'reinforced'/'heavy duty' options as opposed to trying to level-out the resistances were quite shocking to me.

 

[Scoob]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate it.

My understanding was - perhaps outdated information - was that lower overall capacity was deemed "better" as it makes SCB's more effective. I.e. restoring n number of shield points when n is only 10% of your overall shield strength isn't worth much, but when n is 30% of your (lower) max shield strength it makes SCB's very useful indeed. Combining this with bi-weaves - for the much faster recharge - and resistances over health boosts making the effective shield strength that much higher... well, it seemed a smart way to go for a combat ship.

If I were doing a trader type build, or any ship that's not really expected to see combat, but flee from it if it's forced on me, then I'd be more shield health biased. I.e. tank some damage while I attempt to flee, then recharge in super cruise.

I did love my FDL, such a nice ship to fly. I didn't really do it justice Engineering-wise - I just really couldn't be doing with the Materials grind at the time (a while ago, no material traders or other ways of getting materials we have now) - but I felt the Corvette fit the combat role better, but from a more tanky perspective rather than nimble.

In fact, my initial thoughts were that bi-weaves were a perfect fit for fast ships that could put some distance between yourself and your foes. That time not under fire lending to the faster recharge, before getting back into the action. There was some debate (quite some time ago) whether bi-weaves were better while under fire or not. The thought being that shields don't recharge at all within n seconds of being hit, and need some time out of combat (or at least not being hit) for their recharge to kick in. So, getting out of combat was critical for bi-weaves due their strength being their recharge rate. However, from the posts I read (on the internet lol) I thought it was proven that shields do still recharge every "tick" when under fire, so bi-weaves are still potentially useful when remaining in combat. This under-fire recharge in effect gives some additional resistance to the shields. For example, my shield might be being depleted at 50 points a second, but I'm still recharging at 10 points a second, making my effective damage only 40 points a second - a 20% effective resistance to damage. If my understanding of shields recharging while being hit is wrong though, it totally undermines my reasoning for fitting bi-weaves! lol.

Another thing - I'm remembering all sorts of stuff I've read this evening lol - I was under the impression that one of the penalties to boosting shield heath was the recharge rate. I don't mean percent recharge wise, obviously a bigger shield will take longer to reach 100% from 50% than a smaller one. No, what I mean is that say a bi-weave recharges at 10 units a seconds (made up number) where a normal shield recharges at 5 units a second, but has more health at 100% However, if you were to add a booster (or engineer the shield directly) so the bi-weave has as much health as a normal A rated shield of that class, it might only recharge at 4 units a second, due to the penalty. Again, I've used made up numbers here, but the point was that giving a shield too much of a health boost, seriously compromised it's regen, which is of greater impact on a bi-weave. All that said, I'm unaware of what changes there may have been to engineering since the engineering update. Perhaps people were having poor RNG under the old system, so got a "good" shield health bonus roll, but were very unlucky re: the recharge penalty.

@Trollymctrollerson: Yeah, I can see that your build would be more effective than mine. While I have more than double your Thermal resistance - so I take half the damage from lasers you do - you have four time the shield health, making your shields twice as effective. However, I get a major boost from dropping an SCB, where you would not by comparison.

Perhaps I should have done a more "Tanky" build for the Corvette, relying on leaving the combat instance if my shields get broken. Interestingly, I have an Anaconda I was using for passenger missions and haulage last year. I put a lightly engineered shield on that, but went for health boosts over resistance. It has, from memory, about 2,500 health and no more than 40% or so thermal resistance, a little higher for Kinetic and Explosive. However, it did feel a lot stronger when I engaged in combat. I've not used it much lately, but it still felt pretty good when I did, perhaps I didn't encounter any of the stronger NPC's though.

It's a real dilemma this! I'm not material rich enough to play around with stuff, nor to I want to do much more materials grind - it's not that fun. However, I do worry that I'm really not getting the best out of my Corvette by using fast-charging and resistant bi-weaves.

@Stealthie: Thanks for the reply, some interesting information there. I suspect the bi-weaves perhaps just sacrifice a bit too much shield health to be as effective as I'd like. After all, I can engineer decent resistances on a regular shield just as well as a bi-weave.

As an aside, while I remember, I took some of my old resistance Shield Boosters (legacy mods) and re-rolled them. I was surprised when I lost the shield health boosts entirely. I.e. I had a legacy Shield Booster than give me +20% shield health and ~13% to all three resistances. After re-rolling, I lost that 20% health boost, but still managed about the same ~13% resistances across the board. Basically, my shield strength was worse after re-rolling some legacy mods.

I think I might follow your example Stealthie. I cannot get Prismatics currently - I'd need to check what's involved, but I understand there's some grind? - but I might use normal shields and engineer them how you have. The problem is, under the new engineering system, it just take so many materials that I almost give up at the thought of the grind involved. However, I'll likely have to spend some time doing non-fun stuff to get the most out of my ships. I can't even contemplate how much material and data farming you (and others) must have done to be able to engineer so much stuff - especially under the new system! I was always happy to just apply middle of the road G3 mods to most things I Engineered, so while I was material-poor, it didn't really hurt. Now it does lol.

Thanks again all for the replies

Scoob.

Me, two and a half hours ago: "I'll just check the forum before bed...I'll not be long" *sigh* lol

 

[Scoob]

Resistances can be overrated too, by the by. I recommend playing with modding on coriolis or edshipyard - the results measured in Effective HP of sticking with the 'reinforced'/'heavy duty' options as opposed to trying to level-out the resistances were quite shocking to me.

Heh, that would be the smart place to play around wouldn't it - uses less materials that way lol.

I really wish I properly understood how resistances stacked & how diminishing returns worked. Burning through my materials to get a good result only to have it nerfed is frustrating lol.

I think I need to get to sleep now, typing has gotten tricky lol.

Scoob.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

Bi-weaves..............this is on a Corvette

Prismatics.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

My understanding was ... that lower overall capacity was deemed "better" as it makes SCB's more effective. I.e. restoring n number of shield points when n is only 10% of your overall shield strength isn't worth much, but when n is 30% of your (lower) max shield strength it makes SCB's very useful indeed. Combining this with bi-weaves - for the much faster recharge - and resistances over health boosts making the effective shield strength that much higher... well, it seemed a smart way to go for a combat ship.

This is all entirely accurate - if your playstyle supports it.

Bi-weaves reward players who manage to avoid incoming fire, so the recharge can work mid fight (no recharge when taking hits). As such, your logic there is spot-on, but not for an "AFK tank" build.

You thinking about shield recharge, when you were talking about "units per second" is misguided though. Shields - biweave, normal, or prismatic - recharge at a set MJ/second rate, with biweaves being the highest rate for a given class. So a "smaller" shield, in terms of MJ, still recharges at the same rate as one pushed to crazy levels with heavy duty shield boosters. The only thing that makes the recharge take longer is the higher capacity.

My personal shield philosophy is along the lines as the bit I quoted - high resist, high recharge, dodge fire to take advantage of the recharge. I don't really see a point in engineering my shields to massive capacities. My Corvette currently has 800MJ shields. With what I use it for (Mining in the middle of RES's), the shields basically never drop anyway, so while I've flown it with a lot stronger shielding, it was all basically pointless shielding too. If I never drop below 800, everything above 800 is wasted.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

My Vette has bi-weaves. 50.4/58.7/65.6 Kinetic/Thermal/Explosive resistances with 2706 raw mj. In a haz res, one on one fights, I don't lose a ring. Wings, I might lose one or two depending on the types of enemies. I had an SCB but got rid of it because I never used it, so it's plenty strong for me.

 

[Scoob]

(no recharge when taking hits)

Hmm, that was one thing I was unsure of. I'd read about that, but then others had posted to refute it. Darn internet lol. This was a while ago though, likely prior to 3.0 - basically when I was playing last summer, I had a bit of a break and only dipped my toe in the game, so to speak, until a few weeks ago. I mean, I played from time to time, but didn't dabble with Engineering, ship outfitting or anything really.

So, if shields do not recharge when being hit - so, they don't lose 50 units (mj) and gain 5 over a given time for example - then this does negate part of the reason I chose bi-weaves in the first place. It's quite frustrating when false information is posted as fact.

I need to check again, but I noticed that my resistance boosters lost their 20% shield health boost after engineering. Basically, I had a legacy mod with over 20% shield health boost plus the resistances, but just had the resistances (no health boost) after re-rolling. Basically, my shields are somewhat weaker than Coriolis suggests they should be.

Anyway, really can't seem to sleep tonight, hence more posts lol... though I suspect I'm not making much sense.

Scoob.

 

[BL1P]

Heh, that would be the smart place to play around wouldn't it - uses less materials that way lol.

Scoob.

Coriolis confuses me. My FDL shields in-game say something like 2,200ish I think and resists say blabla% but in Coriolis they show as 5,911 with the resists being around the 11,000 mark.

I dont know which to believe

 

[Morbad]

I rolled the Shields for Thermal resistances, and a total of six boosters with a mix of general resistance, additional Thermal resistance and strength.

...

Any input is welcome. Did I just engineer my shields "wrong", perhaps there's an accepted way to do it for best effectiveness vs. NPC's.

What do you mean extra thermal resistance? If you are using anything other than a mix of resistance augmented and heavy duty boosters with thermal resistant shields, I'd say you are doing something wrong.

Specific resistance type boosters are to plug major holes in resistances in setups that aren't using thermal resistant shields, or for making extremely specialized configs for tackling equally specialized (mostly PvP) opponents. I used to have a setup with 88% kinetic resistance for fighting frag boats, for example.

Oh, one final question... What are the maximum obtainable resistance values in 3.1? Also, is there a way to calculate diminishing returns? I'm using six shield boosters - all engineered - but I wonder if I need that many to get the best results on a Corvette.

Shield resistance stacks multiplicatively with diminishing returns kicking in (and halving further contributions) at 30% over the resistance values provided by the shield generator.

There is no hard cap (other than 100%) that I am aware of, and with a very specialized setup ~90% resistance to one damage type is achievable. However, this has major downsides with regards to other damage types.

You can probably do better than what you have with 4-5 boosters. The new version of EDSY should be accurate if you want to play with the options.

My personal shield philosophy is along the lines as the bit I quoted - high resist, high recharge, dodge fire to take advantage of the recharge. I don't really see a point in engineering my shields to massive capacities. My Corvette currently has 800MJ shields. With what I use it for (Mining in the middle of RES's), the shields basically never drop anyway, so while I've flown it with a lot stronger shielding, it was all basically pointless shielding too. If I never drop below 800, everything above 800 is wasted.

I normally run hybrid bi-weave setups, including on my vette. 800MJ is acceptable for PvE or 1v1s against smaller ships, but is woefully insufficient for withstanding focus fire from more than one CMDR...at least while in a large and slow ship.

So, I generally target good resistances and ~2k MJ of shielding, with fast charge bi-weaves, as the best compromise between protection and time to recover from shield collapse (often turning off my sole booster with negative resistances to speed the process).

So, if shields do not recharge when being hit - so, they don't lose 50 units (mj) and gain 5 over a given time for example - then this does negate part of the reason I chose bi-weaves in the first place. It's quite frustrating when false information is posted as fact.

If you are actually flying your ship, you will see significant periods of active regeneration, even in the Corvette, at least against NPCs.

Collapsed regeneration is nothing to sneeze at either. It's even faster and cannot be interrupted by anything short of destroying or cutting power to the shield gen. A competently built combat vette can survive a half-dozen shield collapses in the heart of a CZ without being at serious risk. Not that you'll ever see this many, assuming you are flying your ship and not just letting it sit there.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

Coriolis confuses me. My FDL shields in-game say something like 2,200ish I think and resists say blabla% but in Coriolis they show as 5,911 with the resists being around the 11,000 mark.

I dont know which to believe

Numbers in Coriolis have been wacky lately. Not sure if it's fixed yet, but you could get resistances over 80% for example. And the % boost from heavy duty boosters has gone up and down. I have an old build I haven't updated in a while that says I get a 370% shield boost from a heavy duty booster. Re-adding the module gives the corrected number. It's driven me to ed shipyard cause I don't trust the numbers anymore.

 

[Scoob]

My Vette has bi-weaves. 50.4/58.7/65.6 Kinetic/Thermal/Explosive resistances with 2706 raw mj. In a haz res, one on one fights, I don't lose a ring. Wings, I might lose one or two depending on the types of enemies. I had an SCB but got rid of it because I never used it, so it's plenty strong for me.

Heh, I must be engineering wrong lol.

Tell me, your resistance boosts, do they still give a 20% (or so) shield health boost too? Mine are not doing that currently. My shield health is purely from the HD boosts I have. I really need to double-check this tomorrow, as something has gone a little screwy with my re-engineering of legacy modules. Perhaps I should take them off and re-install & see if some of my shield health is restored? When I lost the 20% (or so) health boosts, I just assumed it was down to the Engineering changes in 3.0 and thought no more of it. However, reading here, other threads and checking on Coriolis, it looks like I might be experiencing a slight bug.

I think if I can get my bi-weaves to around 2,500 - the same as my lightly engineered Anaconda on normal shields with worse resistances - I think it'll work well for me.

If I can lose the SCB, I can also get rid of my two Heat Sink launchers which gives me more options, do you perhaps have a link to your build on Coriolis? Or is it simply a G5 across the board thing? Could you perhaps tell me the shield and booster details at least? I mean, just the shield + mod and how many boosters & their mods - just "G5 [mod]" will be great

Sleep is overrated.

Scoob.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

Here's the build:
https://s.orbis.zone/acTdkcJY

Also, it might interest you to know that you can fire one 7B SCB without overheating if you have specialized + boss cells with a good PP efficiency.

 

[BL1P]

Numbers in Coriolis have been wacky lately. Not sure if it's fixed yet, but you could get resistances over 80% for example. And the % boost from heavy duty boosters has gone up and down. I have an old build I haven't updated in a while that says I get a 370% shield boost from a heavy duty booster. Re-adding the module gives the corrected number. It's driven me to ed shipyard cause I don't trust the numbers anymore.

Yup that was it - Two SBs were showing 270%

 

[Scoob]

What do you mean extra thermal resistance? If you are using anything other than a mix of resistance augmented and heavy duty boosters with thermal resistant shields, I'd say you are doing something wrong.

I engineered my shields as Thermal Resistant but, now I think about it, it was a maxed G4 roll, not G5 - I was out of a certain item. So, I then Engineered one shield booster for Thermal Resist to "top it up", and three for Resistance and one (or maybe two) for Heavy Duty. I can't quite remember clearly at the moment, sorry. I think I might have been chasing unreasonable numbers, I read somewhere that "over 60" was the sweet spot for thermal, but diminishing returns got me. I'd have been better of, I suspect, being happy with 50% thermal and Engineered another booster for something else.

I know I'm not full G5 across the board, so that explains some of the short falls, but I still thought it was a fairly solid role. I do need to check my build though as something is broken re: that missing 20% shield health boost on several of my boosters. Unless I'm getting confused...which is likely lol.

Here's the build:
https://s.orbis.zone/acTdkcJY

Also, it might interest you to know that you can fire one 7B SCB without overheating if you have specialized + boss cells with a good PP efficiency.

Thanks. That's interesting. I'd never really used SCB's until my Corvette build, so I just fitted a 7A. I was quite shocked by the massive amount of heat they produce, but timely use of a heat sink counters that nicely. I was going to look into SCB Engineering, but not got there yet lol.

Edit: I see your Resistance Augmented Boosters are giving you a 26% shield health boost too. Since I re-rolled my legacy mod shield boosters, I've lost the 20-odd percent health boost they had. At least, it's not showing in-game when I examine the boosters. Most odd! I will definitely remove and re-install them, I just hope they're not totally broken as I've not the materials to re-engineer all of them.

Scoob.