For you fellow FAS drivers....

[DrDevice55]

Anyone have an opinion with the new updates on the best shielding for the FAS? Ive been running the 5c BiWeaves, but the newer AI, I wonder if they are not working as well as they were prior.
Is a weaker shield with faster recharge still better then stronger with slower recharge in this new galaxy?

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Bi weaves are only 20%*weaker than A rated, but recharge 50% faster. FAS has garbage shields either way. Go with the faster recharge.

 

[akaliel]

Yup, Droogie is right. Class 5 biweaves recover in 57 seconds and recharge in 1:28m. Class 5A shields recover in 1:39m and recharge in 3:31m. And are only 20% stronger. Personally I find biweaves much better when I'm bounty hunting. However my trading ships use standard shields. For them I'm more concerned about taking sustained damage in one or two enounters. I want them to hold through the fsd recharge while I'm trying to run away. The biweaves need to keep me protected for many. But shorter encounters.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Bi weaves also use less power. Well worth the small hit to strength

 

[Bacalao]

Anyone have an opinion with the new updates on the best shielding for the FAS? Ive been running the 5c BiWeaves, but the newer AI, I wonder if they are not working as well as they were prior.
Is a weaker shield with faster recharge still better then stronger with slower recharge in this new galaxy?

It's not so cut and dried. What are you doing at the time? An assassination mission with a single target might be nice having the bigger shield, but bounty hunting in a RES or hanging out in a CZ where you get into lots of little engagements might be better to have the faster recharge between fights. Depends a lot on how you fly too, if you fit SCBs or if you use silent running.

 

[akaliel]

It's not so cut and dried. What are you doing at the time? An assassination mission with a single target might be nice having the bigger shield, but bounty hunting in a RES or hanging out in a CZ where you get into lots of little engagements might be better to have the faster recharge between fights. Depends a lot on how you fly too, if you fit SCBs or if you use silent running.

True enough, it's situational and depends a lot on play style. In my bounty hunting Vulture I like the biweaves with 2 shield boosters. It gives me about 5% less shielding than a standard 5A shield with 1 booster, but recovers 30 seconds faster and recharges in almost half the time (3:52 vs 2:02). And the power draw is only 0.16 more (with the biweaves and 2 boosters). Overall for a quick vulture bouncing from fight to fight in a res it works very well.

 

[Lobey]

You couldn't prise my bi-weaves out of my cold dead hands - hoping to engineer mod tham a bit though.

 

[MottiKhan]

I still use the 5A shields, but with a boosted booster and a fast spinup Shield Cell Bank. I need 2 heat sinks and lately have had to stop using my hammers before running out of ammo due to heat. I'm thinking of going with 3 heat sinks and ditching the chaff. Or maybe I just need to go with multicannons.

 

[Kazacy]

To be honest i tried these days prismatic shield on a FAS and i was disappointed. In my opinion full armor it's still viable, just try to dodge the weapons arc of your enemy, use silent run (still works if you don't abuse and use frags, low heat) and fit a point defence and chaff. Of course it's not an I-win button but i have fun. Doesn't work to farm npc's but for short, vicious fights it's good (and of course pvp).

 

[GammaZ]

Well, i still use prismatic and 5A SCB.
With some upgrades i now have 600mj of shield which is good on such maneuverable ship.
And some armour to be able to finish fight if shield fails.
At least this way i can use some internals for non combat-related stuff instead of filling them all with HRP-s.

 

[Allant Doran]

Seems like the topic to ask. What's a good 2.1 FAS build?

I've not flown one in a long time but would love to get back to one.

 

[X-Terminator]

And where are Prismatic/Bi Weave Shields best found?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I have biweave and they do well in 1vs1. If you get swarmed however, there's a good chance one of them enemies has missiles and you run risk of losing a vital module like thruster or FSD. I had hilarious effects escaping fights with thrusters down. HRP don't seem to help much against missiles, they damage stuff that sticks out of the hull and thrusters stick out quite.

What I think is that the FAS is really good against bigger ships with the punch they can pack. Against the smaller brats I'm having more and relaxed results with my mining python that has 2 heavy turrets mounted.

 

[Conch]

running Bi-weave on the FAS is the way to go.

but having an APA on her is even better, i could rule the galaxy with it.
(lucky im a good guy)

 

[monkeymagoo]

Wish I had any kind of shield on my FAS at the moment. I'm currently at 4% hull and need to leave the surface of the planet I'm on, then somehow make it to a station without taking a single shot otherwise I'm dead. I'll probably lose another 3% hull bouncing around on the landing pad

Oh, and my balance is quite low - if I lose this ship, I can rebuy one more time so I'll probably have to sell her to be on the safe side. Argh, I need an armed escort.

If I survive tonight, I'll probably look for a bi-weave for mine.

 

[audiodistortion]

Run Bi's, expect to lose them, hull buff.

 

[Tikigod]

Well, i still use prismatic and 5A SCB.
With some upgrades i now have 600mj of shield which is good on such maneuverable ship.
And some armour to be able to finish fight if shield fails.
At least this way i can use some internals for non combat-related stuff instead of filling them all with HRP-s.

The thing to keep in mind with such approaches is that due to how the shield mechanics work, more MJ translates directly into more downtime of shields if they do drop.

There's no way around that rule, outside of perhaps modifications but none jumped out at bypassing the rate of recharging a collapsed shield last I checked through the offerings.

Pip management, larger capacitor and such all do nothing toward speeding up or slowing down shield recharge which is a fixed 1MJ/s for non-bi weaves nor for speeding up restoring collapsed shields, it's all fixed rates unless there was some change in recent months that I missed.

When a non-bi weave shield collapses it will regenerate at around 3MJ/s I think Frontier have it set to roughly now (used to be much slower at the same general 1MJ/s rate IIRC) and the shield will only reform once 50% of the total strength is regenerated. This is why smaller shields re-establish so much quicker than larger and why just going for pure shield strength means when things do go south, you've really dug yourself a hole and better have some counter-measure and hull tank potential especially with weapons like missiles being like they are now.

In 1v1 situations it's less of a concern, but for making the ship more dependable in less favourable situations, it's not exactly ideal.

 

[Surefoot]

Seems like the topic to ask. What's a good 2.1 FAS build?

I've not flown one in a long time but would love to get back to one.

PvE = 1 fixed beam on top, 3 cannons on bottom (i prefer gimbals there in order to snipe modules). The cannons have received a nice buff in 2.1 and are fun to use, they really mess up the innards of whatever they hit. Their main drawback from before, limited ammunition, can be mitigated with engineer mods now.

 

[GammaZ]

The thing to keep in mind with such approaches is that due to how the shield mechanics work, more MJ translates directly into more downtime of shields if they do drop.

There's no way around that rule, outside of perhaps modifications but none jumped out at bypassing the rate of recharging a collapsed shield last I checked through the offerings.

Pip management, larger capacitor and such all do nothing toward speeding up or slowing down shield recharge which is a fixed 1MJ/s for non-bi weaves nor for speeding up restoring collapsed shields, it's all fixed rates unless there was some change in recent months that I missed.

When a non-bi weave shield collapses it will regenerate at around 3MJ/s I think Frontier have it set to roughly now (used to be much slower at the same general 1MJ/s rate IIRC) and the shield will only reform once 50% of the total strength is regenerated. This is why smaller shields re-establish so much quicker than larger and why just going for pure shield strength means when things do go south, you've really dug yourself a hole and better have some counter-measure and hull tank potential especially with weapons like missiles being like they are now.

In 1v1 situations it's less of a concern, but for making the ship more dependable in less favourable situations, it's not exactly ideal.

Yes, i am aware of it. And reinforced shield reduce regen rate even more. But every approach has its advantages and disadvantages. With maximum strength disadvantage is restart/recharge time, with biweave it is low shield strength and need to maintain sys capacitor to gain fast restart/recharge advantage, which means you have to move power from something else reducing maneuverability or firepower.
During fight i usually keep zero pips in sys (or 4 if i need to recharge it, or about to take a lot of damage) and try to keep shield up using SCB. And when shield is down i consider it lost for the whole fight and plan accordingly, FAS base armour + mil. grade is usually enough to finish fight, or to run in the worst case.

 

[Martian Successor]

Anyone have an opinion with the new updates on the best shielding for the FAS? Ive been running the 5c BiWeaves, but the newer AI, I wonder if they are not working as well as they were prior.
Is a weaker shield with faster recharge still better then stronger with slower recharge in this new galaxy?

I'm still sporting Bi-weaves with a 4A SCB in case I get swarmed and it still works great for me. The 4A SCB can bring up my shields from one bar all the way up to full and even if I run out of heatsinks (now that they've been reduced to 3) the 4A SCB doesn't cook me up that much (a couple of seconds above 100% is nothing). I've even got a 0A engineer modded Heavy Duty Shield Booster now and the shields are now tougher but still recharge quickly and come back up in under 50 seconds. I'd recommend modding a shield booster if you want them a little stronger as modding the shields themselves will increase their recharge time.

Bi-weaves on the FAS are a thing of beauty in my opinion (so too on the Vulture). The FAS is manouverable enough to get out of heavy fire and stick to an opponents tail thus ensuring you don't get hit that often and also letting your shields recharge (regular shields are too slow to recharge). Bi-weaves also use less power so that means you can put more pips to Engines or Weapons while your shield bars charge up.

Secondly the FAS has a ton of hull, which means it can stand to take a bit of a beating until the Bi-weaves come back up and they come back up quite fast. Coupled with the FAS's manouverability your opponent won't have much time to do damage to your hull before you get your shields back.

All in all with the new AI, if I'm fighting them 1on 1 they very rarely manage to break my shields - Bi-weaves are tough enough with 4 pips to shields and of course the FAS is so damn agile.