Ship Builds & Load Outs How do you guys engineer and balance resistances on your shields and hulls?

[VoluptaBox]

Hello there,

I've always tried to balance the resistances on my shields and hulls, but after doing some combat the other day it occurred to me that it may not necessarily be the best approach. Pretty much everyone was using energy weapons against my shields, for instance. With this in mind, wouldn't it make more sense to have my resistances biased towards thermal on the shields? I don't mean going overboard and having holes for the other resists, just leaning more towards thermal.

What are your thoughts and approach to this? I know we have some expert combat pilots in the community, I particularly hope they pitch in : D

All the best.

 

[khalismur]

I like to have them all at similar levels on shield to have a good all-rounder vessel. Can't forget to have a good amount of pure shield/hull strength and not only resistances as PA, which is one of the most common weapons, does absolute damage. If you wanna PvP gotta be ready to tank those heavy PA hits and I think for that the best is pure strength instead of thermal, kinetic or explosion resistance.

For hulls, however, I like to have a bit more explosion resistance than the others. Otherwise missiles will wreck hull very quickly and one ninja torpedo can destroy you completely. Need of course module reinforcements too if you plan on hull tanking, so that people won't quickly snipe your drives, weapons or PP.

 

[Stabby_Dave]

For PvE, I go mainly thermal. If you're going to go PvP, you want more balanced.

 

[Faded Glory]

As a PvE player, I pretty much always do the thermal resistance mod on the base shield and then apply resistance augmented to any boosters. Experimental effects are generally fast recharge for the main shield (I use a lot of b-weaves) and super capacitors for the boosters.

I'm not looking for a particularly high number for the absolute shield resistance, most of mine are between 400 and 600 MJ, and they seem to do fine.

I don't do anything with hulls, very occasionally add a few HRP's if it doesn't compromise the speed too much. In the rare event that my shields go down, I will either leave the fight for good, or zip out of range until they recover, which generally isn't very long as they are usually bi-weaves and recover fast.

Might be worth adding that I only use small or medium ships.

 

[sinisalo]

I lean toward thermal in PvE. I reason that laser weapons, with their infinite shot speed hitting instantly, are the biggest threat to the fast, nimble ships I tend to fly. Plus, lasers collapse shields, so for me it makes sense to lean toward thermal resistances.

But a build is a sum of parts, and it's not possible for me to be too precise. I think resistances are very important, and sometimes overlooked in favor of raw numbers. A shield with 1000 MJ and 1,400 thermal resistance is not as effective as a 700 MJ shield with 1,700 MJ thermal resist, but I often see folks focus on that raw number. 1000 is better than 700 after all.

But like the OP said, it's leaning, but trying to leave no holes elsewhere. I give the same consideration to hull resistances, but here I think kinetic and explosive are more important, but as before, you don't want to ignore energy weapons and leave holes in your protection game.

A build though has to take many things in to consideration. Cost, speed, heat, firepower, agility and more. So for me, theoretical and practical are often at odds. For example, I built this Vulture yesterday.

Dual Beam Bi-Weave Vulture

Not quite done (I ran out of tungsten!), and the kinetic resist on the shields and the explosive/kinetic on the hull are lower than I might have wanted. But taken as a whole it hits the marks I was aiming for. Relatively lightweight, fast, agile, good jump and good, fast recovery shields. Overall I am happy with it, even if a few of the resistances ended up lower than ideal.

 

[Ceekay]

I usually size the shield strength with the class of bi-weave installed, e.g. a class 5 in the 550 - 700 MJ range, a class 6 750 - 900 and so on, essentially I try to maximise the fast charge performance of this shield type.

Also using thermal and kinetic modded boosters allows you to tailor the resistances and these booster types also use less power than the resistance augmented type.

Here's an edited version of Mr sinisalo's Vulture https://s.orbis.zone/6aod

 

[sinisalo]

Interesting Ceekay. Looking it over I think that recovery time is outrageous! Good lord.

But looking at resistances (shield HP, MJ modified by resitances) it's worse across the board, and by quite a bit. Thermal resistance percentage is increased, but it's modifying a lower raw MJ resulting in lower protection. But maybe it recharges so fast you never notice? It also uses a lot more power, nearly 2 MW.

Can you explain the benefit here?

 

[Vedmo]

In general, I go with thermal resist shields plus 2 resistant augmented booster before any heavy duty boosters are added (as space allows), as once 2 resist boosters are on thermal resist shields, you will almost always get higher individual values (by damage type) and will most certainly get higher absolute value.

For hull, I am a big fan of reactive surface with heavy duty/deep plating and at least 1 more HRP with thermal resist on it, then after covering MRPs, the more heavy duty HRPs possible the better. This will lead to very well balanced resists without sacrificing absolute value to get there.

If I'm loading up a ship with inherently weak shield values with Guardian SRPs, I'll often use multiple D or E rated boosters and (if I have the free utility slots) chase resistance past a point I would otherwise not go to due to diminishing returns, as the absolute value is not coming so much from the generator or boosters, but rather the SRPs.

 

[Northpin]

Hull - Reactive, Heavy Duty with Deep Plating. (niche build: Reactive, Lightweight with Deep Plating)
HRP - smallest one, thermal with Deep plating, rest of them Heavy Duty with Deep Plating

This means hull will have a nice and large hitpoint pool with quite equal resistance (explosive, kinetics, thermal)

For shields there are generally 2 engineering approaches:

1) Reinforced with different experimentals according with needs (hi cap, multiweave, lo draw or even thermal)
Then trying to improve the resists using SCB.
With 3 SCB nice results can be obtained using 1x heavy duty and 2 thermal
With 4 SCB, a decent combination is 2x heavy duty and 2x thermal
With 6 SCB you can get nice resists with 2x heavy duty, 1x resistances, 3x thermal and all with supercap experimental

Advantages, usually better absolute shield values, comparable after-resists values with thermal builds - sometimes better.
Disadvantages, better absolute values usually means longer regen from broken and longer regen generaly speaking - simply because the MJ pool is larger.
And since absolute values are the one that matters when ramming or when being shot with plasmas, i usually favor Reinforced


2) Thermal with various experimentals... etc...
Then improving it with SCB.
3 SCB can give decent results by using 1x heavy duty and 2x resists
4 SCB can give decent results by using 2x heavy duty and 2x resists.
6 SCB gives nice results by using 3x heavy duty and 3x resists

Advantages, better MJ values - as in each MJ offers better protection.
Smaller absolute shield values but with better resists - so comparable after-resists values.
Since the absolute values are smaller, thermal shields offer less protection to ramming and Plasma damage.

Thermals also work better with Guardian shield boosters - especially on small ships.
Thermals also offer better protection against reverb torpedoes due to improved integrity.


PVP vs PVE is simpler - usually in PVP prismatics are used , Bi-Weaves in PVE
But Bi-weaves also work ok in PVP, assuming good evasive piloting skills

 

[Just Paul]

If the shields is reinforced, I use 1 thermal and 1 resistance booster, the rest is HD, and all with super capacitor.
If the shield is thermal, 2 resistance boosters, and the rest HD, again all with super capacitor.

The reinforced shields are usually prismatic or normal, but I do have a couple reinforced bi-weaves for heavy bi-weave builds.
Thermal are all bi-weaves.

 

[Ceekay]

Interesting Ceekay. Looking it over I think that recovery time is outrageous! Good lord.

But looking at resistances (shield HP, MJ modified by resitances) it's worse across the board, and by quite a bit. Thermal resistance percentage is increased, but it's modifying a lower raw MJ resulting in lower protection. But maybe it recharges so fast you never notice? It also uses a lot more power, nearly 2 MW.

Can you explain the benefit here?

As I've said in several posts there's no perfect shield build there's just what works best for for your ship/weapon array/tactics ................ etc etc etc, with a Vulture making use of it's agility is paramount as you can avoid most weapon strikes (lasers and rails excepted).

My preferences in shield build is at the lower edge of fast regen and lowish strength, I've trialled high capacity shields on a lot of ships and I always come back to a setup that will regen quickly between engagements, and as mentioned by others having a decent armoured hull will allow you to disengage if it all goes pear shaped.

I would suggest that overall ship builds are more than just shields you can have great shields but insufficient DPS from the weapons array can make combat a whole bunch of no fun!, e.g. I have several ships with full PA weapon array, high burst damage (great in HazRES) but due to the low ROF they struggle in pirate threat zones as the targets hicap + SCB shields are difficult to drop, essentially try to get a balance of decent shields, weapons and hull coupled with tactics that suit your combat style is always more important than relying on specs and recommendations from the rest of us

 

[Gully Foyle]

Hello there,

I've always tried to balance the resistances on my shields and hulls, but after doing some combat the other day it occurred to me that it may not necessarily be the best approach. Pretty much everyone was using energy weapons against my shields, for instance. With this in mind, wouldn't it make more sense to have my resistances biased towards thermal on the shields? I don't mean going overboard and having holes for the other resists, just leaning more towards thermal.

What are your thoughts and approach to this? I know we have some expert combat pilots in the community, I particularly hope they pitch in : D

All the best.

I reinforce then lighten it. Everything that I can't lighten I make efficient except dirty drives.

 

[sinisalo]

always more important than relying on specs and recommendations from the rest of us

You modified my build as if you had made an improvement, or at least I assumed that what was you were doing. I think it's objectively worse but wanted to ask if I was missing something you were intending to show.

And I didn't actually ask anyone for anything. You offered and seem to object to my reply wondering why you made these changes? You offer advice on how I should approach Elite which I find condescending frankly (builds are more than just shields? Really?) At least I assume you are talking to me and not to the OP who is actually asking others for the advice you say isn't important.

 

[GeoJase]

My preference for agile ships is to maintain their agility as much as possible, so I tend to avoid heavy hull builds for those. My go-to for bulkheads in those cases is Reactive with Lighweight & Deep Plating engineering. Lighter = faster and more maneuverable = get hit less

 

[Ceekay]

I believe you did ask "Can you explain the benefit here?" but never mind

@ sinisalo you left out the important part of that statement "essentially try to get a balance of decent shields, weapons and hull coupled with tactics that suit your combat style ",

Simply put I prefer to use a shield setup with lower strength but fast regen and use tactics that avoid most of the return fire, others prefer the shield tank approach neither is "wrong" just different use whatever works best for you.

 

[VoluptaBox]

Thanks a lot for your inputs everyone, much appreciated

Also, since we're trying Vulture builds around, here's mine (feel free to comment on it, I don't mind): https://s.orbis.zone/6ay4