Prismatic shields in a cz

I’ve seen several people say to use prismatic shields on large ships in czs. I don’t get it. You’re going to be shot at, but you’re basically not going to heal. Isnt a biweave better because it regenerates?
 
Depends a lot on your ship, your style, your skill, etc.

There is no right or wrong answer here.

Personally i subscribe to the don't get hit, don't have to worry about shields school of thinking.

Pick your targets, always look for enemies that are facing at least one ally on them and no allies helping them. Outnumber your enemies and take them down. The more you take down, the more the battle shifts in your favour.
 
Biweave regenerates if you are not under fire. It means that these shields can be better (mainly for PvE fighting), but you need to fly your ship properly. In fights when you expect to be heavily focused are prismatic better due much higher overall strength ... you leave fight when these shields are about to drop. (For prismatic is often used ship reboot, which can bring back shields at 50% ... you need to be almost stational and avoid to be damaged during reboot for successfull restoration of shield)

For CZs if you avoid focus and attack targets on border of fight area (ideally which are already damaged and under allied fire) you will have the best use for biweave. They will keep you safe in moments when attacked, and still have enough room for regenerate once you will take down your target. There is one more thing good to know, and it is that bigger biweave shiled have better (faster) recovery. You can see it and plan your ship builds on sites like https://coriolis.io/ and/or https://edsy.org/
 
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My Corvette has class 7 prismatic shields and 2, 7b shield cell banks.
I got into top 10%, with only once having to pop 2 SCB, because of 4 Spec ops spawning almost inside my ship.
Besides that, I never felt threatened, so it really has a lot of random factors and conditions involved like some commanders mentioned already.
Luck, skill, build, position on the field etc etc.
Between rearm and delivery of bonds, shields just recharge pretty well I would say.
You can even win a medium cz without getting hit once, just choose your targets accordingly.... and I use a slf to agro first 😆
 
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I’ve seen several people say to use prismatic shields on large ships in czs. I don’t get it. You’re going to be shot at, but you’re basically not going to heal. Isnt a biweave better because it regenerates?
My bi-weave is better for me in CZ.

With prismatic shields, you're tough as hell in the beginning, but once your shields drain down you have to jump out.
 
I think it comes down essentially to how big of a target you are and how easily you can escape the incoming fire.

For big ships that are slow (ex. Vette) Prismatics are a good choice. For faster, smaller ships (ex. FDL), Bi-Weaves.

Prismatics give the big ships staying power due to the huge Prismatic mj pool. Smaller, faster ships can extend away from the fire to recover, as noted above.
 
I'm generally not a fan of prismatic shields because of the glacial regen but i use them on some builds. Usually my ships designed for CZs use bi weaves. In either case, for pve purposes, i generally run out of ammo before shield.
 
Depends on bi weave size as well. 7c bi weave can do 5.1 mj/s recharge and 8c bi weave can do 6.7 mj/s. Even 6c is around 3.7 mj/s.

At 6c and up, I think that high recharge rate is a no brainer decision for PvE.

I've seen a few PvE players use prismatics and reboot, but it is absolutely worse off than bi weave. They are always low on shields and have to stay out of combat significantly more often.

PvP is a different story. For slow ships, prismatic is the easy choice, but for a ship boosting past 600 m/s, I'd go bi weave.

At end of day, you will want both bi weave and prismatics engineered. So try both!
 
As Auntie says above, if using prismatics and they get low, just whizz off from the enemy, stop and reboot to 50% in about 15sec.

Another trick, is find a handy station or carrier very close if there are a lot of people around. When you dock, your shields regen super quick. Very useful if you need to rearm - just hang around for a little longer on the pad and steal their free electricity.
 
There are Prismatics with thermal mod on my Corvette gun ship. The Utility slots are all filled with boosters and they're balanced as close to 50-50-50 (heat-kinetic-explosive) as I can. The main threat I've seen are from heat weapons so that's the important one.

The internal slots are all filled with HRs and again with an eye on thermal effects.

If the CZ is evenly matched, I can stay there through multiple rounds. If it's uneven against me, I can burn through the shields and let the hull take the strain, there has to be significant fire from the enemy to bring the hull down to get me to leave. I haven't lost this Corvette in CZ combat for over a year or more. My targets are the big boys in the furball and the SWAT ships.

What usually drives me from a CZ if you're doing BGS is that the BGS mechanics penalize you if you bring in single, large cash-in bond sums, they don't have the same effect as bringing in the same bond total in multiple cash-in runs. FD slows you down on purpose.

The other factor is ammo, I can synth but it's nice to take a break, re-arm, re-pair and re-lax.

Happy gunning!
 
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My vette has a 7c bi-weave and as backup 2x 7b scb. But those scb dont get used much because i rarely lose 1-2 rings of shields.

Due to the amount of friendlies in a CZ, there is plenty of time when i dont get under attack.
But it depends of surrounding awareness target selection and so on - basically you have team mates and you have to play in the team
Don't be the only green ship in a pack of 6 reds, be the 5th green attacking the same red.
 
I also have a vette with 7c bi-weave and two 7b shield cells, but typically, I rely on the regen of the bi-weave to strengthen the shield. It's only when I make a mistake that I need to use my shield cells. So for me, I prefer bi-weave because it usually recharges enough all by itself.
 
i'm only using bi-weave - for the many reasons above.
but i saw an interesting video (happens!) of somebody running prismatics with zero pips to shields in a CZ - because the several thousand MJ will anyway hold until CZ is finished. with such a set up and more pips to eng and wep, it might makes sense?
 
All my ships that aren't used for trade or mining use bi-weaves backed up by SB or two, while my combat ships also have several SCBs and/or GSBs (I aim for about 800-1k MJs total with the GSBs on medium combat ships, at least 1.5k on larges).

Getting focused by several ships, typically Spec Ops, is the only real threat to a PvE bi-weave build.

For Spec Ops, don't target the alpha first as every other Spec Ops will then focus you . Instead you kill the wingmates first in a series of 1v1s, leaving the alpha for last.
If the alpha is already shooting you, don't shoot back at it (even a single MC round or pulse laser shot will trigger it). Fly over to the nearest group of friendlies and kill whatever they're shooting at. At least one friendly will probably then target the alpha, meaning it'll switch targets, freeing you to take out the other Spec Ops without being focused.
 
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Prismatics work very well with SCBs. A shield tank Corvette with prismatics can stay in a CZ all night without even using all the SCBs, depending whether you always go for the special ops alphas and enemy captains.
 
It depends how intense the fighting is.

If you're doing low intensity zones in something big like a corvette, and you've got a big ol' stack of boosters and G5 engineering, you're unlikely to deplete even a biweave shield by the time the battle is over, and it'll have fully regenerated by the time you've cruised to the next zone. So for doing a ton of zones back to back, biweaves are great.

If you're running a build that's going to have to go back for more ammo after a zone or two anyway, you might prefer the initial higher shielding of prismatics.

Personally I run biweaves on most of my builds - not out of any particular balance concern about the shielding itself, but because they take way way way less power to run.
 
I also much prefer bi-weaves on my PVE Vette. I have 1 C7 SCB that mostly stays off but it’s there for an emergency. I find that it’s not too hard to find the time to avoid getting shot at during the fight and for that I prefer the fast regen of the bi-weaves. In the last CG I was making about 3-4M per run.
 
Threat 6 pirate assassinations are a fab place to test your mettle. I use biweaves on my vette with an option to swap powerplant out for a more powerful one and install prismatics. But l prefer current setup.
In czs its basically the same setup. The weaves charge so quick if your canny and take on targets carefully.
For a zerg I still use the weaves and might pop a few charges of the 7a twin g4 scbs. Thing's can go south pretty quickly if ganked by Ops so be wary.
I normally follow the AI as they mill about and shoot what they target.
With a carrier nearby I'm no longer concerned about how long I can stay solo before a rearm I just do 2 highs back to back and rearm go again.
 
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