Engineers Reinforced shields, or thermal resistant?

Jake Savage · Jan 17, 2017

I have had reinforced shields grade 5 on my Corvette for months, but I am now thinking that seeing as I spend most of my time in haz rez sites bounty hunting, and most of the time npc's use lasers, that a thermal resistant shield generator would be a better choice.
Anyone using thermal resistant shields, and if so, what do you think of them?

Kzak · Jan 17, 2017

I prefer thermal resistant shields. Each MJ of shield is more effective given that the shield's main vulnerability has been fixed via Engineers.

Bryan K · Jan 17, 2017

I ran with reinforced shields on my Anaconda, FdL, and Python for a long time, but switched all of them over to thermal resistant because in PvE combat you get effectively the same, if not better, shield strength but with much less recharge time. I team thermal resistant shields with heavy duty shield boosters, so you get the best of both worlds.

nosleepdemon · Jan 17, 2017

I put thermal resistant on my shields, and general resistance on my boosters. I run a bi-weave so I found it better to increase the effective value of each point of shield, instead of increasing the total points available and hampering the high regen rate.

jd5684 · Jan 18, 2017

I'm a PvE guy, thermal resist all the way.

thirstyfish · Jan 18, 2017

OP: request mod to move thread to engineers discussion, where this thread belongs.

Captain Willard · Jan 18, 2017

Reinforced shields and 4 resistance SB's on the corvette. So many ways to go. I'm only fighting npc's tho, that has to make a diff. Thinking about making them prismatic, we will see.

Roasted1982 · Jan 18, 2017

With the new patch you can now go reinforced and add two G5 thermal boosters and have both, high MJ ANd high thermal resist.

Morbad · Jan 18, 2017

Been generally using thermal resistant shields on everything since the 2.1 beta.

Also, thermal and kinetic resistant shields received an integrity increase in 2.2.03...I have a B7 thermal resist shield gen with an exceptional integrity roll that can take seven hits from reverb cascade weapons before being knocked out.

Starwolfe · Jan 18, 2017

I ran both.

The latest addition for Thermal to improve integrity really makes me lean towards Thermal.

On a pure MJ effectiveness Reinforced does provide more due to how it can reinforce the shield strength along with resistances.
Add in the right mix of Resist Augment and Heavy Duty and you'll have shields that can last longer in comparison to Thermal.

Which gets back to Thermal's integrity - if you go Open and want to have an added defense on shield-buster torpedoes the Thermal are harder to take down because of it. So its a bit of piece of mind and insurance.

That, and unlike Reinforced Thermal does not impair shield regen rates.

In all honesty, it does come down to a bit of personal preference and with what goal you are aiming for.

Jake Savage · Jan 18, 2017

Thanks guys for the feedback. I will go try thermal out.

pato · Jan 18, 2017

let me destroy your worldview:

example:

Anaconda
7C BI-WEAVE [average G5 reinforced]
6x A Shield Booster [average G5 heavy duty]
no secondarys

MJ 2642 (5096KI/2548TH/6116EX)

vs Thermal shields

MJ 2087 (2860.5Ki/3029.9Th/4174.0Ex)
-44% / + 19% / -32 %

really guys? really?

Morbad · Jan 18, 2017

pato said:
let me destroy your worldview:

example:

Anaconda
7C BI-WEAVE [average G5 reinforced]
6x A Shield Booster [average G5 heavy duty]
no secondarys

MJ 2642 (5096KI/2548TH/6116EX)

vs Thermal shields

MJ 2087 (2860.5Ki/3029.9Th/4174.0Ex)
-44% / + 19% / -32 %

really guys? really?

I'll pit my resistance Corvette against your max Joules Anaconda any day.

pato · Jan 18, 2017

8 x rail guns will melt you

bye bye hope u can eject fast enough

LameoveR · Jan 18, 2017

I run Bi-Weave thermal resistant with 4 heavy duty SBs and 2 thermal res sbs.

Von Shadow · Jan 18, 2017

Jakesavage said:
I have had reinforced shields grade 5 on my Corvette for months, but I am now thinking that seeing as I spend most of my time in haz rez sites bounty hunting, and most of the time npc's use lasers, that a thermal resistant shield generator would be a better choice.
Anyone using thermal resistant shields, and if so, what do you think of them?

I run reinforced on my Corvette and resistant on my FDL ... main reason is that weight makes more of an impact on the smaller ships and the resist boosters are without weight penalty ... reinforced end up by 240% heavier .... so on a smaller ship i prefer to keep closer or below optimal mass on shields & thrusters for max effect

I run bi-weave on everything now

CitizenLee · Jan 18, 2017

I run G5 Thermal Resistant Prismatics on my 3 main ships (FdL, Python and Anaconda) along with a mix of Resistance Augmented and Heavy Duty Boosters.

GunnerBill · Jan 18, 2017

5c Bi-weave Therimic to level 5 on my Vulture works very well. Not so well on my FAS, where the same shield feels a bit "stretched".

No experience of this on a big ship but it's on the cards. Not sure whether to use bi-weave or standard for this though.

goemon · Jan 18, 2017

thermal resist bi-weave + res boosters for all my pve-combat ships: dbs, courier, FDL... the recharge rate and effective total MJ is just so nice during a RES/CZ session.

i have reinforced shields on some other ships, my DBE for exampel.

GammaZ · Jan 18, 2017

IMO reinforced/max MJ is always more reliable. Will protect equally good from anything from lasers to plasma accelerators to lithobraking on high-G planet. The cost is lower recharge and less EHP gained from SCB-s. And supplemented with just 1 thermal resistant booster it can have like ~20-30% thermal resist... That's why i usually prefer it for larger ships, where recharge issue is easily solved by SCB-s. For smaller ships things are a bit different, A-grade HD boosters are usually too heavy, there are no internals for large SCB-s and often only few utilities for shield boosters... for example used thermal resistant on standart A4 shield on cobra, because it seems to provide best possible EHP without boosters...