Newcomer / Intro Sheild Booster Vs Hull Reinforcement?

Currently have Hull Reinforcements crammed into every option module space of my vulture
Have wondered about shield boosters but the disadvantages is that they need extra power, and could also get damaged
Anyone got the maths to show which offers best defense?
 
No maths here but boosters and reinforcements have the advantage of being complimentary as they don’t compete for space on your ship, unlike Shield Cell Banks which also require you to decide when to use them as well as waste perfectly good reinforcement slots.

Boosters by making your shields stronger will increase the amount of damage you can take before the hull starts to take primary damage, but they do use energy (an issue in the unengineered Vulture) and make the recharge time for the shield longer. Module reinforcements will help protect Shield Boosters.

Given an unengineered Vulture I would probably skip Shield Boosters and fit Chaff and or Point Defence.
 
If by shield boosters you mean Guardians Shield Reinforcement Package, then they are useful indeed, but they do cost power and you cannot deactivate or set power priorities on them
So you have to make a conscious decision:
  • more hull (with little to no penalties) or
  • more shields with some penalties (more power which also mean more heat, and the prospect of having your powerplant shot leaving you stranded because you exceed 40% power)
For example i do not use them on my vulture, but i rely heavily on them on my alliance ships

There are also shield boosters that go into utility slots - they are sort of useful non-engineered and really marvelous when engineered.

And there are also the Shield Cell Banks that go into internal optional slots and act like a battery to recharge shields.
They do cost a lot of power, they really heat up your ship and they have limited charges. Also the ones below size 6 are not really impressive in terms of recharge capacity
 
Dont forget than with 4 pips in your system capacitor you increase the damage resistance of your shield by 240%. 100 hull is by no way equal to 100 shield. 100 shiled are much better. Even more with corrosive effect making hulls complete trash (some npc can have it now). and shield give 100% mrp protection to your modules.
Current meta in the game, pve or pvp wise, is to stack as many mj of shield as you can like a monkey. And the game allow this value to be very very high right now. Some would say up to a stupid broken amount.
 
agree with @Lollipop for my combat ships, I always shield tank, then run and recharge if/when they drop. To me, hull reinforcements mean you're preparing to take damage.
 
I would say @Northpin has great advice, He has prior given me great advice for a Vulture build along with many others. And the general idea is to combine your hull reinforcements with shields. You can differently run a hull tanking build with no shields but this will require a different play style to learn as we all have started the game relying on shields as the sidewinder taught us.
As @Gobin Splat noted, the modules could be damaged. Sure any module can be destroyed, but having module reinforcements gives them a bit of protection. Taking a couple of slots away from raw hull protection to protect your subsystems is a fair price for the extra level of protection shield boosters can provide when combined with a shield generator.

With the help of many on these forums, below is the Vulture I'm currently building as an example, Still collecting some more materials for the extensive engineering, But the vulture has all her modules and is sitting in dry dock prepared for her maiden voyage soon enough.

 
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