Shield strength when BELOW optimal mass. Is Coriolis accurate?

sidereal6

S
In googling how shields work in ED, what I'm reading is that if your ship is BELOW the optimal mass of your shield, that the shield continues to work at peak strength. Going over the optimal mass reduces strength, but being under it has no effect. That's just what I'm finding on google.

So what's confusing me is what I'm seeing on coriolis. Here are two ships with the same shield. Neither of them is above the optimal mass. Based on what I've read, they should have the same shield strength. But coriolis says the smaller ship has weaker shield strength:

5A shield. Optimal mass = 405T

FDL. Hull mass = 250T. Shield strength = 470 MJ

Asp-S. Hull mass = 150T. Shield strength = 205 MJ

Has it always been that way?
 

goemon

goemon
1. shieldstrenght has a basic modifier per ship type. that's why (your exampel) FDL and AspS differ that much. FDL has a higher "shieldbase". for fun you can compare a 3A shield on a adder and on a courier - same hullmass.

2. you still gain strenght with hullmass below optimal mass of the shieldgenerator, but not a lot after a certain point. that's why a 6A nearby gains nothing on a AspE compared to a 5A, as both generators are already way above the AspE hullmass.

3. coriolis isn't 100% accurate, but very, very, very close (i would argue that the difference to the stats seen ingame in right hand panel don't make any difference pve).
 

StiTch

StiTch
Goemon neatly details the base concept here. Ships have different shield multipliers; each ship has inherently better or worse shields than another ship.

So why do we have shield optimising values at all, I hear someone ask? Well to go off on a tangent from point two of Goemon's post...

goemon said:
that's why a 6A nearby gains nothing on a AspE compared to a 5A, as both generators are already way above the AspE hullmass.
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Optimal masses mean different ships can, in effect, handle shield classes differently.

The easiest example of this to relay would be the 'conda and Cutter. Give a max class, A-rated shield to both in coriolis. Note shield strengths. Then change that shield for a class lower on each. Take note again.

The iCutter has an excellent shield strength value, so it has beefy shields. But it has a comparatively huge hull mass. Consequently, despite the stronger shields, it VERY quickly loses shield strength when you downgrade a shield class - from approx 950 mj to 700 mj. The 'conda has weaker shields, but with the 400T hull, it puts so little stress against the optimal mass that it loses less than 100mj, from about 595mj to just over 500mj.

So it basically lets ships, based on their hull masses, handle using less than the best shields differently. In terms of combat this means ships will lighter hulls better for using a lower grade shield in favour of higher grade SCBs.
 

sidereal6

S
I didn't see this info anywhere else so figured I'd post it. Here are all the base class-A shield strengths for each shield size that a ship can carry.

l34cSci.png


It's sorted by hull size. The highlighted cells are the sizes that have optimal masses which are the closest to that ship's hull mass of all the available options. So for example, size 3 is highlighted blue for the Asp Scout because size 3's optimal mass (165t) is just 15t from the Asp's hull mass (150t). It can also carry a size 4 shield, but the optimal mass for the size 4 is 285t which is 135t over what the Asp weighs. So basically, highlighted rows are the most bang for the buck.

They're highlighted red if the ship doesn't actually have a slot of that size. An interesting one is the Clipper. It's only 5t from the optimal for a class 5 shield, but it has no such slot. I've also used a class-6 shield in the class-6 slot, but based on this graph, I think I should downgrade to a class-5. It'll save 40t (I'm using prismatics) but only cost me 13% shield strength. For a fast transport, not a combat ship, that seems like a good compromise.
 
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Celery Jack

Celery Jack
I have a question, is a shields MJs the same thing as hitpoints? Say you have a 500MJ shield, does that mean it absorbs 500 points of damage?
 

Vevvev

Vevvev
Celery Jack said:
I have a question, is a shields MJs the same thing as hitpoints? Say you have a 500MJ shield, does that mean it absorbs 500 points of damage?
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In a sense, yes, but SYS power also effects the MJ strength of the ship as well which is why 4 pips to SYS is a common tactic.
 

biohazard15

B
Vevvev said:
In a sense, yes, but SYS power also effects the MJ strength of the ship as well which is why 4 pips to SYS is a common tactic.
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SYS does not affect MJ, but it adds damage resistance (against any damage, including absolute from plasmas). 0% at 0 pips - which means you have only shield resists, and at 4 pips you get 60% resistance.
 

Vevvev

Vevvev
biohazard15 said:
SYS does not affect MJ, but it adds damage resistance (against any damage, including absolute from plasmas). 0% at 0 pips - which means you have only shield resists, and at 4 pips you get 60% resistance.
Click to expand...
Thankyou for clearing that up. Was kind of unsure but I was aware more pips to SYS = stronger shields.
 
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