On the subject of shields.

[spoongoon (OP)]

It´s my impression that not a lot of people use shields, is there a reason for this?
I have not put any on my designs yet but I´m researching delta shields and recharging rate 2.5.
How to make most of them, should I scale down armour in favour of shields or maybe research better tech first.
I´d like to hear your philosophies on the subject.

[Whitecold]

Shields are a matter of taste. They have some drawbacks, they use fuel, and you can be caught with your shields down, and they offer much worse protection than armor per ton.
Their advantages are regeneration rate and that shields don't leak damage like armor, so it is a trade off. Best way is to look how much protection you get per HS for your armor and compare it to your shields, I think it is 2.5 for delta shields, then you can calculate the time it takes to break even (Regen time*Armor strength/Shield strength), and look if you feel it is worth to strap some shields on. I'd never use shields alone due to their vulnerabilities.
Shields are rather a late game tech, their effectiveness compared to armor improves with tech progression.

[alex_brunius]

It´s my impression that not a lot of people use shields, is there a reason for this?
I have not put any on my designs yet but I´m researching delta shields and recharging rate 2.5.
How to make most of them, should I scale down armour in favour of shields or maybe research better tech first.
I´d like to hear your philosophies on the subject.

Early tech shields tend to not be especially powerful compared to the size they use. ( compared to active defenses or armor ).

Especially in a missile based Aurora combat setting where a maximum alfa strike of lethal amounts of missiles is often desired. In those situations armor will always be superior regardless of techs.


Shields do have their uses though. To exploit their strength you want to build really big ships, since they regenerate fully over time for free and the bigger shield the faster regeneration.

So shields in my fleets Generally appear first on Command/Flag ships, large Carriers or large Battleships.


One of the cool uses of shields is to "tank" through enemy AMM spams even when you don't have enough point defenses. I had a large fast ship with lots of shields during my startrek inspired RP game that moved in and out of enemy AMM range and absorbed/regenerated several times the shields strength over the course of the battle without a scratch.

The same tonnage in armor would have either been forced home for repairs or to make a suicide dash gambling on being able to reach the enemy defenses before being overwhealmed.

[SteelChicken]

I love shields.  I use them alot.   I dont bother until I have 3-4 levels of tech though.  They work better on large ships, so you can have more and therefore a higher regen rate.  This is especially helpful when trying to deal with NPR's who like to shoot 11ty billion AMM's at you.

[Hawkeye]

I usually don´t bother with them before Gamma (better Delta) shields are researched.
After that, they go on every military ship.
Great for stopping those leakers from causing damage and later on, with even higher tech shields, large ships can mount impressive shields.

[Wolfius]

As a rule of thumb, armour gives you better survivability per engagment, but shields give you better survivability across multipule engagments.

They each have their pros and cons, depending on the style of play you want and the opponents you're facing.


Personally I like to put most of my stock in long range missiles and layers of active defence, idea being you don't need armour or shields if the enemy never lands a hit because you've sunk that tonnage into things to shoot him and his missiles out of the sky, but glass cannons are a gamble I'm deliberatly courting disaster with them.

[Arwyn]

I use them, even early on.

1) Regeneration. Shields come back, and dont require repair, armor damage does.
2) Sustainability. Shields come back, so even damage ships can present full shields in a subsequent engagement. That can make a huge difference.
3) Shields dont suffer from shock damage (that I have seen so far)

I use them for heavily defended ships/stations, but usually have even a few on smaller ships that get targetted a lot. Small ships generally are not worth it for the trade off in weight and range.

At higher levels with high regen, shields are VERY useful. I would much rather have a big hit on shields than on armor late in the game, as weapon damage tends to go way up, and the shock damage becomes more and more common.

[Paul M]

I have the most primitive of shields and feel they are well worth having.  If you have an effective anti-missile system from active defences then the shields are there to stop armour damage from leakers.  So if the shields can take the damage of one warheard, and the time between leakers is greater than the shield regen rate then your ships take no damage.  Without shields those leakers would cause armour damage.   As has been pointed out armour damage can only be repaired in a shipyard while shields come back and the generators can be repaired in the field.

If shields makes sense, or how many shields make sense depends on what assumptions you are making about the combat situation.  In aurora due to AI limitations it is likely you can determine if, for a given fleet composition and enemy, shields are sensible or not.