I have never used them before and am honestly not really sure how exactly they work other then they restore after taking damage, charge to full power after being activated slowly and are less space efficient then their equal weight in armor.
A quick primer:
- Shield strength is equal to the strength tech times the size of the shield times the square root of the size divided by 10, where the size is given in HS. This means that shield strength scales as HS^(3/2) and a larger shield is nearly always better than two smaller shields of the same total size.
- Shield regeneration is the regen tech times the size of the shield (in HS), and gives the total shield strength that will regenerate in 300 seconds. This means that shield regeneration is directly proportional to size, and two shields of the same total size will regenerate the same total power as one shield of that size. There is a misconception by some people that smaller shields regenerate faster; this is objectively untrue - although larger shields take longer to reach full strength (since they are stronger per HS), the regeneration rate is the same.
- Shields are highly effective against high-penetration weapons like spinal lasers and particle lances, since they absorb the full damage and nothing will get through to the internals if there is still shield strength remaining. Conversely, they are somewhat less effective (but still good) against low-penetration weapons like railguns and missiles. Meson cannons ignore shields entirely.
- Shields at a sufficiently high tech level are almost strictly superior to armor (unless facing mesons). This is because while shields have less raw strength than armor per HS, shields must be fully eroded before internal damage could be dealt, while armor only needs to be partially eroded before a ship starts taking heavy internal damage. The rule of thumb here is that a ship with about 50% armor damage is effectively exposed to internal damage - so once shields reach 50% of the strength per HS that armor has, they become equally or more effective. This happens starting at Epislon tech with the maximum size (25+). Endgame shields are about 75% as strong as armor per HS, which makes them effectively superior in nearly all cases.
The most important takeaway here if you are a total noob is that you should always use the biggest shield generator available at your tech level. As a general rule, your total shield strength should be
at least the same as one armor layer's width, and if you cannot accomplish this in a tonnage-efficient manner it is probably too early in the tech tree for shields to be truly effective. In practice, the break point is usually Gamma or Delta shields depending on the overall ship design and fleet doctrine.
so my assumption about max fleet speed is based on ~40% max tonnage dedicated to engines and fuel but I feel like I am a little slow here (for reference my previous generation was using Internal Confinement Fusion was at 10km/s, moving to Solid Core Anti Matter I feel I should be faster but this is where the math seemed to point was a happy medium)
This is a reasonable assumption and you're probably fine, especially given the diverse threats you currently face. Your bog-standard NPRs at this point are probably still using fusion drives as NPRs are not very good at teching up like a player is, so I wouldn't worry too much about standardizing against their fleet speeds.
Feedback is appreciated as always. I am particularly interested in your thoughts on the shield to armor radio and the speed however if you feel I have royally gooned something up I am happy to address it.
Per above, I'd say your big issue is that you are using far too small generators. If you are at Xi tech level even with bas size-10 generators you should be getting 50 strength per 10 HS. I am seeing 18 strength per generator which means they are a measly size 5 HS and only 36 strength per 10 HS. You are leaving a lot on the table, and frankly at Xi tech level you should be able to make shields of size 40 HS which will have a hefty 400 strength per generator or 100 per 10 HS, how can you say no to this?
A proper shield generator(s) will take up a lot of space, there is no way around this, so you do have to be prepared to commit to shields, which probably means sacrifices in other areas such as weapons loadout. Small ships can struggle to make the best use of shields as the largest sizes (40 HS == 2000 tons!) may not be practical, although on the flip side with 400 points of shields who needs armor anyways?
