Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alrenous]

Kinetic weapons seem to actually do about 12% damage against armour.  A Paragon firing a full heavy needler burst into a Lasher does 93 damage. (50 x 15 shots, 750) A gauss cannon (700) directly hitting armour does 82 damage.
Am I missing something or is that how it is supposed to work?

Is the idea for shields in an even battle to lower them to vent the hard flux and then raise them again? Or are they balanced against usually taking hits on the armour? Or...?

Is the idea that campaign fleet battles will usually (say a plurality) be even or slightly in the computer's favour? I found it a lot easier to get a slightly larger fleet to attack me than to try to run down a similar sized one.

[Thaago]

Kinetic weapons get a 50% penalty when they hit armor, AND armor naturally reduces damage done to it. Lets see, a gauss cannon does 700, so thats 350, and a lasher has 250 armor, so thats 350*(350/2*250) = 245 for a fully armored lasher... but then again I don't know if the formula I'm using is correct or what the effect of neighboring areas is, so who knows! I've never really done damage experiments to try and determine the exact formula.

For most ships shields should be your primary defense. Whether or not to vent when flux gets high or to take hits on armor and keep firing is a complicated question depending on ship, situation, etc. Whatever you do though, don't overload shields!

The campaign is just a placeholder, so I just don't worry about it.

[harrumph]

The armor formula is:

actual damage = base damage * base damage / (armor value + base damage)

Damage is also modified by type (kinetic does 50% damage vs. armor), but I don't know where that goes in the equation. If "base damage" incorporated that reduction, you'd expect the needler against an undamaged Lasher to do 25 * 25 / (250 + 25), or a little over 2.27 for the first shot (assuming they all hit the same cell of armor, each would do a little more than the one before it, but I'm too lazy to do that math; I'm pretty sure it'd be under 50 total). If the 50% penalty is applied after armor mitigation is calculated, we'd get (50 * 50 / (250 +50))/2, or a little over 4.17 for the first shot. Again, not going to do the math; I think if every shot landed on the same spot you'd get ~80 damage. That's assuming the Lasher had perfect armor to start with, though—I think 93 damage is well within reason if the Lasher's armor were somewhat damaged.

The gauss cannon, though, should be either 375 * 375 / (250 + 375), which comes to 196, or (700 * 700 / (250 + 700))/2, which comes to 257.89—unless that wasn't again a Lasher? Against, say, a Dominator (1500 armor), 375 damage would be reduced to 75. If you use 700 as the base, I don't think you can get below 200 even against an Onslaught. Maybe if you're firing just beyond your maximum range.

So, in conclusion, I have no idea how armor works.

[Alrenous]

@Thaago,

Problem is I found most ships function better without the shield, with the exception of missiles, and against significantly slower ships. In the campaign there's also repairs and crew to worry about... But.
With omni shields, (or a manoeuvrable ship) almost every fight I can win with it up, I can also win with it down, (except for blocking missiles) and if I were taking hull damage, I take less. Having hard flux just means I may not be able to put the shields up when missiles come in, making me brittle. Having to vent means the missiles are all but guaranteed, unless my ship is so fast it can simply run out of range. AND venting takes the PD down. As a bonus, no shield means no risk of overload and a constant 50% bonus on all energy weapons.

Which makes me very much dislike front shields, as they have to be kept up to make sure they're in place for a missile barrage. Which means just the threat of missiles can seriously hinder the power of a front-shielded ship.


I'm not worried about the placeholder campaign, I'm worried about missiles again. Missiles are more powerful for the side with more ships. If Alex is relying on more ships to balance AIs against humans, as is the common method, the AI will usually be able to overwhelm point defence on the player, unless PD is so powerful the player can't penetrate the AIs PD screen at all. No matter how it works out, missiles will always be somewhat disappointing for the player to use as opposed to being used against the player, and either PD is kind of anemic for the player or missiles are kind of useless.

As an example, Lashers with MRMs. The AI can afford to blow their volley on your shield, because there's probably another Lasher waiting to burn your armor when that MRM volley does 2250 damage to your shield. If you blow your MRMs on the AIs shield, you don't. Further even if you do burst down something with the missiles, it just puts the fleet closer to parity. Imagine you kill their Lashers with yours, and they don't get a chance to shoot their missiles. But they have an extra Lasher. You've expended all your missiles, and you destroyed theirs at 1:1. But they have some left over and can randomly assassinate one of your ships, and if they do it is more of a blow because one ship is a larger percentage of your fleet.

As another example, imagine a gigantic EMP nuke that simply takes down everyone's shields, to examine the maximum potential. Both sides fire all their missiles at once. Quite likely the AI will wipe out every ship that can't dodge missiles, while even if you manage to kill their ships 1:1 - and not less because they have more supporting PD - they win instantly.

Finally, because you can focus Pilums from the entire fleet on a single target, the extra Pilums available to the AI can sometimes put the pressure above the threshold of what a ship can withstand, and can go well beyond that if the player fleet has enough Pilums to return the favour.

The armor formula is:

actual damage = base damage * base damage / (armor value + base damage)

Damage is also modified by type (kinetic does 50% damage vs. armor), but I don't know where that goes in the equation. If "base damage" incorporated that reduction, you'd expect the needler against an undamaged Lasher to do 25 * 25 / (250 + 25), or a little over 2.27 for the first shot (assuming they all hit the same cell of armor, each would do a little more than the one before it, but I'm too lazy to do that math;

Ah, I see, I misread the armor formula. I thought it was the formula for how much damage gets through armor. I assume there's yet another formula for what how much damage gets through depleted armor - how much of the incoming damage takes the armor modifiers.
My gauss test wasn't against a lasher - since I was getting roughly 12% every time I didn't see a point in being consistent with ship targets - it was on an Eagle. I also did some autocannon tests that did around 12%, on a Dominator if I remember correctly.

I'd have thought that kinetics did 50% base damage. 350 * (350/1350) = 90, which is within 10% of what I observed.

[Cryten]

Sounds like you need more fighter wings. Fighters are the most potent reusable weapon in the game. Because of the game mechanics the enemy can only field roughly the same amount of OP as you can so if you concentrate your firepower (and have the appropriate cap/cruiser crackers) then the enemies number advatage is generally pointless.

As for kinetic damage, I find I can tank the firepower of the lower grade destroyers and frigates kinetic weaponry but it you let a single high epxlosive onto your armor then all that extra dps will quickly kill your hull. The other point of shield is if you can get your fleet working properly its basicly free damage absorbtion, wipe out a wave, use your wasps to screen missiles and vent away congrats you took no damage.

Of course managing large 100+ fleet point battles is a hard thing to do. In a fair fight I find I tend to lose a few destroyers/cruisers even if I concentrate well.

*edit* Oh and guys remember armor is determined by the local armor cells so thiers something like a divide armor rate by 4 and then add in 4 cells kind of scenario in thier somewhere.

[Kommodore Krieg]

The system works pretty well in practice, and you are right that some ships handle better without the shields up.  For example, in an Onslaught/Dominator I almost never put shields up;  I have so many flak cannons that missiles are almost a non issue unless I overload, which won't happen unless I raise shields.  Most of the ships with bad, frontal shield systems (usually the "low tech ships") also have tons of ballistic slots, and most ballistic PD is excellent, with flak being king.  On top of this PD, you have the best base armor on these ships, so you really only need to raise shields in emergency situations.  That's how I use almost all of the Low tech ships; raising shields in emergency and tanking enemy damage on the armor while simply out muscling them with all the ballistic firepower.  This works because they will have their shields up while you don't.  Yes you take some damage on the armor, but because their flux is going to max out faster from all your kinetic damage you will either overload them or force them to drop shields/stop firing.  

High tech ships on the other hand have weaker PD, but much better shields.  Which means they can simply tank most missiles.  The tradeoff for their generally better stats is their reliance on those shields.  On these ships I'll usually raise shields and keep them on for the duration of combat, using the hold fire command when necessary to stop flux from getting too high, and then backing off and venting if need be.

Omni shields are definitely the best though, because you get the best of both worlds.  Most of the time you can run with shields down and then raise them briefly to block a strike before lowering them and raising them again elsewhere when the situation calls for it.  

[Alrenous]

Because of the game mechanics the enemy can only field roughly the same amount of OP as you can so if you concentrate your firepower (and have the appropriate cap/cruiser crackers) then the enemies number advatage is generally pointless.

Irrelevant to whether missiles scale in power with fleet size.

As for kinetic damage, I find I can tank the firepower of the lower grade destroyers and frigates kinetic weaponry but it you let a single high epxlosive onto your armor then all that extra dps will quickly kill your hull.

In most cases, I find that the extra firepower I'm able to dish by having no shields means I destroy the ship firing the high explosive ballistics before it can do serious damage. Again - 50% on all beam weapons, plus no shield upkeep, plus they stop to vent while I keep shooting. It adds up to a lot. Most shield-reliant ships are supposed to be highly manoeuvrable, so instead of using that to back off and vent flux, just avoid the main guns of the target long enough to kill it.
As a bonus, most AI ships will put their shields up, meaning I can overload them, stop them firing entirely, and do so that much faster because I've got more flux dissipation.

The other point of shield is if you can get your fleet working properly its basicly free damage absorbtion, wipe out a wave, use your wasps to screen missiles and vent away congrats you took no damage.

This is why I said, 'if you take hull damage, you'll take less.' If you outclass the other fleet so seriously it cannot breach your shields, then it doesn't much matter whether you have them up or not, does it? You're going to win either way. The only reason to put shields up is crew deaths and repair time, which for balance purposes I disregard, because balance only matters in close fights where you're going to take crew deaths and hull damage anyway.

My point: if you're in a fight where you take hull damage, you can take less damage by killing faster rather than using a shield. Putting the shields up means you have a higher risk of losing.

The system works pretty well in practice, and you are right that some ships handle better without the shields up. [...] That's how I use almost all of the Low tech ships; raising shields in emergency and tanking enemy damage on the armor while simply out muscling them with all the ballistic firepower. This works because they will have their shields up while you don't.  Yes you take some damage on the armor, but because their flux is going to max out faster from all your kinetic damage you will either overload them or force them to drop shields/stop firing.

Yes, that's what I'm finding.
I'm fairly sure that's not how it is supposed to work, though. Hence the questions.

For example,

On these ships I'll usually raise shields and keep them on for the duration of combat, using the hold fire command when necessary to stop flux from getting too high, and then backing off and venting if need be.

So, an infalliable strategy for killing hi-tech: deplete their shields, and when they run off to vent, have a missile frigate chase them down and missile them to death. Does the AI even reliably run away to vent with these ships? If they do, sure you'll have issues getting your frigates to not waste their missiles, but in principle it means hi-tech only works because we have to rely on the AI.
If they don't raise shields, you just missile them immediately. If they don't vent they'll overload and you can missile them. The shield makes them more vulnerable, not less, regardless of what they do.

I'd love to be able to tell a couple Piranha wings to simply shadow a ship until its shields fall. At that point the rest of my fleet would just be there to tank damage while my flagship overloads a shield down and my shadow Piranha deliver the deathblow. Rinse and repeat until victory. Perhaps give the rest of my fleet hardened shields, heavy armor, the works. Take Broadswords for extra overloady goodness. Though, still, I don't think this is supposed to be a good strategy. Could be wrong, of course.

Heck I may even be able to do this by chasing the Piranha and predicting and then overloading their intended target just before they it it, come to think.

Omni shields are definitely the best though, because you get the best of both worlds.  Most of the time you can run with shields down and then raise them briefly to block a strike before lowering them and raising them again elsewhere when the situation calls for it.

That's what I do. However, it is pretty algorithmic - I wish I could turn the omni shield to autofire at missiles and bombs. Again, I'm pretty sure it isn't supposed to be something a macro or program could easily do better than I can.

[Thaago]

I wonder which ship you're flying when you do this, to be honest, because that doesn't really sound like the same game I'm playing. Are you just playing early frigate 1 vs 2-3? Thats about the only scenario I can think of that matches your description. The AI currently does not handle kinetic swarm damage ala machine guns very well - that is a current issue.

All but the smallest opponents have enough HE weaponry to make pretty short work of armor - there are a few ships that I fly armor primary, but not many. For example a Medusa can tank something like 10k damage on shields but has 3k hull and 300 armor. Sure its a high tech ship, but will NOT do better with shields only blocking missiles. Sure I lower it if a sabot swarm is about to hit, but thats just the lesser of two evils.

My point: if you're in a fight where you take hull damage, you can take less damage by killing faster rather than using a shield. Putting the shields up means you have a higher risk of losing.

Errr.... no. Just no. Yes you can kill it faster, but its going to kill you MUCH MUCH faster. Again, there are a very few ships that I fight how you described, but most ships can take damage to their shields equivalent to 2/3 of their hull and up (significantly more in the case of high tech ships). Add to that the fact that its going to be knocking out your weapons and engine while you're still pounding its shield. Add to that the fact that if you get flanked and have to withdraw for a minute, it can vent and will come back fresh!

So, an infalliable strategy for killing hi-tech: deplete their shields, and when they run off to vent, have a missile frigate chase them down and missile them to death. Does the AI even reliably run away to vent with these ships? If they do, sure you'll have issues getting your frigates to not waste their missiles, but in principle it means hi-tech only works because we have to rely on the AI.
If they don't raise shields, you just missile them immediately. If they don't vent they'll overload and you can missile them. The shield makes them more vulnerable, not less, regardless of what they do.

Right, here the problem: ships fire back. 'deplete their shields' on a high tech ship is freaking hard for the most part and they will be throwing a lot of firepower at you. The AI DOES save its shield to block missiles if its high on flux. And many ships also have excellent PD! You try doing this on an aurora and you'll find yourself very very dead unless you are in an Onslaught or something similar! Heavy blasters are nasty things to take on the armor, and they are very fast projectiles. Try and missile an Enforcer and the flak will laugh at you.

This is why I said, 'if you take hull damage, you'll take less.' If you outclass the other fleet so seriously it cannot breach your shields, then it doesn't much matter whether you have them up or not, does it? You're going to win either way.

This is pure fallacy. The middle sentence STARTS with the assumption that shields are weak little things that drop at a moments notice, thus your conclusion that you must so heavily outclass the opponent. This does not actually support your argument that shields are weak - it purely follows from it.

I get it, you don't like shields, and thats fine. There many playstyles in this game that lead to success...

Missiles are more powerful for the side with more ships

Yes, and so are ballistics and energy weapons, whats your point? If you want to have more missiles on your side, field more missile ships. A Vigilance destroyer will pack 21 MRM and a medium energy weapon for what, 5-6 fleet points?

As an example, Lashers with MRMs. The AI can afford to blow their volley on your shield, because there's probably another Lasher waiting to burn your armor when that MRM volley does 2250 damage to your shield. If you blow your MRMs on the AIs shield, you don't.

This is not a problem! This is an example of the different strategies available to different forces - a large inferior force fighting a smaller superior opponent has to rely on concentration of firepower to take that opponent down. That Lasher is not "blow"ing its volley on your shield: it is not wasting its shots! It is concentrating maximum firepower on you so that, when others do the same, you die. Just because its using the missiles out of their assigned role doesn't mean its a bad use of them.

If you as a player are in the role of the smaller, superior force then the missiles, your strike capability, take on a different strategic role. They become precision kill weapons to pick off smaller opponents to STOP them from swarming you. The weapons play a very different role in different scenarios, and the player has to use them correctly to get good use of them.

[Temstar]

All but the smallest opponents have enough HE weaponry to make pretty short work of armor - there are a few ships that I fly armor primary, but not many.

Nah, not Onslaught and Dominator. These two are pretty much designed to fight with their shield down. For one, they shields suck and they have low base flux, so with shields up you're seriously cutting your fire power. Two these two ships can hold outrageous amount of PD (For my Dominator I use 2 dual flak and 11 light machineguns, for Onslaught I use 7 single flaks) and have some serious armour. In fact two Onslaughts trading HAG fire takes ages to bring down each other's forward flank armour, and since Onslaught have two of those nose horns you can just do a roll and change it to take fire on the undamaged half once you lose one. On top of this Onslaught's broadside is powerful enough that when fighting cruisers you can just not use the hard point guns and fire only on broadside and turreted missile, thereby taking hits on the broadside armour and save your nose armour for front on battleship slugging matches.

[Thaago]

I completely agree I'd add to that the Enforcer - crappy ass shield, great armor. As I said, there are a few ships I fly armor as the primary defense, but not many. It is a lot of fun to just stomp on in with an Onslaught, though I do like a fighter wing or two.

[Alrenous]

The tests I've done are on the Paragon, Brawler, Lasher, Onslaught, Eagle, Hammerhead, Dominator, Medusa, Tempest, with a smattering of Conquest.

I'm going to go try going up against an Aurora again just to be sure. I'll report back below.

Due to Forlorn Hope, the Paragon tests are absolutely conclusive, as I can repeat the experiment exactly. The shield cripples the Paragon. This shouldn't be surprising - its shield upkeep is 60% of its flux dissipation. Not using it means you're doing nearly four times as much damage. (40%-50% as compared to 150%) Literally, a non-shielded Paragon is worth about three shielded Paragons. And there's no risk of overload. And you don't have to stop firing to vent. This is partly due to its massive armour, to be sure. The Paragon takes 60% damage on the shield, but will take less than 15% of a 200-power shot, typical of a medium mount, until it loses some of the armour. Which happens slow because those shots are doing less than 30 damage.

The Apogee is even worse. Upkeep is still 60%, but it isn't omni so it has to be kept up most of the time, and its armour is kind of lame.

With the Medusa, yeah it outrun quite a few things - I specifically excluded that scenario. For things it can't outrun, you can overload their shields with antimatter blasters and kinetics in the universal slots. Either you cripple their damage output or they overload and just die.

Lets take that Paragon example again. Paragon versus two faster ships with assault guns. So they're doing 150% damage to me, less their shield upkeep.

(This turned out to be a great idea. I approximated how many second of fire each second of shield is worth, when the shield is being hit. Fighting two Eagles, a Paragon has to survive for optimistically an extra 1.3 seconds for each second its shield is on, just to break even on damage caused. It gets worse if the Eagles fire their sabots, for example.)

No, lets do real ships. Say a couple assault Eagles. Six grav beams at 50 dps each or so on armour. Six assault chainguns at 399 dps each on armour. Total MAX dps is 2700, but their shield upkeep is 40%, so they're doing roughly 1620 dps...before armour. If I have the formula correct, those chainguns will actually be doing 15 dps to start with. (And don't forget that when my armour is breached the damage will suddenly go down, too, as the +50 per grav is countered by the -133 on the chainguns, and then they have to work through the entire hull.)

Meanwhile, the Paragon has a choice between doing 40-50% of its damage, or 150%. Can three Paragons kill an Eagle before the two Eagles do significant damage to one Paragon's armour? Yeah. Yeah they can.

Yes, some weapons will be shut off. It doesn't matter because you can't fire all your weapons at max flux anyway.

The Paragon can continuously fire the Autopulse lasers plus one and a bit Heavy Blasters, total dps 921. 1380 after the high flux bonus. I'm assuming the Eagles are smart enough to stay away from the Tachyon Lance, or it gets worse.

If the Eagles raise their shields, the Paragon will rip them off with the Heavy Needlers. They will then be at their lowered DPS, or try to vent. If they vent, the Paragon will go through their armour and half their hull, while not being shot at. One more cycle and now it is 1v1, the fight is over, victory Paragon. If they don't vent they either have to stop shooting to regenerate shield flux (yay!) or they just let the Paragon kill one.

Or the Paragon can raise the shield. Every second it is up the Paragon forgoes about 800 damage in flux it could have spent on weapons. One-tenth of the hull of an Eagle. Moreover, the Eagles' gravs are doing total 360 flux per sec (600*60%) plus whatever spare chaingun flux per sec they can dissipate flux for, works out to about 160. (Chainguns do damage at 1:1 flux, half damage on shield, 60% damage as flux.) Each second the Eagles are preventing the Paragon for using flux to cause about 1000 damage. So roughly each second of shield is worth about 1800 damage. And that's not even counting sabots. (Or Piranha bombs, or etc...)

Or, for each second the Paragon has the shield up, it must somehow manage to shoot for an extra 1.3 seconds just to break even.

More importantly, with the shield down it can be delivered as a burst, and kill the Eagle sooner so that it can't keep doing damage. Also, it can be delivered as a burst so that the Eagle doesn't have time to run out of range.

This was a fair amount of work, but I can do similar calculations for other ships. Based on my tests they all need to shoot for more than a second extra for every second they have a shield up.

This is why shooting a shield with your shield down is always a net win. (If, I repeat and stress, you can't run away.) Every second of fire prevents more than a second of return fire, and doing so with the shield down lets me burst out more shield damage sooner, preventing more damage sooner.

Errr.... no. Just no. Yes you can kill it faster, but its going to kill you MUCH MUCH faster.

Err, no. Also, no. I burn all its flux in damage so it can't do any damage to me. See above!

Add to that the fact that if you get flanked and have to withdraw for a minute, it can vent and will come back fresh!

I specifically mentioned slow ships. Slow ships cannot withdraw. Fast ships can back off and vent, yes, which is why I mentioned the tactic of chasing it down and missiling it. This is all relative.

And many ships also have excellent PD! You try doing this on an aurora and you'll find yourself very very dead unless you are in an Onslaught or something similar!

Worked just fine when I tried it. Let's do this again.
If they don't back off, you can just keep hitting them. If they try to keep the shield up, it will overload. If they back off to vent, their PD is off. If they back off but don't vent...well, I'm happy because they're essentially taking themselves out of the fight.

If they back off and don't vent, it is simply a matter of firing more missiles than the PD can handle, if for some reason I still want to kill them. 

Try and missile an Enforcer and the flak will laugh at you.

I'm talking about hi-tech ships.

This is pure fallacy.  The middle sentence STARTS with the assumption that shields are weak little things that drop at a moments notice, thus your conclusion that you must so heavily outclass the opponent.

No. Just no. Also, you're breaching their shields if you're winning. Unless the shields are your sole defence, if they're not breaching yours, the forces aren't balanced, they're heavily in your favour. By definition, they're doing significantly less damage than you are - you're going through their shields AND armour AND hull. Damage = (S+A+H) Their damage is, at most, just shields. Damage = S. You're outclassing them by roughly (A+H)/(S+A+H) percent. Do you want me to walk you through an example?

Yes, and so are ballistics and energy weapons, whats your point?

No, ballistics and energy weapons do not scale with fleet size. See my examples in my previous post, or the further examples below. The more missiles you have, the more don't get shot down. The more you have, the more you can afford to waste. Neither of these matter for either other type.

By contrast, the larger fleet has relatively more PD, which means even more missiles get shot down.

If fighting a same size fleet, lets say half your missiles get shot down, and the rest do a total of 100 damage per shot. Simultaneously, your beams and guns are doing 100 each.

Fighting a smaller fleet, less than half your missiles get shot down, because there's relatively fewer PD escorts and because you're concentrating fire from relatively more missile mounts. You do 150 or more damage. Your beams and guns are still doing 100.

Fighting a bigger fleet, more of your missiles get shot down - sometimes all of them. Your missiles are doing 50 damage a shot down to completely worthless, depending on how powerful PD is in general. Your guns and beams are still doing 100 damage a shot.

If you want to have more missiles on your side, field more missile ships. A Vigilance destroyer will pack 21 MRM and a medium energy weapon for what, 5-6 fleet points?

I'm considering doing exactly this. What happens if I form a fleet of almost nothing but Harpoons and Sabot SRMs? Maybe a couple Atropos for spice? It should suck. I suspect it will be easy mode.

What I predict is that all my burst will overwhelm PD, and almost instantly smash several ships, so that after a volley or two their fleet ends up tiny compared to mine, say 2/3 or 1/2, so the fact that most of my ships have few weapons shouldn't matter.

In fact I've sort of tried this just now. I made a fleet of a solo Onslaught. Since it loses autobattles, the AI thinks it can win against me, and saves me the trouble of chasing it. It's wrong, which means I get to test what four Pilums will do to nominally well-defended ships like Ventures, Hounds, Lashers, and Condors. Turns out the Pilums alone can kill Lashers and Hounds. Hounds run out of places to dodge, then a Pilum takes out their engine and suddenly a couple thousand damage blooms. Lashers try to shoot them down but they simply overwhelm the Vulcans, then their shield overloads, then they die. With Ventures and Condors you can overwhelm the shield through their PD with four Pilums shooting at them. Either they lower the shield and take the hits or they keep it up and overload and take the hits anyway. Also with all the Pilums that end up flying around, a Venture losing its shield from damage or to vent often means between 50% hull damage and instant death.

By contrast, one Pilum is a complete waste of OP against these fleets. Two can sometimes ruin a Hound's day because they let the swarm build up over time, but it's not reliable. Five Pilums would be a total massacre.

[Thaago]

No. Just no. Also, you're breaching their shields if you're winning. Unless the shields are your sole defence, if they're not breaching yours, the forces aren't balanced, they're heavily in your favour. By definition, they're doing significantly less damage than you are - you're going through their shields AND armour AND hull. Damage = (S+A+H) Their damage is, at most, just shields. Damage = S. You're outclassing them by roughly (A+H)/(S+A+H) percent. Do you want me to walk you through an example?

Ugg. This kind of thinking depresses me in how much it ignores. The majority of combat in this game is not about running ships into each other and just letting the numbers play out. You specifically ignore the fact that ships can move and maneuver, which is the single biggest factor in their combat ability! You say I took damage S? Wrong! I took damage 10*S, 50*S, because I can maneuver and coordinate with other ships to provide relief. They will probably take multiple time S on their shield as well! Every ship has a potentially infinite amount of damage it can absorb. Lets say its a fight - 2 on 2 evenly matched ships. If I have another ship with me while the enemy's backup is across the map, then I'm going to win without taking any hull damage because I can disengage and vent while my ally is keeping them busy (defeat in detail is realized very well in this game, and the AI is very susceptible to it...). In a balanced engagement, maneuver is king. Even in capital ships you can disengage a tough opponent, vent your shield flux, and re-engage fresh with just a little backup. We can compute damage/flux and DPS all day long, but ignoring movement is ignoring the single most important element in the game.

Are there some ships that are more deadly shields down? Yes! This doesn't mean that this is the case for all playstyles or for all ships! I agree with you that the Paragon is much better in a straight up brawl without its shield up all the time(although comparing it to Eagles is like comparing a shark to puppies); its a lifesaver for blocking damage from harassers and from strike ships though! The raw numbers, while important and easy to tweak, are much less important than the circumstance.

[EDIT] Sorry if this came across as hostile, it was not my intent. I think I must just be in a bad mood or something O_O

[Dreyven]

you can read above what he just said

I don't think shields cripple ships at all, in fact, i have my shields turned on about 95% of the time and can't complain, although fact is that this is highly weapon set up dependend, i personally would never fly a paragon equiped like in this mission because the blasters use way too much flux. That said, it still makes this variant a viable and good ship, even with shields up, you just have to toggle autofire on weapon group 4 if you are near the maximum flux, then you can let it cool down to the "hardflux" and start firing again until there comes a point where you need to vent. (you will soak up 37500 damage per venting cycle).

No, lets do real ships. Say a couple assault Eagles. Six grav beams at 50 dps each or so on armour. Six assault chainguns at 399 dps each on armour. Total MAX dps is 2700, but their shield upkeep is 40%, so they're doing roughly 1620 dps...before armour. If I have the formula correct, those chainguns will actually be doing 15 dps to start with. (And don't forget that when my armour is breached the damage will suddenly go down, too, as the +50 per grav is countered by the -133 on the chainguns, and then they have to work through the entire hull.)

That's not how it works... if i can follow your math, your shield upkeep of 40% lowers your weapon damage by 40%?
Shield upkeep is a constant flux/second value of how much flux your shields generate when active (of the base vent rate)
On the eagle that's 210 flux/second, on the Assault variant you mentioned above that's 27% of the actual vent rate...
the only affect this has is that the flux capacity is 27% faster full then when shooting with shields off (assuming you are over your vent rate to begin with)

thagoos post here

i definitivly agree with you, running the numbers against each other seems kind of wrong, especially when it's 2 ships against 1
there is no way that you can keep pressure on 2 ships to prevent both from venting and coming back with fresh shields, also, numbers don't count for weapon positioning, autofire management, shield management etc.

[Kommodore Krieg]

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that a paragon with it's shields up is doing less damage than one with it's shields down Alrenous .   They do exactly the same amount of damage up until the flux limit is reached; in fact, the paragon fighting without it's shields up will likely do far LESS damage because it's going to be having it's weapon systems disabled as it takes damage on the hull.  If you are carefully monitoring your flux level, dropping shields to dissipate and or vent when you have a moment, and avoiding overload, the shielded paragon will always do 100% damage whereas the unshielded one's damage will depend on weather or not it's weapons are even online from all the fire it's taking on the hull.  This is made even easier by hull mods like accelerated shields/ stabilized shields and hardened shields.  Same thing goes for the Apogee.

[Cryten]

Maybe hes mistaken the bonus to beam weaponry for being near the flux limit and thinks that its applied when the shields are down instead?