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General Discussion / Hardened Shields OP?
« on: November 05, 2021, 08:31:26 AM »
I had read in another thread that Hardened Shields was generally considered OP, or that it helps high tech over low tech. I was surprised to read both statements, as my experience was the opposite.
For the general question of "is it valuable for LT?", my experience is a strong yes. I originally started my run (all low tech) avoiding shield upgrades and favoring hull/armor hullmods and skills. Over time, I noticed my Enforcers (which had hardened shields in addition to other defensive upgrades) were pretty darn rugged, even in the face of Remnants. I put HS on the rest of the fleet, usually by removing other lesser hullmods. My gut is that this moved me from 20-30 DP of losses per battle to 0-10 DP. This is all subjective, but it felt like a fair upgrade. It's not like Remnants got easy.
For the question of it being OP, I had recently been considering HS on my Legion, so I pulled data on the impact of HS or an equivalent amount of capacitors on a variety of cruisers and capitals. The metric I ended up with was the amount of damage the shield could take to hit full flux. The ships I was using for this had officers with different skills, so the exact numbers are pretty specific to my fleet, but the trend should be general (I think). The data is at the bottom. I don't know how to format tables, so the presentation is a little clunky.
For almost all the ships I looked at, the difference between HS and equivalent caps is very small, equivalent to less than 1000 damage. The Paragon is the oddball. (I think this has mostly to do with the way the flux pool grows with capacitors (a = mx + b), and the Paragon seems to have a large 'b' term, so the impact of adding capacitors is relatively small.) I do understand that the impact of reduced damage can't be simplified in the way I did it; in particular, reducing damage can enhance the impact of dissipation. A larger flux pool can be used for weapons, though, which can be very helpful on badly overfluxed load outs (see Onslaught).
I guess, as a non-s-modded upgrade, it doesn't feel OP to me. With the s-mod, it gets a little better as you aren't debating an equivalent amount of capacitors, but likely compared to the next best upgrade (I normally go heavy armor, missile racks, and HS as the s-mods, so ITU is the next most-expensive). That gives a bigger relative difference to HS, but I'm still struggling to say that's OP.
Am I just missing something?
Ship - HS or not - Capacitors - Flux capacity - Shield efficiency - Damage to full
Dominator XIV - No - 18 - 16380 - 0.76 - 21550
Dominator XIV - Yes - 0 - 12599 - 0.57 - 22100
Champion - No - 18 - 15789 - 0.76 - 20520
Champion - Yes - 0 - 12000 - 0.57 - 21050
Aurora - No - 18 - 16800 - 0.76 - 22100
Aurora - Yes - 0 - 13200 - 0.57 - 23160
Legion XIV - No - 48 - 25119 - 0.76 - 33050
Legion XIV - Yes - 18 - 18900 - 0.57 - 33150
Paragon - No - 48 - 39350 - 0.57 - 69040
Paragon - Yes - 18 - 33350 - 0.43 - 77560
For the general question of "is it valuable for LT?", my experience is a strong yes. I originally started my run (all low tech) avoiding shield upgrades and favoring hull/armor hullmods and skills. Over time, I noticed my Enforcers (which had hardened shields in addition to other defensive upgrades) were pretty darn rugged, even in the face of Remnants. I put HS on the rest of the fleet, usually by removing other lesser hullmods. My gut is that this moved me from 20-30 DP of losses per battle to 0-10 DP. This is all subjective, but it felt like a fair upgrade. It's not like Remnants got easy.
For the question of it being OP, I had recently been considering HS on my Legion, so I pulled data on the impact of HS or an equivalent amount of capacitors on a variety of cruisers and capitals. The metric I ended up with was the amount of damage the shield could take to hit full flux. The ships I was using for this had officers with different skills, so the exact numbers are pretty specific to my fleet, but the trend should be general (I think). The data is at the bottom. I don't know how to format tables, so the presentation is a little clunky.
For almost all the ships I looked at, the difference between HS and equivalent caps is very small, equivalent to less than 1000 damage. The Paragon is the oddball. (I think this has mostly to do with the way the flux pool grows with capacitors (a = mx + b), and the Paragon seems to have a large 'b' term, so the impact of adding capacitors is relatively small.) I do understand that the impact of reduced damage can't be simplified in the way I did it; in particular, reducing damage can enhance the impact of dissipation. A larger flux pool can be used for weapons, though, which can be very helpful on badly overfluxed load outs (see Onslaught).
I guess, as a non-s-modded upgrade, it doesn't feel OP to me. With the s-mod, it gets a little better as you aren't debating an equivalent amount of capacitors, but likely compared to the next best upgrade (I normally go heavy armor, missile racks, and HS as the s-mods, so ITU is the next most-expensive). That gives a bigger relative difference to HS, but I'm still struggling to say that's OP.
Am I just missing something?
Ship - HS or not - Capacitors - Flux capacity - Shield efficiency - Damage to full
Dominator XIV - No - 18 - 16380 - 0.76 - 21550
Dominator XIV - Yes - 0 - 12599 - 0.57 - 22100
Champion - No - 18 - 15789 - 0.76 - 20520
Champion - Yes - 0 - 12000 - 0.57 - 21050
Aurora - No - 18 - 16800 - 0.76 - 22100
Aurora - Yes - 0 - 13200 - 0.57 - 23160
Legion XIV - No - 48 - 25119 - 0.76 - 33050
Legion XIV - Yes - 18 - 18900 - 0.57 - 33150
Paragon - No - 48 - 39350 - 0.57 - 69040
Paragon - Yes - 18 - 33350 - 0.43 - 77560