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[TaLaR]

Enemies don't use dedicated beam kiter builds and AI is very bad at range management. It needs ridiculous combined speed and range advantage to prevent approach by determined player.

Plus, the only beam you really need to keep shield up against is HIL. TL/PL are burst and AI likes linked fire, so you can vent/drop between shots. Gravs/Tacs aren't going to do much to armor during few second of approach.

And as soon as enemies use mixed beam + projectile (Tacs + Gauss on Conquest, etc) advantage of Helmsmanship 3 is lost anyway.

[sotanaht]

Enemies don't use dedicated beam kiter builds and AI is very bad at range management. It needs ridiculous combined speed and range advantage to prevent approach by determined player.

Plus, the only beam you really need to keep shield up against is HIL. TL/PL are burst and AI likes linked fire, so you can vent/drop between shots. Gravs/Tacs aren't going to do much to armor during few second of approach.

And as soon as enemies use mixed beam + projectile (Tacs + Gauss on Conquest, etc) advantage of Helmsmanship 3 is lost anyway.

You can't ignore things like missiles or iron beams, or long range high explosive ballistics like maulers.  When you are in a Paragon trying to get into close range so you can ensure a kill, those shields have to stay up and that 0 flux boost is almost 2/3rds of your speed (half, when you max everything else).  Plus with a 20 second base shield-raise time (5 second max with hull mods, which is still quite slow), you really just want to keep the shield up as much as possible.

[TaLaR]

Enemies don't use dedicated beam kiter builds and AI is very bad at range management. It needs ridiculous combined speed and range advantage to prevent approach by determined player.

Plus, the only beam you really need to keep shield up against is HIL. TL/PL are burst and AI likes linked fire, so you can vent/drop between shots. Gravs/Tacs aren't going to do much to armor during few second of approach.

And as soon as enemies use mixed beam + projectile (Tacs + Gauss on Conquest, etc) advantage of Helmsmanship 3 is lost anyway.

You can't ignore things like missiles or iron beams, or long range high explosive ballistics like maulers.  When you are in a Paragon trying to get into close range so you can ensure a kill, those shields have to stay up and that 0 flux boost is almost 2/3rds of your speed (half, when you max everything else).  Plus with a 20 second base shield-raise time (5 second max with hull mods, which is still quite slow), you really just want to keep the shield up as much as possible.

If you are being hit by anything hard flux, Helmsmanship 3 fails immediately, so this is hardly an argument for taking it.

You also don't need to raise full shield to fight one enemy. AI always fires exactly at your center anyway + a bit of spread to due to weapon placement/accuracy. With Accelerated Shields hullmod you get enough coverage for long range combat against single enemy in under 1 second, about 3 to fully cover front. Anything above that is excessive unless surrounded.
On narrow ships like Odyssey you might even flicker to prevent shield from expanding too much (and catching shots that would have missed the hull otherwise).

[sotanaht]

Enemies don't use dedicated beam kiter builds and AI is very bad at range management. It needs ridiculous combined speed and range advantage to prevent approach by determined player.

Plus, the only beam you really need to keep shield up against is HIL. TL/PL are burst and AI likes linked fire, so you can vent/drop between shots. Gravs/Tacs aren't going to do much to armor during few second of approach.

And as soon as enemies use mixed beam + projectile (Tacs + Gauss on Conquest, etc) advantage of Helmsmanship 3 is lost anyway.

You can't ignore things like missiles or iron beams, or long range high explosive ballistics like maulers.  When you are in a Paragon trying to get into close range so you can ensure a kill, those shields have to stay up and that 0 flux boost is almost 2/3rds of your speed (half, when you max everything else).  Plus with a 20 second base shield-raise time (5 second max with hull mods, which is still quite slow), you really just want to keep the shield up as much as possible.

If you are being hit by anything hard flux, Helmsmanship 3 fails immediately, so this is hardly an argument for taking it.

You also don't need to raise full shield to fight one enemy. AI always fires exactly at your center anyway + a bit of spread to due to weapon placement/accuracy. With Accelerated Shields hullmod you get enough coverage for long range combat against single enemy in under 1 second, about 3 to fully cover front. Anything above that is excessive unless surrounded.
On narrow ships like Odyssey you might even flicker to prevent shield from expanding too much (and catching shots that would have missed the hull otherwise).

Paragon, 39300 flux, which means you get 393 flux at <1%.  0.34 shield flux/damage means you can take 1155 damage.  That's 2 Atropos Torpedoes.  Also 2125 dissipation, 10% of which is 212.5, just over half the maximum you can take is dissipated every second.  A gauss shot is 1400, so that will end your 0 flux boost (and is slightly more than you can dissipate in DPS as well), but anything less than that and you can keep going.  Most Frigates unless they are loaded with all kinetic weapons can't do enough damage to overcome that, so you can actually completely ignore a frigate while you close with a cruiser.

All this damage adds up very quickly if you take it on hull/armor instead, especially if you are talking about blocking high explosive damage like HILs, Pilums, Heavy Maulers etc.  That's armor you could use to aggressively vent and kill more enemies.

[Alex]

I think the fact that the monitor has a fortress shield that reduces incoming damage by 90% is the reason it can tank tons of damage, not hard flux dissipation.

IIRC the flux shunt was added to the Monitor after it kept getting totally slaughtered and just in general not feeling very useful during initial testing. Consider what it does vs stuff like light-but-consistent fighter pressure, etc...

[Thaago]

Defensive Systems 3 (for shields) and Helmsmanship 3 are similar, in that they both are AI fixes with some minor benefits to the player. They could become basic abilities for all ships, for all I care.
Monitor is tanky, but in my experience, not tanky enough: AI sometimes disables fortress shields, even if it has positive dissipation with it, which is a mistake.

Keeping shields up while approaching is vital, especially if those enemy ships have beam weapons.  You can easily out-dissipate the beams on shields, but if you lose your 0 flux boost the enemy can probably outrun you.  That's where Helmsmenship 3 is basically mandatory.  Defensive Systems 3 ensures that you keep that 0 flux boost even when you take a few stray missiles or long-range kinetic weapons on approach as well.  Both skills are only really useful on approach, but that's probably the most vital point in the fight.  You have to get close enough to the enemy (WELL within their weapon range) to ensure you can kill them before they run away.

To that extent I'd say they are more important for players than AIs, and they are both in the top 10 most important combat skills for player ships.

Eh, hard disagree. They are worth it for AI captains but close to the bottom for player ships. Any situation where the enemy is doing so little damage is a curbstomp.

The only exception I'd say is some specific Paragon builds, because it is a) the slowest ship in the game and b) has massive flux reserves. But its a marginal increase in power for 4 skill points - thats a very high opportunity cost.

[TaLaR]

Paragon, 39300 flux, which means you get 393 flux at <1%.  0.34 shield flux/damage means you can take 1155 damage.  That's 2 Atropos Torpedoes.  Also 2125 dissipation, 10% of which is 212.5, just over half the maximum you can take is dissipated every second.  A gauss shot is 1400, so that will end your 0 flux boost (and is slightly more than you can dissipate in DPS as well), but anything less than that and you can keep going.  Most Frigates unless they are loaded with all kinetic weapons can't do enough damage to overcome that, so you can actually completely ignore a frigate while you close with a cruiser.

All this damage adds up very quickly if you take it on hull/armor instead, especially if you are talking about blocking high explosive damage like HILs, Pilums, Heavy Maulers etc.  That's armor you could use to aggressively vent and kill more enemies.

Constantly fired HIL is the only full counter to flicker that AI can use (player could simply keep TL on standby waiting for a shield drop to fire off-center). But HIL is very expensive to fire and actively loses flux war for ship that uses it. So against a ship using one you can simply afford to keep the shield up and win the flux war anyway.

All projectiles are slow enough that you can raise shield as reaction after you seem them coming (at typical capital vs capital combat range anyway), they are not sufficient argument to keep shields up. Unless enemy fires dense stream of HE or highly damaging projectiles, you can just flicker to block the important part.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think the fact that the monitor has a fortress shield that reduces incoming damage by 90% is the reason it can tank tons of damage, not hard flux dissipation.

IIRC the flux shunt was added to the Monitor after it kept getting totally slaughtered and just in general not feeling very useful during initial testing. Consider what it does vs stuff like light-but-consistent fighter pressure, etc...

I'm not saying the hard flux dissipation does nothing, I agree it's quite useful with fortress shield, especially for the AI, but the 90% damage reduction is the strong thing for tanking? A monitor with no fortress shield but with flux shunt would just get slaughtered, and probably faster, at least that's what it seem like to me. Maybe it makes it more resilient against fighter harassment, but I don't see that as anywhere near as valuable as being able to absorb cruiser/capital level firepower with a frigate.

It also seems like the player could do just fine in a monitor without flux shunt, but the ship is so low impact that the player will never pilot it. For the AI it is certainly a big boost.

[Alex]

It's definitely a case of a very strong synergy; fortress shield makes flux shunt mean a lot more. If you had to pick just one, then yeah, fortress shield is way better. But if you compare fortress shield vs fortress shield with flux shunt, there's much more of an improvement than between "nothing" and "just flux shunt", if that makes sense.

[TaLaR]

Fortress shield without flux shunt can be actively harmful.
Take 4xTL + Gravs + Tacs  Paragon (no hard flux at all) vs sim Paragon and just keep firing TLs in alternation. It doesn't generate enough soft flux to overwhelm the target Paragon, but being fired by TLs is enough for target to keep Fortress shield enabled. I call this AI tactic 'suicide by Fortress shield'.