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[Asherogar]

Options are good, and having option to make shieldless build is great, but current Shield shunt seems to work entirely backwards. As someone already pointed out: "You are spending OP to make your ship worse". Even ships with terrible shields like Conquest better of spending those OP on anything else and still have shield to catch some occasional torpedo or scary HE weapon shot.

Let's compare it with Resistant Flux Conduits. They both provide 50% EMP resistance, Conduits cost 5 OP more on capital but provide you with 25% flux vent bonus (which now even more important, because we no longer have additional 25% from skills) and leave your shield enabled. Again, I don't think 5 additional OP worth it even for Conquest, even if you need EMP resistance you better off just squeeze this 5 OP from somewhere and get yourself Conduits.

I see 2 ways how Shield shunt can be improved:

First one is by giving it additional bonuses, like increased armor, maybe some flux buffs or very limited armor regen. Which is sound like pretty herd to balance thing.

Second one is reverting hullmod cost into giving OP instead. And plain additional OP is way more flexible than any bonuses, because you can spend them on whatever this exact ship needs. It's even sounds more logical, because I imagine by disabling shield you're also removing all the equipment need for it to function, freeing up space and system energy or whatever for additional modifications.

Or a hybrid of both can be used, by giving out additional OP and a bit of bonuses on top. Shield is still too good to ships with decent flux stats and shield efficiency to give up for a bit of additional OP.

Anyway, does anyone have any success with this hullmod?

[Amoebka]

You spend OP to make your braindead AI not tank kinetics on a 1.4 efficiency shield. For a player's flagship, it's never a right choice because you know when to turn the shield off, the AI needs it taken away because they misuse it. Better let them eat a stray reaper than see them waste all their flux shield tanking on a 2500 armor ship and never shoot their weapons.

[Asherogar]

You spend OP to make your braindead AI not tank kinetics on a 1.4 efficiency shield. For a player's flagship, it's never a right choice because you know when to turn the shield off, the AI needs it taken away because they misuse it. Better let them eat a stray reaper than see them waste all their flux shield tanking on a 2500 armor ship and never shoot their weapons.

Aaand now your braindead AI fiddling on the edge of enemy range, constantly taking permanent damage and very uncertain if it should engage or not. Also there's not so many situations when even 1.4 shield get overloaded instantly, especially if we are talking about AI, which tends to shield flicker masterfully near 80-90% flux.

[Amoebka]

That's the problem - they start flickering at 90% flux, when they already have no flux to shoot.

As for skittishness, reckless officers cure it nicely.

[SCC]

I mention Derelict Contingent so that no one else has to.
If you are asking for pristine ships, what's the utility of Shield Shunt... No idea.

[Razor Feather]

It definitely seems to be more a "my shield wasn't all that good to begin with and I want the bonus I can get for not having one" option than a "I don't want to get emp'd" option. I think it could stand to have a more consistently benificial side to it though, like maybe boosting hull strength by a bit or giving extra peak performance time, so there would be at least some occasions where its worth considering even without derelict contingent.

[SafariJohn]

Certain shieldless builds have worked very well in the various fleet tournaments. A common use is to trick the AI into firing finisher missiles at the shieldless ship - if it has very effective PD it will never even get hit.

[SapphireSage]

Certain shieldless builds have worked very well in the various fleet tournaments. A common use is to trick the AI into firing finisher missiles at the shieldless ship - if it has very effective PD it will never even get hit.

That was using DR's version of Shield Bypass though, which gave a massive +50% flux dissipation boost on top of not having the flux cost for having shields up and EMP resistance. The flux boost made it possible to make a very flux hungry ship go flux neutral, like SO but a different timer.

[RemnantAI]

One great aspect of Shield Shunt is that it makes A.l. much more decisive about engagements. Take away the shield and you will see some AI's make excellent ALL IN plays, but because the shield is missing it tends to be suicide.
 I can see outfitting a "Reaver" D-mod trash fleet with shield shunts to make them hyper aggressive. Personally I call those trash fleets "Reavers" like from Firefly. Core shielding isn't working, life support is minimal, and there is structural damage? Just strap a few more boosters to it, we have merchants to catch and eat.

If a shunt passively decreased multiplier of damage of HE, Energy, and OR Frag we could shell some OP for it. Like HE only doing 150% to armor. Energy doing 90% to everything. Frag kinetic could be unchanged. Shields have replenishable durability, anything replacing them would have to have highly tangible offensive or defensive benefits.

[Thaago]

I have not played around with shield shunt. Theorycrafting though: if it doesn't have a shield, it can't waste flux on shield tanking. For derelict contingent ships (I know, SCC already mentioned it), they have many times the normal amount of hull, so all shields really do is take up flux and keep weapons from going offline. This helps stop weapons from going offline, so that has good synergy.

Non-derelict contingent, I could see putting shield shunt on SO ships along with automated repair unit. The issue with SO ships is usually that they back off due to high shield flux even with reckless officers... no shield, no backing off, someone is going to die. 2 ships enter, 1 ship leaves!

[Asherogar]

So Shield shunt works as a band-aid solution for AI's bad handling of weak shields? Sure, but I still disagree with OP cost, it should at least cost 0. You are losing shield anyway, so any random ships wouldn't be abusing this mod. And I don't see 50% EMP resistance as a bonus, it's a minimum mandatory thing, otherwise even a tiniest bit of EMP in whole enemy fleet will left you completely paralyzed with no counterplay.

[Thaago]

Most of the time the AI's handling is correct: as players we want our ships to survive and not take constant chip damage (and the AI does lower shields in a reasonably cautious way against pure kinetic fire). But when I want my ships to go "RAHHH RIDE OR DIE!!!" thats a different story. Asking for the AI to make that kind of high risk decision is just going to lead to disappointment in most cases, but shield shunt forces the issue.

[Rauschkind]

maybe this was viable if it had energy weapon resistance.

[DatonKallandor]

It's very much viable, just niche.

[Daynen]

Yeah I'm wary of shield shunt because you're trading something crucial for something typically not that important; obviously it's best used on ships with garbage shields and already tough armor.  Using it as an AI correction tool is also kind of ghetto in my mind but I guess your mileage may vary.