Print

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

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

For me, the Enforcer is the absolute peak of armor shunted ships. It's not amazing, but it strikes the perfect balance between being wildly powerful, maneuverable enough to not just get mobbed the moment they burn into combat and disposable enough to keep losing it when you inevitably over-extend them.

*immediately dies to High Intensity Laser*

Or Tachyon Lance. Or torpedoes. Or DEM missiles. Or bombers.

Nightstrasza got it right - and almost one year ago. Why would you dig up this thread with such a pointless message...

[Nuuki]

For me, the Enforcer is the absolute peak of armor shunted ships. It's not amazing, but it strikes the perfect balance between being wildly powerful, maneuverable enough to not just get mobbed the moment they burn into combat and disposable enough to keep losing it when you inevitably over-extend them.

*immediately dies to High Intensity Laser*

Or Tachyon Lance. Or torpedoes. Or DEM missiles. Or bombers.

Nightstrasza got it right - and almost one year ago. Why would you dig up this thread with such a pointless message...

I dunno, it might be because shield shunt gets a worse rep then it deserves? Maybe because I've been using it a lot recently and found myself having loads of fun with it? Hell, maybe both!
Honestly though, shield shunt is not quite as bad as everyone seems to think it is. Would it benefit from a buff? Yes. Does it need that buff to be usable? No. If you think torpedoes, bombers, plasma bolts, EMP damage or what have you render the shield shunt "literally unusable" then you should try to use it yourself. I haven't had any excessive issues with it (and when I did, I was already under so much sustained fire that shields would only have prolonged my life by a few seconds) and honestly, found myself having more fun than I've had with the game in a long time. Seriously, if you ever get bored of the fleet you're currently using you should try using a few shield shunted low tech ships. They're more fun than you think.

[Killer of Fate]

it's only application is being s-modded onto XIV variants for ridiculously high armour that can't be pierced by most weapons in the game. Though it still gets recked by end game enemies which are simply too fast to be effectively killed by Low Tech before they manage to kite out all your armour.

In my playthrough I kinda reversed Shield Shunt, in that it removes shields still, but instead it gives 50% fire rate at the cost of gaining 25% flux costs, cause otherwise it felt out of place with SO variants, the one which Eradicator has for example by default, and it... Well, it's a long story, who cares.

in vanilla imo, Shield Shunt is kinda like HSA. It sucks for 90% of the things, but then there is some broken end game combo that suddenly makes it good again that everyone is aware of, but then someone walks in and is confused as to why people think something is bad when there is 1 SPECIFIC, well in this case a few (cause Enforcer XIV, Dominator XIV, Legion XIV, Onslaught XIV, but meh, probably not all of them tbh) that makes them go "wtf, Shield Shunt is good, you guys". And the argument of "WELL, IT MAKES UR SHIPS MORE AGGRESSIVE, SO IT'S GOOD, CAUSE I WANT MY CREW TO DIE INSTANTLY". Okay, sure. You're absolutely correct about that, can't argue.

[wodzu_93]

Main problem with shunt is simply giving up the main benefit of any shield, even bad ones - replenishing health. No amount of armor will compesate for this. There is a way to get health back, on Elite Combat Endurance, but even that is finite, in essence giving you an extra HP pool if you don't get bursted to death first. Lack of regen will always make Shield Shunt niche pick at best, for the few ships where +% armor bonus is noticeable, and useless everywhere else.

Now, if there was a way to truly regenerate armor or health, that would change things - but this is in the domain of mods.

[Pizzarugi]

Never. Even the worst shield even for an AI is better than shield shunt. You can use it to flicker to catch a reaper or hellbore shell. AI will do that too. It should be free or even gain OP of removing shield, that 15% armor is not worth it and to make the mod worth it need to build it in and even with it built in my dominators do better with a shield, a dominator with trash shield that overfluxes itself quickly from gunfire is still better with a shield. Sure, you can put strong PD with PD skills maybe and PD hull mod but then you already paid OP to put on the shunt, not to mention the story point waste and S-mod slot waste, not to mention it will do nothing against plasma, hephaestus or hellbores flying your way. There's a reason Vanguard being so overhype when added to the game is trash, bcs it has no shield so you just shoot it for 5 seconds with hephaestus and it explodes, same gonna happen to any ship you put shield shunt on.

Is it good for player? debatable, I rather not pay anything to gimp my ship and catch missiles and anti armor projectiles with it, literally free defense, if you are reaching 100% flux anyway then you took more than you could bite at the same time and/or you have unoptimized loadout with flux hungry guns and not enough venting, shunt won't fix that, just turn off the shields and keep firing on 99% while backing off to vent and maybe catching a reaper with a flicker. For AI?, only to fix their behavior bcs they will catch even anti-shield projectiles on their shields while having bad shield, that's literally the only reason to ever use shield shunt and even then my builds still fared much much better with a crappy shield. It still comes down to the optimization, if the build is bad you will overflux even with shunt, it gives nothing to venting speed and your firing speed will grind to a halt at 99% flux.

Also, forgot to mention, your weapons will be perma disabled without a shield, enjoy a overload free life where you can't shoot anyway bcs damage and emp will disable everything. Shunt is only good to bully smaller than you ships but take on anything capable of equiping a heavy mauler, hephaestus, plasma or worst of them all, hellbore and tachyon then you are firing nothing and you will melt as they turn your armor black in first volley from max range before you even approched them. I don't put shunt even on mora simply bcs they eat more damage while having it and I don't have to pay any s-mod or story point or most importantly OP for it and even on things like dominator and onslaught you have to fix so many problems to minimize shunt drawbacks while you can have no shunt for free, keep the shield for flickers and eating infinite damage and spend all that OP for actually usefull stuff. Unless you are a Luddic and you want suicide run down the enemy, then you lose most of your fleet but win or you didn't bring enough and all explode bcs you can't push thro.

This is pretty much why I don't use Shield Shunt at all. The fact that armor is finite and is permanently lost in a fight is all the more reason why I'll never rely on it over shields. At least with shields, I can dump my flux and then dive back into a fight. With armor, once it's been stripped, you're done. It should be treated as a second layer of defense for when your shield is down for whatever reason, not something to lean heavily into.

The only way I'd take shield shunt builds seriously is if I'm using mods which add ways to regenerate armor. And even then, those same mods would likely have ways to make shields more efficient anyway so there's no reason trying shield shunt.

[Beep Boop]

The flipside is that a ship relying on shields can end up persistently flux-locked anytime it tries to engage an enemy, and thus never accomplish anything, while shield-shunted ship will always be able to hurt an enemy. Yes, it will take permanent damage, but infinite combat sustainability is not really a thing in Starsector anyway, since you will eventually run out of PPT and CR and self-destruct.

[Daynen]

If it can't use shields, it can't be overloaded.  Let that thought guide your decisions.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Moras have Damper Field so why not shield shunt those

[Amoebka]

Moras have Damper Field so why not shield shunt those

Because they don't really need flux for weapons. The only thing Mora as a carrier needs to do is not die, and even a crappy shield helps with that a lot more than some extra armor.
Shield Shunt is for when you want the ship to dedicate all its flux to weapons.

[Thaago]

Also Damper Field works really well with shields: while the field is active flux is dropping, effectively regenerating those HP while the armor takes much less damage anyways. SO Mora is a bit of a meme and not really worth it, but it does that one thing quite well.

[yajusenpai]

Because you are not suppose to put carrier to the front where it can get hit.
Best defense for carriers are distance.

[Killer of Fate]

Moras have Damper Field so why not shield shunt those

Because they don't really need flux for weapons. The only thing Mora as a carrier needs to do is not die, and even a crappy shield helps with that a lot more than some extra armor.
Shield Shunt is for when you want the ship to dedicate all its flux to weapons.

in theory, you could use shield shunt, heavy armour and armoured weapon mounts and then use all the OP you would use for vents or capacitors for fighters... Though you achieve neutral cost most likely, as the hullmods probably cost even more than the shield itself.

[yajusenpai]

Also there are always the problem of opportunity cost.
As all of you know, Shield Shunt while cheap still cost 3/5/7/10/one S-mod slot. So can they be better used elsewhere.....

[Princess of Evil]

"My shield is technically infinite" HT players when i introduce them to LT's overwhelming firepower of the entire flux pool:

[Zumberge]

Shield Shunt has a use in what I call the "Armored Gorilla" doctrine: Get the biggest, stupidest brick of a ship you can find, put Shield Shunt on it along with as many other defensive hull mods as possible, a healthy dose of kinetic and ideally EMP, and put a level 7 reckless officer at the helm, ideally one with as many defensive skills as you can manage.  Deploy it at the center of your battle line, front towards enemy, and let it go.  The whole point of its existence is to plow into the enemy ranks hurling ordinance every which way - not really a true spearhead so much as a big, loud, existential threat for the enemy fleet which pulls the heat off of everything else, and if it dies, it dies.  If you're familiar with the DISTRACTION CARNIFEX tactic from Warhammer 40,000 tabletop, you know what to expect, except due to it being a fairly big ship with no means to waste its flux on defensive measures it can slug it out against anything that takes the bait.

Barring that?  Shield Shunt on long-range support ships, maybe - stuff you expect to not ever be in the direct line of combat.