quote:
phased shields only add protection against Phased Polaron Beams
Still, PPBs are fairly easy to research, and they absolutely devastate normally shielded ships.
My bro, had a fleet of 4 Baseships with 2.5K shields, and 500 ablative armor. Unfortunately, with one standard shield in the mix, his legendary 50% fleet got wiped out, and even after three Save/Reload Tactical tries against a smaller force, he was defeated badly.
Losing a bit of shield strength is well worth protection against PPBs, but if your enemy is into other weapons, you can get better defence using (my modded) normal shields
I really wish there were shields that could block the specialty weapons. Then you could have low hitpoint protection against everything, or high hitpoint protection against some.
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As for cost, the reason why nobody cares about weapon prices is that the cost of engines, ship control & defences
greatly outweigh the price of weapons.
Using a cheaper weapon system will only save you a modest percentage of the total ship cost, but your slightly larger & cheaper fleets will end up impotent and die in droves.
[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 20 March 2001).]