Ship Design for Dummies, weapons, armor, shields, oh my!

[Taera]

Geo - with the exception of very early game armor is not a defense - its the backup of the shields. Meaning that if a shield IS breached, you dont lose components -- at least not instantly.

The point is that shields can survive partially - four armors will be 1 if hit by enough damage.

My opinion.

[Wardad]

Originally posted by Stone Mill:
Just a note on shields... your designs will be vulnerable to ship capture without them. (Especially an WP ambush). So even though they are bulky and inefficient, I include just one even on my early designs.

If I see that a player is not using shields... I try and take advantage of this... hello boarding parties!

Yeah, what he said and what Master Belisarius said
"I like to include at least a shield to avoid boarding and help to avoid the Ionic Disperser's effects."

Try warping in and taking on a pack of fighters with no shields and no armor. All direct fire fighter weapons are weak, even the fighter PPB.

So even non phased shields have a purpose. Even if they use PPB and skip the shields, the shields will still protect against Ionic dispersers, Fighters, and Boarding Parties.

[PvK]

One or two normal shield gen III's on a destroyer can be very decisive against enemies who have no shields, no PPB, and no shield depleters. Quite useful for early-game wars.

PvK

[geoschmo]

Yeah, I need to get around to testing shields. I expect them to be effective. Even armor was for destroyers and smaller. I hope that shields at least prove semi usefull for LC's and above beyond just anti-boarding. the greater size to damage ratio should make the difference.

[oleg]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
... I hope that shields at least prove semi usefull for LC's and above beyond just anti-boarding. the greater size to damage ratio should make the difference.

Please don't forget ID. It was no coincidence MM was finally forced to do something about that uberweapon !

[spoon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
But it just doesn't fit with what I see when I test it. I haven't tried shields yet, but at least for armor I see no point in using ANY once you get past LC's. The mounts make the weapons do just too much damage, even for Armor 3. That is unless you have a lot of armor, and then your ship is too weak to really hurt the other guy.

One of the main reasons I use armor is because it is cheap, and a lot of my designs end up with armor III on them just for the sake of keeping cost within the build-time cutoff points.

[Wardad]

Damaging Warp Points - up to 200kt damage, ignores shields, damage is applied to armor first.