The great shield debate

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There has been a lot of information given about shields, but I still haven't figured out which ones to go with. They all have their good points. I just can't decide.

Resilient Shields have the 5% absorb of course, which is nice but doesn't seem to do much unless I'm missing something. Regen shields may have nice regen, but heavy strikes from battleships can break them instantly. The strong shields have a lot more durability, but almost no regen rate, which also hurts during battleship battles with the lack of regen power.

Anyway, I plan on sticking with cruiser all the way, so really, which shields are best for my type of ship?

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I generally go with the Resiliant shields (or a damage-resistance specific shield of the type of damage I'm currently dealing with most - preferrably both), because honestly you have a lot of hull and don't really need to be afraid of hull-tanking a little bit when the shields get low, and the lack of bleedthrough (5% reduction) will maximize the hull tank ability by the time they get through it, and there's a 5% reduction of damage (absorption) right off the top. Plus with EPtS and so on you get a much better return.

A lot of people will push for Corvariant (the cap ones) specifically because the EPtS return is huge in comparison.

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it really does depend entirely on what you like playing with as shield power settings.

If your running at low shield power (around the 25 mark) covariant are best.

If your running with 50-75 standard or resilient become better.

if your running with 100-125 regen are better, although resilient are still an option for the anti-bleedthrough if your looking at dropping any hull regen moves or doing lots of hull tanking.

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Don't try "hull tanking". That just doesn't work. If the enemies are hitting you hard enough to actually get your shields down, then your hull is going to be slagged in about 10 seconds. As soon as your shields are down, the next torpedoes or mines that hit you do massive damage.

In my opinion for a cruiser, the regenerative shields are the best. In easy encounters that don't last long, it's not going to matter what shield you have. If the enemy ship dies quickly it most likely isn't a major threat and isn't going to be putting out that much damage.

In a challenging encounter, the battle will last long enough for regen shields to come out ahead. If you're being pressured and you put yourself on shield power setting, you'll be regening at three times the normal rate and regen catches up that much faster.

Generally if a group of enemies hits you so hard that you absolutely can't maintain your shields with power transfer and Emergency Power to the Shields, then the extra capacity of a covariant shield is only going to last a few seconds anyway.

The extra 5% shield absorption doesn't matter much on a cruiser with a strong hull. On a science ship, which has pretty strong shields but a weak hull, those might be a good choice.

For an escort that doesn't plan on taking a lot of fire, the higher capacity shields are probably better, because they allow for more hit and run tactics. Head in, nail the enemy and then get back out of range before drawing too much fire. If you're not going to sit there slugging it out then going with a regen shield won't benefit you.

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Regen is likely the best for your cruiser, at least for PvE leveling content. They will afford you enough protection to take a big hit or 2 while regenerating quickly between combat stints.

PvP you are likely better off with Resilient in a cruiser.

Challenging PvE its hard to tell yet. If there ever is any, we don't yet know the nature of it.

All we can really tell you now is there is no best shield setup for a cruiser. There is only a best shield setup for the specific circumstance you are in.

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Challenging PvE its hard to tell yet. If there ever is any, we don't yet know the nature of it.

Good bet it won't be regen though if grouped. Regen's shield capacity would most likely waste a lot of shield healage from external sources, thereby effectively giving you less regen than you would with a higher capacity shield.

But if you aren't grouped, it'll most likely be regen again, since if the content is challenging, the fight will probably have a longer duration, and that means regen will prevent more damage.

All we can really tell you now is there is no best shield setup for a cruiser. There is only a best shield setup depending on the circumstance you are in.

Yup. And also worth noting that, if you know what you are doing, there's a lot of freedom to play with as well. We aren't being pushed closed to the limit for most content.

Then when you toss in Cap and Reg values on blue shields, so you can go double cap, cap+reg, or double reg), there's a lot of options that nicely pick up from one to the other. Regen(reg, reg) shield to Regen (reg, cap) to Regen (cap, cap) to normal (reg, reg) and so on...

A lot of freedom to find the one that fits best with your playstyle.

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also while regen suffer from spike damage, doesn't necessarily mean you'll die because of it.

Some one fires off multiple beams, that will do a big burst and get through your shield, however a second later your shields are back up. So unless they timed it just right any torpedoes will hit again recharging shields and do little damage.

So unless the enemy is smart or lucky or your just sitting there not doing anything, regen with 4x recharge from 125 shield power will quite easily be the best shield for most circumstances.

And while yes, you might not get the most efficient healing out of shield heal abilities, each shield resistance point is worth a lot lot more, less damage shields take faster they regen back to full.

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Resilient all the way.

Not even taking x% of the damage is better then having y% more strength or z% more regen.

Also, most Resilient Shields only have barely less Strength&Regen then a standard shield.

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There has been a lot of information given about shields, but I still haven't figured out which ones to go with. They all have their good points. I just can't decide.

Resilient Shields have the 5% absorb of course, which is nice but doesn't seem to do much unless I'm missing something. Regen shields may have nice regen, but heavy strikes from battleships can break them instantly. The strong shields have a lot more durability, but almost no regen rate, which also hurts during battleship battles with the lack of regen power.

Anyway, I plan on sticking with cruiser all the way, so really, which shields are best for my type of ship?

I'll have to look, but the ones I have atm are 7k Cap, but the Reg is only 47, but you really don't need th Reg that badly when you have Science 1 ( fixs sheilds) and Eng 1 ( repairs hull )

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One thing I noticed with my sheilds was the down time for them to recover if the fight was more challenging and bled them dry. I have been leaning toward regen shields for my escort but probably need to get up to higher levels to determine how well that is working out.

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I think the Covariant ones are best if you are an engineer. They can really take a pounding and if you use your skills correctly, they will last even longer.

When you get the really good skills: Brace for Impact, Rotate Shield Freq as a captain, this bolsters your already strong shielding. A good Covariant shield with a brace for impact can take like 15 mine hits and not flinch.

In a cruiser it is almost a certainty you have some sort of "emergency power to shields" setting. This gives you a big boost to regeneration and can get overcome the weak regen of the covariant sheilds. The same thing goes for smartly using a "shield battery".

I usually run with close to a full power to weapons, with the Covariants, but if things are looking somewhat troublesome, I can switch even more power to the shields to bolster a quicker regeneration rate.

So to sum up for me, the engineering skills seem to overcome the slower recharge time, and the overall strength of the shields can win the day for you in many battles.

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Those high regenerative ones are great for escorts, because you can easily use many facings during battle...or at least they work great for me...

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Best level resilient shields with a disruptor resist bonus. They're good for everything up to level 30 due to all npcs using disruptors for those levels:

Klingon, Romulan, Gorn, Nausicaan and Orion all use disruptors. When they can't bring your shields down fast enough with their disruptors, tanking torpedoes and mines becomes automatically easy. I believe however when you get to the Cardassian mission arcs, you'll need shields with a phaser resist bonus.

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In any case, once you hit level cap, expect to grind up one of each as they will all have some situational usefulness.

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Regenerative Shields with [reg] at 75% shield power are almost broken.

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Yeah..they make it a tough decision by offsetting all the plus with a minus...

I personally go with

1.) Absorption percentage
2.) Recharge rate
3.) Max HP...


It has served me well.... But I sometimes have to think about it each time even so....

Sometimes the recharge is so low that it offsets the mega-size HP imho... a shield that takes forever to recharge is (in my opinion only) the worst way to go...

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Don't try "hull tanking". That just doesn't work. If the enemies are hitting you hard enough to actually get your shields down, then your hull is going to be slagged in about 10 seconds. As soon as your shields are down, the next torpedoes or mines that hit you do massive damage.

In my opinion for a cruiser, the regenerative shields are the best. In easy encounters that don't last long, it's not going to matter what shield you have. If the enemy ship dies quickly it most likely isn't a major threat and isn't going to be putting out that much damage.

In a challenging encounter, the battle will last long enough for regen shields to come out ahead. If you're being pressured and you put yourself on shield power setting, you'll be regening at three times the normal rate and regen catches up that much faster.

Generally if a group of enemies hits you so hard that you absolutely can't maintain your shields with power transfer and Emergency Power to the Shields, then the extra capacity of a covariant shield is only going to last a few seconds anyway.

The extra 5% shield absorption doesn't matter much on a cruiser with a strong hull. On a science ship, which has pretty strong shields but a weak hull, those might be a good choice.

For an escort that doesn't plan on taking a lot of fire, the higher capacity shields are probably better, because they allow for more hit and run tactics. Head in, nail the enemy and then get back out of range before drawing too much fire. If you're not going to sit there slugging it out then going with a regen shield won't benefit you.

This is exactly how I feel about it. Once I switched to regen shields on my cruiser in beta on a whim....I NEVER looked back. Alphas can be a problem, but being an engineer and having access to shield resistance takes care of alot of that (rotate shield frequency FTW!)

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Don't try "hull tanking". That just doesn't work. If the enemies are hitting you hard enough to actually get your shields down, then your hull is going to be slagged in about 10 seconds. As soon as your shields are down, the next torpedoes or mines that hit you do massive damage.

Bear in mind I didn't suggest trying to hulltank. I said that you shouldn't be afraid, in a cruiser, to hull tank a little bit. One of the biggest mistakes a Cruiser captain can make is freaking out if their shields are about to fall and trying to spam power over to that side like its going out of style. This can leave you open elsewhere for a more deadly salvo.

Your better option is to start to turn, rotate the power three or four clicks at most and if the shield falls you won't be too bad off if you're just taking cannon/beam fire, it's just the mines and torpedos you really have to worry about.

Ending a battle at 60-75% hull shouldn't even phase a Cruiser pilot in the slightest if it's a tougher battle. Ending a battle at 30% means you've taken the statement of "don't be afraid to let your hull get hit" way out of proportion to "you can just hull tank".

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People are saying they use engineering to buff lower cap shields; I do it the other way. I use covariants and use my engineering/science skills to recharge. Emergency power to shields, science team, rotate shield freq, shield battery... then to top it off if I'll switch to max shield power if I'm on cool down for all those to boost recharge between encounters. With a cruisers I have enough hull to not need the bleed through... with that many shield regen options why would I ever lower my capacity?

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Does it change things that I play a tactical officer, NOT an engineering officer?

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Does it change things that I play a tactical officer, NOT an engineering officer?

On a cruiser- not terribly much. You may want shields that have a higher starting capacity, instead of regen, but regen is still important. I tend to favor Standard shields (higher capacity than Regen or Resilient, higher regen than Covariant and Resilient), if all things are equal. Though if I find a regen shield with CAP bonus, that would find its way into my shield slot.

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Covariants are really the only shields worth using in a PVP setting. Shield regeneration isn't going to help you at all when you have multiple players focus firing on you. I think the PvE difficulty has been scaled back so much that regenerative is probably the easy button for PvE, but Covariants will always be my favorite when running a cruiser or a science vessel.

As a few posters before me pointed out, an engineer captain with BO skills such as reverse shield polarity, science team, and emergency power to shields has a vast amount of shield damage resist and shield regen skills - so many that by Commander that he shouldn't really need to rely on a high base regen value for his shields at all.

This works in any ship with an engineer captain, and to a lesser degree other captains (EPS Power transfer, Rotate Shield frequency are both really impressive skills). Consider, however, that using covariants in an escort is somewhat of a waste when dealing with a significantly lower shield cap value. The bottom line is, if you're built for defense or doing a lot of pvp, cap is much more important than regen.

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People are saying they use engineering to buff lower cap shields; I do it the other way. I use covariants and use my engineering/science skills to recharge. Emergency power to shields, science team, rotate shield freq, shield battery... then to top it off if I'll switch to max shield power if I'm on cool down for all those to boost recharge between encounters. With a cruisers I have enough hull to not need the bleed through... with that many shield regen options why would I ever lower my capacity?

That's how I played and it worked great both PvE and PvP. If you don't have access to all of the ability shield heals then I can see the attraction of regen shields.

The other great thing about this style is that you really don't need to put much power into shields.

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bear in mind that those powers that increase shield power rating (emergency power to shields) are more effective on regen then covariant, but covariant gains more from the set heal (stuff like being hit by transfer shields).

+25 shield power will only be a small regen boost if the regen initial amount is low.

Also the high regen shields gain more from shield resistance, as the less damage they take the more likely their going to regen more then their taking. Whereas covariants will just take less damage but once their down their down.

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There has been a lot of information given about shields, but I still haven't figured out which ones to go with. They all have their good points. I just can't decide.

Resilient Shields have the 5% absorb of course, which is nice but doesn't seem to do much unless I'm missing something. Regen shields may have nice regen, but heavy strikes from battleships can break them instantly. The strong shields have a lot more durability, but almost no regen rate, which also hurts during battleship battles with the lack of regen power.

Anyway, I plan on sticking with cruiser all the way, so really, which shields are best for my type of ship?

Good question Lindsey.

Considering the lack of Death Penalty I would just recommend you go with any of the above as death means nothing currently... In fact maybe dont equip one and just go ram into the enemy every 15 to 30 seconds youw ill eath through their shields in no time with no lasting damage to your ship or crew!

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Good question Lindsey.

Considering the lack of Death Penalty I would just recommend you go with any of the above as death means nothing currently... In fact maybe dont equip one and just go ram into the enemy every 15 to 30 seconds youw ill eath through their shields in no time with no lasting damage to your ship or crew!

Listen, you may need a death penalty and hardcore levels of difficulty to find motivation not to die, but I don't. You think you're smart, but you're not. You're just a troll, and everyone on these forums knows it.

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For my science ship, I swear by resilient.