The various federal laundry irons (FGS, FDS, FAS) are notorious for having relatively weak shields but very strong hulls. Shield boosters help, engineering helps more. There are two main schools of though on shield and shield booster engineering for PVE:
- MJ tanking with a reinforced shield generator and heavy duty shield boosters
- resistance tanking with a thermal resistance shield generator, one shield booster kinetic resistance, one shield booster thermal resistant, and filling up with resistance augmented shield boosters
MJ tanking results in high MJ numbers but each hit takes a lot of energy out of the shield. The infamous shield booster nerf wanted to reduce the effectiveness of heavy duty shield boosters, and the exquisite focus crystals needed for grade 5 heavy duty shield boosters are
bugged again.
Resistance tanking is all about shield effectiveness. Put a thermal resistance mod on the generator, kinetic resistance on the first booster, thermal resistance on the second booster, and resistance augmented on all other boosters. Your raw shield strength is lower than with a MJ tank, but due to the increased resistance, your
effective shield strength is comparable. And you do not need the exquisite focus crystals.
Since I was away in the void for most of 2.1 and 2.2, I only started engineering when the devs had implemented the shield booster nerf in beta (it did not make it into live) and EFC were bugged, so I went for a resistance tank:
Smuggler's Blues was the result, and it serves me well in a low CZ as long as I keep four pips to shields and make sure I do not draw aggro from everybody. Yes, my absolute shield strength is only about 700 MJ, but due to the resistances, my effective strength is about 2500 MJ. My only weak spot are PAs because they deal absolute damage, but that's what lateral thrusters are for.
PS:
DarkMere wrote:as I only pick on Vultures or less (I'm a coward).
Your job is not to loose your ship for your faction, but to make sure the other guy looses his ship for his faction