Shield / Hull Resistance

[Relix Typhon]

I'm wondering if someone would be able to explain what part resistances play in preventing damage?

I get there are different types of weapons that deal different types of damage but am fuzzy on resistances.

Am I correct in thinking that if my un-modded shield generator has a Thermal Resistance of -20% and I am shot with a thermal weapon with a damage stat of (say) 100, I actually receive 120 damage to the shield?
Whereas it has a 50% resistance to explosive damage so would only receive damage of 50 to it if the weapon dealt 100 base damage?

[BaseKillerWolf]

From my understanding, your example of resistances is correct. Most of the shielding advice that I have seen involves maximizing resistances for a shield generator and a booster, then throwing on a second booster to up the overall shield health. I tested this on my Conda's bi-weaves and the darn thing feels like a truck in the shield department.

[TorTorden]

Yup, and so most pve'rs go for thermal resist on the shields, can get an almost 50% boost to thermal resist so those -20% becomes +30.

Suddenly you take half damage from lasers...

[Lanceor]

Yep, that's basically how it works. If you increase your damage resistance from 0% to 50%, you take half the damage which effectively doubles your shield strength.

A consequence of the damage reduction is that your effective shield recharge rate is increased as well:

• A 200 Mj shield with 0% resistances would take around 100 seconds to fully recharge.
• A 100 Mj shield with 50% resistances would be able to absorb the same amount of damage, but would only take 50 seconds to fully recharge.

Resistances from multiple sources are calculated as multiple damage multipliers - a 20% booster and a 30% booster would give you a damage multiplier of 0.8 * 0.7 = 0.56.

Beyond 50% resistance, there are diminishing returns - achieving 70% resistance is very hard, and 75% is mathematically impossible even if you had a million shield booster slots. In many cases, 50-60% is a good sweet spot.

Beware though that 40% of a Plasma Accelerator's damage ignores resistances. If you're relying purely on resistances for protection, you may find yourself very vulnerable towards PA armed enemies.

That's basically shields in a nutshell. My general rule of thumb is to get resistances (especially thermal) above 50%, and then stack shield strength after that.

[Relix Typhon]

Thanks guys, glad I was on the right track!

Been unlocking engineers recently and while I'm there, I do some low level rolls as I usually have the mats to hand. Managed to get my 5A shield to +4.4% thermal while only sacrificing kinetic resistance by 2.2% and regen rate by 5%. That's a G2 roll, pretty good I thought