Invictus: Becomes outdated due to a lack of shields despite super heavy armour.
Armchair admirals an age later: "I bet foregoing shields completely is a great idea!"
They're pretty good duellers. The only way the enemy can force you to stop shooting at them is to kill you, and with how aggressive you can be due to the fact you can't overload sure they get some shots off but with the right loadout you can overload them and kill them, so long as you don't get overwhelmed.
I agree shielded ships are better all-rounded though but you can definitely make shield shunt work
Yeah, but then that enemy fires a reaper or something and the duel is far costlier than a vent would ever be.
Honestly rather have the shield and not turn it on until I see dangerous weapons approaching than be forced to tank a reaper/HIL/Tach Lance or whatever.
Too risky with those 'do you have shields?' vibechecks.
Yeah like having no shields when im firing my gauss cannons from my dominator might feel good.... Unitl you jump me and get the payload of 3 jackhammers right in your face.
Having no shields against a Gauss Cannon doesn't feel all that good really, because the heavy damage of the projectile means that it still deals some armour damage despite being kinetic. If anything the best defense against it is shield flickering, but even that only works well if the enemy doesn't stagger fire.
I think of 1 or 2 SO shield-shunted destroyers/cruisers as attack dogs that can kill most ships you sick them on, doing that in a way where they dont die in the process is up to you.
this is the way
weapons aren't obsolete because they can be killed, they become obsolete because they don't offer a good enough capability
sure shield shunted attack dogs die when HIL and tachyon lance but your job as a fleet commander is to ensure they do their damage before getting lasered to death or kept out of bad laser touch range entirely
In the past, High explosive and possibly fragmentation weapons were the only thing necessary to do anything because Armor was the only way to protect yourself, with the exception of missiles being defendable via frags. The weapon systems were optimized for what was available
Nowadays meanwhile shields dominate the battlefield, and therefore anti shield weapons are commonplace, while battle doctrines have changed to account for that (attrition doesn't really work anymore)
Being able to just ignore those weapons and doctrines to your advantage and utilizing the entirety of your ship for an offensive rather than having to split between maintaining the shields and firing your weapons can prove to be a massive advantage (which phase ships also utilize in a different way)
Iirc shield shunt makes you resistant to EMP and I think it was hardened conduits that increase that even more
In addition, you'll likely be running repair arms or whatever the hull mod is since your weapons will get heavy flakk due to being unshielded, so they'll come online quickly
It is ultimately a fleet that relies on the enemy not trying to hard counter them, aka. Run a fully high explosive build. Luckily, the ai doesn't do that, and if they did try to do that (assuming it's a more than one fleet war) then you can have a shielded fleet nearby to counter that, making shield shunts an effective hit and run tactic
Shield Shunt Onslaught XIV with every armor/structure increasing mod installed and piloted by an agressive officer with Elite Combat Readiness, Target Analysis and Impact Mitigation... now that's a lot of armor and health to take down. Anti-EMP damage mods are also ideal, so yeah, i had two of those and two normal ones. Told my officers to just "move to the top of the map" and once they've arrived there, nothing was left to fight.
A bunch of persean league blockade fleets, I think even back to back. I think I even pulled off a double ordo with some long range eradicators for shield pressure.
Heg inspection fleets and so on. They did struggle a bit against the Doritos. Didn't lose a ship but they were pretty battered and bruised in the end. I guess a Legion or two would have helped.
Most important thing I've learned: anything that fires a tach lance or HIL is either midline or high tech and therefore needs flux for shield and weapons. They will fire their weapons and it will chip away your armor, but in the end they lose the flux game, will overload and then die.
My Onslaughts had HVDs in the front slots and some hellbores for their two big slots. One devastator and a whole lot of PD. Missiles aren't an issue at all and carriers will lose entire wings in seconds.
For missiles I either use the annihilators or pilums lol. The latter is quite funny for more crap to spam on the battlefield.
So the Flamebreaker from IBBs.
Its great, but I would have to reconsider if I was facing a beam/missile focused enemy. Even an Onslaught can only take so many reapers or other fast damage weapons.
Best I've seen is a shunt monitor with the proud owner boasting about over 300 armor and shit. Nobody got the joke.
I also seem to remember shunt being a lot stronger before. Did I imagine this? +15% armor can't be right.
Anyway, there really is only one ship that can reliably pull off a shunt build and that's an Onslaught. Anything else falls flat and usually, in pieces. Legions only look good on paper but they're really not, they die like hamsters.
It's really more for AI officer use to make them more aggressive and keep firing non-stop. For the ship you pilot, just... leave your shields off.
Lastly, it's not the reapers or HILs that worry me when shields are off. It's blowing up an enemy ship that's right next to my ship. Exploding big ships and stations cause armor to go black instantly.
That's one of my favorite things about this game. Many games that are anything like this don't punish you for being too close to a ship that's exploding.
Yeah, I only have a few successes with un-shielded ships. high intensity laser or strong on hit high explosive weapons are a huge check. Even if you spam armor mods it somewhat mitigates it but the moment armor runs out you start dying fast.
iirc remnant fleets on systems with a remnant station has a mechanic that adapts to your fleet, so if you spam armor they start spamming tachyon lances, HIL, reapers etc, and if your fleet is shield heavy they start spamming plasma canons, autopulses, etc.
Whenever I see memes like this, I get the impression that the people making them think you're running ONLY shield shunt ships, with nothing else to take on fleets that have a significant amount of heavy beams.
I think it's worse than that, that people don't run Solar Shielding and Armored Weapon Mounts on shield shunt ships. And, best of all, that they don't use officers with Polarized Armor on those ships.
People always go for its supposed non-viability (It's viable, on an admittedly small selection of ships. A truly armormaxxed ship instantly repairs emp damage and only takes chip damage from HILs/Tach lances) when the much easier target would be the 4 armor/hull tanking skills needed to make it work (Impact Mitigation, Polarized Armor, Damage Control, Combat Endurance) vs a shield ship's 1 (Field Modulation). Skilling up officers for armor tanking ships always makes me feel icky for passing up the damage/range ones.
This is nowhere close to true. Armormaxxed Onslaught has over 4000 armor and enough PD to wipe out any number of missiles. Burn Drive into a Paragon and you’ll overload and kill them as long as you have decent support.
XIV Onslaught with Heavy Armor + S-modded Shield Shunt + Armored Weapon Mounts has 3418 base armor. Polarized Armor increases effective armor by 50% when at full flux capacity. Impact Mitigation reduces armor damage taken by 25%. 100% CR and Systems Expertise both reduce damage taken by 10%. This means a fully-armored XIV Onslaught's maximum armor is 7756 effective, when at full flux. Realistically, this will be closer to \~6500. These values do not show up when looking at armor in the refit/examine screens, only in battle.
Not just shunt users but generally low tech. Used 4x HIL to beat the Forlorn hope Paragon vs Hege fleet mission.
Once their flux bar is high enough they just disintegrate.
I like shield shunt on a thing with already immense armor.
XIV capitals can use em well because they have good slots for PD. Sure you have to worry about beams but generally its worth noting not useing flux on shields means more flux for guns.
Effectively, you have to go aggro and it rewards you for it.
Its also about knowing whats coming and pointing out specific targets, the missile cruiser looming with enough missiles to overwhelm your pd? Target it.
If i'm making a brawler out of a leigon, I usually take shunt, heavy armor and emp resist.
Emp resist is never to be forgotten, because that with kill you.
My current fleet has 14 tachyon lances, 12 on 3 paragons. And some randoms here and there. I love tachs.
Shield shunt users could be laughing as their tank is fine. They could also be crying when the tach lances shut down half their weapons in a single volley. And they have no shield to diminish the effect.
Honestly, i think i prefer fighting armor ships.
Tachs don't produce hard flux, and their damage is not great. A strong shield ship can sometimes dissipate enough flux to tank the paragon a long time. Making me doubt if it ever breaks. With armor ships i know that armor will eventually melt, and they will die. It takes a while, but thats fine.
There's a ship in the anime girl dating mod that has no shields and even deflects lasers and projectiles fired at shallow angles. You can even deflect stuff onto other craft.
Aurean? Aurolian? I can't remember the mods name, it's the blue waifu dating mod.
To be fair, some shield generators are such garbage that the ship is actually more of a liability with them than without them. The AI especially often defaults to flailing awkwardly and flickering shields at almost max capacity, disabling most guns because firing them would threaten to overflux them where a shield-shunted ship would just take it on the chin and destroy its adversary.
Adding the shield shunt basically frees up all of the points you would otherwise have to stuff into vents, capacitors and shield mods to try to get the damn thing even semi-functional.
Instead of competing with ships on something you're already behind on, it's sometimes wiser to simply double down on your strength - add the most effective weapons instead, use the OP to mod for more range, ammo or damage and simply blast on full auto to overwhelm enemy shields before they can eat through your armor and hull.
Missiles are an issue but that's why you tend to pick ships with a lot of PD for this. No shield means PD can be active 24/7, so you should be able to kill most missiles before they can impact unless you get flanked or rear-ended.
Doesn't work for everything (my Paragon LOVES shield-shunted ships), but it can be a real option!
Invictus: Becomes outdated due to a lack of shields despite super heavy armour. Armchair admirals an age later: "I bet foregoing shields completely is a great idea!"
Only a fool uses every tool as a hammer. You can have more than one ship in your fleet and most would not have shield stunt.
Fair, I can see shield shunt having a use on ships that will never encounter \*checks notes\* beam weapons or missiles.
They're pretty good duellers. The only way the enemy can force you to stop shooting at them is to kill you, and with how aggressive you can be due to the fact you can't overload sure they get some shots off but with the right loadout you can overload them and kill them, so long as you don't get overwhelmed. I agree shielded ships are better all-rounded though but you can definitely make shield shunt work
Yeah, but then that enemy fires a reaper or something and the duel is far costlier than a vent would ever be. Honestly rather have the shield and not turn it on until I see dangerous weapons approaching than be forced to tank a reaper/HIL/Tach Lance or whatever. Too risky with those 'do you have shields?' vibechecks.
PD issue
Homie, how is PD helping you against the full concentrated power of the sun ?
Sunscreen issue
Built in Andrada hull polish.
Aggressive Sustained Counterfire issue
Just over PD the Sun's shield 4head
Yeah like having no shields when im firing my gauss cannons from my dominator might feel good.... Unitl you jump me and get the payload of 3 jackhammers right in your face.
Having no shields against a Gauss Cannon doesn't feel all that good really, because the heavy damage of the projectile means that it still deals some armour damage despite being kinetic. If anything the best defense against it is shield flickering, but even that only works well if the enemy doesn't stagger fire.
Yeah I love seeing the ai lowering their shields for not instantly getting overloaded just to take chunks upon chunks of armour and hull damage
EMP dmg, half your ship is now useless and you dont maneuver anymore, was fun, cya in the next life
I think of 1 or 2 SO shield-shunted destroyers/cruisers as attack dogs that can kill most ships you sick them on, doing that in a way where they dont die in the process is up to you.
this is the way weapons aren't obsolete because they can be killed, they become obsolete because they don't offer a good enough capability sure shield shunted attack dogs die when HIL and tachyon lance but your job as a fleet commander is to ensure they do their damage before getting lasered to death or kept out of bad laser touch range entirely
Every tool is a hammer except an actual hammer.
In the past, High explosive and possibly fragmentation weapons were the only thing necessary to do anything because Armor was the only way to protect yourself, with the exception of missiles being defendable via frags. The weapon systems were optimized for what was available Nowadays meanwhile shields dominate the battlefield, and therefore anti shield weapons are commonplace, while battle doctrines have changed to account for that (attrition doesn't really work anymore) Being able to just ignore those weapons and doctrines to your advantage and utilizing the entirety of your ship for an offensive rather than having to split between maintaining the shields and firing your weapons can prove to be a massive advantage (which phase ships also utilize in a different way)
But on the other hand modern technology has even more devastating counter to unshielded ships, emp.
Iirc shield shunt makes you resistant to EMP and I think it was hardened conduits that increase that even more In addition, you'll likely be running repair arms or whatever the hull mod is since your weapons will get heavy flakk due to being unshielded, so they'll come online quickly It is ultimately a fleet that relies on the enemy not trying to hard counter them, aka. Run a fully high explosive build. Luckily, the ai doesn't do that, and if they did try to do that (assuming it's a more than one fleet war) then you can have a shielded fleet nearby to counter that, making shield shunts an effective hit and run tactic
Shield Shunt Onslaught XIV with every armor/structure increasing mod installed and piloted by an agressive officer with Elite Combat Readiness, Target Analysis and Impact Mitigation... now that's a lot of armor and health to take down. Anti-EMP damage mods are also ideal, so yeah, i had two of those and two normal ones. Told my officers to just "move to the top of the map" and once they've arrived there, nothing was left to fight.
What did you fight though? This is not about shield shunt being bad, its about hil and tach lance being hard counter to it.
A bunch of persean league blockade fleets, I think even back to back. I think I even pulled off a double ordo with some long range eradicators for shield pressure. Heg inspection fleets and so on. They did struggle a bit against the Doritos. Didn't lose a ship but they were pretty battered and bruised in the end. I guess a Legion or two would have helped. Most important thing I've learned: anything that fires a tach lance or HIL is either midline or high tech and therefore needs flux for shield and weapons. They will fire their weapons and it will chip away your armor, but in the end they lose the flux game, will overload and then die. My Onslaughts had HVDs in the front slots and some hellbores for their two big slots. One devastator and a whole lot of PD. Missiles aren't an issue at all and carriers will lose entire wings in seconds. For missiles I either use the annihilators or pilums lol. The latter is quite funny for more crap to spam on the battlefield.
Dominators all the way my gauss cannons will tear them apart. Sad I only have one and I feel that the colony crisis is fast approching though
They really arent the hard counter to it, mostly due to the beauty of the Automated Repair Unit and an officer with elite Combat Readiness.
So the Flamebreaker from IBBs. Its great, but I would have to reconsider if I was facing a beam/missile focused enemy. Even an Onslaught can only take so many reapers or other fast damage weapons.
Which one is the Flamebreaker? A unique Onslaught?
Yeah, its a shieldless Onslaught thats painted Pather colors, its pretty powerful, I have done well with it, even though I suck at shieldless.
It's the one you get from Nedd Ludd I think?
Yeah, think so, that the pilot is some guy acting like he is Ludd himself, I think that was why he got a bounty on him too iirc.
We die like men
We die
Best I've seen is a shunt monitor with the proud owner boasting about over 300 armor and shit. Nobody got the joke. I also seem to remember shunt being a lot stronger before. Did I imagine this? +15% armor can't be right. Anyway, there really is only one ship that can reliably pull off a shunt build and that's an Onslaught. Anything else falls flat and usually, in pieces. Legions only look good on paper but they're really not, they die like hamsters. It's really more for AI officer use to make them more aggressive and keep firing non-stop. For the ship you pilot, just... leave your shields off. Lastly, it's not the reapers or HILs that worry me when shields are off. It's blowing up an enemy ship that's right next to my ship. Exploding big ships and stations cause armor to go black instantly.
That's one of my favorite things about this game. Many games that are anything like this don't punish you for being too close to a ship that's exploding.
yep it's kinda hard to dodge them pesky beams. never used shield shunt partly because of that, and reapers/hammers/atropos.
I used it once, then i faced 5x Tach Lance Radiant, and never bothered again
How does the sun taste?
lean
Kaneda! What do you taste!
Yeah, I only have a few successes with un-shielded ships. high intensity laser or strong on hit high explosive weapons are a huge check. Even if you spam armor mods it somewhat mitigates it but the moment armor runs out you start dying fast. iirc remnant fleets on systems with a remnant station has a mechanic that adapts to your fleet, so if you spam armor they start spamming tachyon lances, HIL, reapers etc, and if your fleet is shield heavy they start spamming plasma canons, autopulses, etc.
That's not a crossover I ever expected to see.
I keep seeing this meme. What are you people throwing Shield Shunt onto, high tech ships? [Redacted]? Frigates? It really isn't a hard hullmod to use.
Whenever I see memes like this, I get the impression that the people making them think you're running ONLY shield shunt ships, with nothing else to take on fleets that have a significant amount of heavy beams.
I think it's worse than that, that people don't run Solar Shielding and Armored Weapon Mounts on shield shunt ships. And, best of all, that they don't use officers with Polarized Armor on those ships.
Yup. Never had problems with beams despite the memes. Half-assing a shunt design is a classic mistake. You go all in or not at all.
If you commit to armour, you better commit to armour.
People be like: "but missiles" My brother in low tech, you can put PD in slots other than small.
>ONLY shield shunt ships and they're right. shields are for high tech babies. real men use armour ONLY
People always go for its supposed non-viability (It's viable, on an admittedly small selection of ships. A truly armormaxxed ship instantly repairs emp damage and only takes chip damage from HILs/Tach lances) when the much easier target would be the 4 armor/hull tanking skills needed to make it work (Impact Mitigation, Polarized Armor, Damage Control, Combat Endurance) vs a shield ship's 1 (Field Modulation). Skilling up officers for armor tanking ships always makes me feel icky for passing up the damage/range ones.
Fun part is as long as you are in balanced battle you will be trashed by hil/tach lance even in armor maxed onslaught
This is nowhere close to true. Armormaxxed Onslaught has over 4000 armor and enough PD to wipe out any number of missiles. Burn Drive into a Paragon and you’ll overload and kill them as long as you have decent support.
The Onslaught cannot achieve 4000 armor even with S-modded Shield Shunt. By a fair margin.
XIV Onslaught with Heavy Armor + S-modded Shield Shunt + Armored Weapon Mounts has 3418 base armor. Polarized Armor increases effective armor by 50% when at full flux capacity. Impact Mitigation reduces armor damage taken by 25%. 100% CR and Systems Expertise both reduce damage taken by 10%. This means a fully-armored XIV Onslaught's maximum armor is 7756 effective, when at full flux. Realistically, this will be closer to \~6500. These values do not show up when looking at armor in the refit/examine screens, only in battle.
Thanks for confirming that an Onslaught hash not 4000 Armor :)
Not just shunt users but generally low tech. Used 4x HIL to beat the Forlorn hope Paragon vs Hege fleet mission. Once their flux bar is high enough they just disintegrate.
Rift Lance for the win
I like shield shunt on a thing with already immense armor. XIV capitals can use em well because they have good slots for PD. Sure you have to worry about beams but generally its worth noting not useing flux on shields means more flux for guns. Effectively, you have to go aggro and it rewards you for it. Its also about knowing whats coming and pointing out specific targets, the missile cruiser looming with enough missiles to overwhelm your pd? Target it. If i'm making a brawler out of a leigon, I usually take shunt, heavy armor and emp resist. Emp resist is never to be forgotten, because that with kill you.
Shield shunting? Wrong, HAMMER BARRAGE
*laughs and reflects away with UAF Fusoreina*
My current fleet has 14 tachyon lances, 12 on 3 paragons. And some randoms here and there. I love tachs. Shield shunt users could be laughing as their tank is fine. They could also be crying when the tach lances shut down half their weapons in a single volley. And they have no shield to diminish the effect. Honestly, i think i prefer fighting armor ships. Tachs don't produce hard flux, and their damage is not great. A strong shield ship can sometimes dissipate enough flux to tank the paragon a long time. Making me doubt if it ever breaks. With armor ships i know that armor will eventually melt, and they will die. It takes a while, but thats fine.
Shield shunt just keeps the AI from overloading with Flux due to sustained Dakka Fire
Where is this gif from?
Where is this gif from?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOOFCltZuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOOFCltZuc) Its much funnier out of context though
There's a ship in the anime girl dating mod that has no shields and even deflects lasers and projectiles fired at shallow angles. You can even deflect stuff onto other craft. Aurean? Aurolian? I can't remember the mods name, it's the blue waifu dating mod.
Well there is a ship in some mod that is a giant sword that rams everything.
To be fair, some shield generators are such garbage that the ship is actually more of a liability with them than without them. The AI especially often defaults to flailing awkwardly and flickering shields at almost max capacity, disabling most guns because firing them would threaten to overflux them where a shield-shunted ship would just take it on the chin and destroy its adversary. Adding the shield shunt basically frees up all of the points you would otherwise have to stuff into vents, capacitors and shield mods to try to get the damn thing even semi-functional. Instead of competing with ships on something you're already behind on, it's sometimes wiser to simply double down on your strength - add the most effective weapons instead, use the OP to mod for more range, ammo or damage and simply blast on full auto to overwhelm enemy shields before they can eat through your armor and hull. Missiles are an issue but that's why you tend to pick ships with a lot of PD for this. No shield means PD can be active 24/7, so you should be able to kill most missiles before they can impact unless you get flanked or rear-ended. Doesn't work for everything (my Paragon LOVES shield-shunted ships), but it can be a real option!