How Shields and Energy Allocation Work in 4.0.2
Shields have changed. I may very well have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone discussing this. If this is not new information to you, carry on. I'm going to detail my findings below as best able. Special thanks to my wife for helping me do some science.
Firstly, this information is not visible in game. You can only see it at websites such as https://www.erkul.games/live/calculator and https://www.spviewer.eu/
Huge thanks to both of these sites for doing what they do. They're amazing.
When you look at a ship, you will see a change in the energy readout section.
The yellow pips in the shield section.
You will also notice the shield details have changed.
What does this mean?
The yellow pips are now the minimum energy required to allow your shields to reach their maximum hp.
The green pips above that do not affect the health of the shields, they only effect how quickly they regenerate and how soon after taking a hit that they begin to regenerate. The hp/s and the damage regen delay.
If your ship has multiple shield generators, such as the Hornet. Reducing the yellow pips will turn individual generators off evenly.
One yellow pip. One active shield generator.
Some ships have many pips and many generators.
In this example, the Retaliator has one shield generator assigned to each yellow pip.
Taking the shield energy down to 4 pips leaves 4 shield generators active.
The stock Nomad requires 5 energy pips to maintain full shields. Reducing it to 4 pips turns off one shield generator. Reducing it to 2 pips turns off the second shield generator.
Energy management has mattered for a long time, but this allows for greater flexibility with building a ship loadout.
Note that the damage reduction the shield provides is no longer reduced based on energy. Retaliator at high energy and low energy as an example.
The only things that changed in this example is the total shield HP and the HP/S. Thats it.
Also note that with the previous shielding/energy method, you had to have maximum energy to shields in order for them to absord the full amount of energy damage.
This is no longer the case.
Your shields will now always absorb the full amount that they are able to, with the applied resistances.
Also note that in most cases shields have to be drained completely before you start dealing energy damage to a ships hull.
For example, the Crusader Ares Ions cannon does a lot of damage:
5150 damage per shot.
If a ship has 15000 shield health and 20% energy resistance (purely for purposes of example), then the Ion will deal 4120 damage per shot. Meaning it will take 4 shots at 16480 total damage to bring the shields down.
Be aware that the damage over the shield capacity is 'wasted'. In the above example, the additional 1480 damage from the final shot has no effect on the ships health pool. (Splash damage and physical damage may get through, this is speaking purely of the energy damage.)
This is kind of a huge change that seems to have gone largely unnoticed, that I am aware of.
And it really needs some kind of visibility in game, but who knows when we'll get that.
For now, I hope the above is informative and helps you build your ships. It has changed my view on a few ships that I had considered problematic. The Retaliator being one of the prime examples. Additional shield energy is certainly valuable, but no longer a hard requirement.
EDIT - Testing the Excess Damage on Small Ships
The results are interesting and do not perfectly align with what I have above for the 'wasted' damage. But its hard to know exactly what is happening.
My wife took out her Ion and I brought a few assorted small ships out to Deakins Research Outpost and did our test fires outside the armistice. This allowed me to take the ships to the repair pads to see if there were any costs to repair. This was beneficiary because sometimes the damage was minor and not visible on the ship hologram.
Each of the below tests was a single shot from the Ion's cannon. I brought out an Aurora MR, a Sabre Firebird, and Mirai Fury.
Aurora MR -
test one 500 meters, front of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test two 500 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test three 500 meters, top of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test four 500 meters, top of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test five 1000 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test six 1000 meters, top of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test seven, 50 meters, front of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test eight, 50 meters, top of ship, took out shields, minor damage
Firebird -
test one 1000 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test two 1000 meters, top of ship, took out shields, moderate damage
test three 500 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test four 500 meters, top of the ship, took out shields, moderate damage
test five 50 meters, front of ship, took out shields, moderate damage
test six 50 meters, top of ship, took out shields, moderate damage
Fury -
test one 1000 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test two 1000 meters, top of ship, took out shields, no damage
test three 500 meters, front of ship, took out shields, no damage
test four 500 meters, top of ship, took out shields, minor damage
test five 50 meters, front of ship, destroyed ship
test six 50 meters, top of ship, destroyed ship
The results are not exactly conclusive. My best guess right now is that the damage that goes through is based mostly on the shape of the ship, which impacts the shape of the shields. Which makes sense why larger ships don't necessarily register any damage, because their shield bubbles are (probably) a little further out due to scale. Distance seems to have some impact, but only registered on the smallest ship tested. Which was of course complete destruction.
It was a fun test, though. Science!