Hardened Shields

[WhyteDragon]

Yes, Ivan, I have. We had level 4 Hardened Shields all ready to go.

And no laser upgrades. They had all five.

We lost horridly.

Also, you're blowing it horridly out of proportions. Shield Boost has a cooldown such that it will typically only be used once per fight, meaning you can only consider that shield boost to be effective once. And even more than that, Hardened Shields is a 20 Kermiculite Upgrade. You are dropping an entire 80 Kermiculite for this -- you could get a Destroyer with that.

Yes, if you assume purely shields it will indeed seem greater. Even if you assume their weapon damage is double yours, it would still come out roughly even.

Now try and look at it a bit differently, in a real situation.

Both sides have invested 5000 shields. Side 1 has maxed lasers, Side 2 has maxed shields. Both sides will be using penta, so they will deal 72*1.5 DPS and 144*1.5 DPS respectively.

Side 1 has 50 shield regeneration, but also reduces damage by 32%. They will take 96 damage per second.
Side 2 has 50 shield regeneration, they will take 58 damage a second.

50 seconds of firing pass, and the shields become 200 for side 2. They boost back to 3200 shields, and we assume that the additional 500 shield regeneration gets them to 3700. Side 1 has 2100 shields.

34 seconds of firing pass. Side 2 should have 0 shields now, while Side 1 should have a bit more than 100. And, moreover, Side 1 will deal more hull damage.

Side 2, despite having hardened shields, will clearly lose the fight since shields will drop.. This is ignoring broadsides, but if a team feels like they're missing a core Kerm upgrade I don't think you should expect them to sit around and take that kind of abuse.

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The short version? Opportunity cost. Don't underestimate it. If you want to assume raw damage values, these are likely the two aspects you'll be looking at -- Upgrade Laser and Hardened Shields. But frankly, that 80 kerm could have easily been put into a destroyer, stabilizers + fusion core... Cruiser Command isn't all about parking your BC next to theirs and dishing out damage while taking it. There's a lot more depth into it than that.