"Regenerating Shields" by William Butler 1997 v2.6/7

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Regenerating Shields

by: William Butler

>

>Jason, I've been keeping an eye on your posts and you seem to prefer RS. How

>about a short (if you can do such a thing ; ) discussion on how to survive the

>late game with RS, especially with how to deal with Shield Sappers.

>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well I'm no Jason, but I'll give it a go.

If you take RS you get 40% more shields plus 10% regen per round of battle (this is good)

You also get Armor at 1/2 strength which is bad

On the surface it appears to be a bad trade off. You get 1/2 the armor and only 40% more shields.Of course it's actually more than 40% when you consider the regen, but you still get less back.

So the question is when is RS a good thing.

Answer: When you weren't going to use alot of armor

Early game when missles aren't that powerfull armor isn't that important, but once Doomsdays and such roll around you really want some armor on those ships to reduce the kill rate. This can be a bad time in the life of someone with RS since you need to use Twice as much armor to get the same effect.

Near endgame you geat a bit of a reprieve in the form of the Nubian. The Nubian has a base Armor of 5000 and thus you can leave off the armor if you wish and not have a totally weak design. Of course the question is why would you want to do this, where is the payoff. The payoff comes from only having to put 2 stacks of shields on your Nubians instead of 3 and you get an equivilent amount of shielding. Granted the 2 stacks (RS) provide 4200 and the 3 stacks (nonRS) provide 4500, but the RS shields regen to make up the difference. Now you have a free slot on the Nubian to add some goodies like...cloaking, or...Overthrusters, or ....More Nexi for higher initiative. These extra little gadgets can swing the battle in your favor if used correctly.

Now for the downside to lategame RS. Your starbases are more vulnerable. The total armor goes from 49,000 to 25,000 (if I am figuring correctly), and you shields go from 16,000 to 22,400 (or there abouts). This means it takes less DP to kill your starbase which is a bad thing. On the bright side though is the fact that your Starbase was probably dead anyway. Most people won't attack a Starbase without overwhelming odds in their favor and so you would have been toast anyway. So if the extra Armor won't really help your Starbases you might as well get the extra power of RS on your ships. Now if you like to add stacks of armor to your Nubians then RS is not for you, but if you like to let the 5000 base armor of the ship do the job, the RS pays of with the extra slot on the ship.

Anyway, when you get down to it, it comes down to a basic design philosophy that varies from player to player. If RS fits your style of play then go for it, and minimize the use of armor in your designs. If RS doesn't fit your style then go design heavily armored ships with less goodies and doodads on them.


Hope this helps

Bill Butler