[Balance debate] Cruiser shields.

I am late to the party so I do not have much to add that hasn’t already been said, however I will say that I find shield disruption to be an underutilized mechanic when it comes to balancing shields.

I think you can safely buff shields across the board if the instances where disruption can occur increases. If every weapon strike contributed some disruption to shields, then you could have shields with 1000 health while keeping the game flowing. The pace would be short stretches where the shields are up, punctuated with opportunities for direct damage. Once the disruption is shaken off the shields come back online and ships have a chance to lick wounds.

Under this system, “big” damage weapons are used to keep the shields down permanently, disruptive weapons are important to get shields down faster and more regularly, repair modules are more valuable and have a better chance to expend their full resources every time shields come back up, and shields stay relevant for a longer stretch than just at the beginning, disruption resistance modules are more valuable. It gives another variable to tweak the balance between weapon modules and lets the shield modules feel more powerful without making them dominate over all other mechanics in the game.

I agree that the variety of shields is currently lacking for cruisers and dreadnoughts. If small and medium shields were removed and fast recharge, reflective, and multiphasic equivalents were added we’d probably see a more interesting variety of starship designs. There’s also the lack of weapon variety. As many people have mentioned, the fact that pulse cannons can wear down any shield, most armor, and deal tons of hull damage all at decent range is a serious problem that affects every aspect of ship design. For shields, it seems to mean that shield strength is king; resistance barely matters.

Disruption has produced okay results for me. It looks like it bypasses those destroyer recharge beams, and I haven’t yet encountered a cruiser that lasts long enough to bring its shields back up. The main problem being that the only good disruption tools are subject to point defenses and missile scrambling.