Shields Vs Armour

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

In the case of soldiers and tactical combat, definitely shields, because you don't want your soldiers to get hurt (or maybe you do, but most of us surely don't) and shields are a solid way of protecting your troops. Also, there is the dreaded entropy gun, which is quite effective against armour yet pitiful against shields.

 

But vehicles... That's another story entirely. The idea occured to me when I realised that both offensive X-Com craft have a fair amount of armour. You see, vehicle armour can't be damaged (soldier armour can be damaged and destroyed) and there isn't a vehicle entropy gun (or anything that resembles it). So why not just leave the entire vehicle disruptor shields alone?

 

Before getting my Retallitator/Annihilator fleet (3 Ann. and 6 Ret., I think anything more than that is overkill), I built a new base called Repair Bay and constructed seven (yes, the 7 we know of, 4+3 and all) vehicle repair bays and transported all constructed craft there.

 

My Ret. are equipped with double weapons control systems and double missle jammers, and my Ann. have triple of each (so they have no shields whatsoever). The results are fairly good: I just cleared up the alien dimension of all UFOs, and they didn't put up any real fight. Not one vehicle lost, and all the damage was repaired in less than a day. Most of the damage was from friendly fire anyway

 

So why bother with building small/large disruptor shields (both of them take a lot of time and resources to manufacture) when you can just get a base specifically designed for repairing vehicles (repair bays are completed in five days) and forget about your vehicles entirely? I know you will say "but once you get shields, you don't have to worry about anything" but we all know that's not entirely true. You can still have your shields destroyed and have to build more of them to replace the losses and stuff.

 

BTW: I coupled this strat with "beam weapons only -no missles" to produce a fleet that requires no support from my engineers (no ammo, no replacing shields, no nothing).

 

Edit: Added stuff that's in red (typos).

Edited March 24, 2004 by Jonaleth Irenicus

[Cpl. Facehugger]

I perfer to have shields. There is something appealing to me about having an extra layre of protection from all those nasty heavy disruptors and such. Besides, I don't like having an entire repair base. A manufacturing base sure, but not a base with entirely hangars (it would be a pain in the butt to defend.)

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

It is my experience that aliens do not prefer to attack my repair base. They prefer trying my manufacture base (because there are so many engineers there?).

 

Still, you could build the base so you won't have problems defending it.

[[NKF]]

The only problem with a base with a lot of staff is that not all your defense guns will be active.

 

Not that I'm complaining. Even three plasma defense modules can wipe out most of the raiders as long as they don't have dimension missile launchers.

 

A number of my previous base raids were conducted on a base with lots of staff and a skeleton crew of 3 android sentinals. Things would've gone pear shaped if it hadn't been for the fact that I didn't have a repair hangar and had surrounded my grav lift with defense modules.

 

---

 

The old shields vs ship armour question:

 

 

Ship armour makes use of damage reduction. It's small, and not much, but it's something. It's also your last layer of defense.

 

Shields do not have damage reduction and thus take full damage (or whatever value the random number generator rolls). Basically, it's just an extension of your hitpoints that take full damage. On the other hand, they recharge. This makes it possible for a small fleet of ships (Explorers, for example - if you're feeling brave) to take on the entire alien dimension fleet by themselves. You'd need to spend a lot of time regenerating your shields, but it still makes it possible. You couldn't do this without shields.

 

Now, to demonstrate this in effect in action, let's observe the mighty battleship, which is a very nasty ship indeed. Let's pretend we've got an annihilator armed with three plasma defense guns and have it charge up to the battleship and open fire. The shields would vanish almost instantly, but no matter how much you try, you'll not even be able to dent the hull due to the damage reduction provided by the hull armour.

 

- NKF

[Brute]

Shields are a must for alien dimension missions. You can simply retreat to alien buildings to wait the shield recharge..

[Tuoppi]

I never bother to manufacture shields. Aliens provide me with plenty of them as i usually don´t sell them. (By the time i have researched them i have enough money anyway.) If i run out of them i use any other tech available. And 3 annihilators with bare beam weapons are well enough to quickly dispose of anything they throw at me, just have to clear the alien dimension in few wawes. Craft ammunition just takes too much money and engineering hours(=more money) to be efficient.

[Tsereve]

Three or four Annihilators with a heavy disruptor and 2 mediums each is more than enough to destroy all but a mothership or battleship. forget large shields, two small shields offer the same protection using only 8 squares--large ones use 9.