Subset Games Forum

Like everything else in this damn game, it's 100% situational and dictated by the gods of RNG.

If you wind up encountering loads and loads of enemies with missiles and bombs, the evasion will undoubtedly serve you better (defense drones are nice, but they can be expensive).

If you conversely run across nothing but lasers and beams, a well-inflated shield bubble can make you completely untouchable.

And of course if you anticipate and spec for one scenario and are greeted instead by the other, you will likely wind up completely boned. Running up against a well-shielded ship with loads of rockets and/or a hacking system is usually how I lose most of my games, as I tend to reflexively buy shield upgrades without thinking them through.

The correct answer is the run the middle of the road so as to minimize your chances of getting screwed. There have already been a number of answers to this effect. Hitting endgame with less than three shields is going to dramatically raise your risk level, but having four can be superfluous if you have hefty enough offensive tools (i.e. boarding crews to kill the weapons systems on the flagship). Likewise, a reasonable goal for engines is to have your evasion at or just above 40 (read: 1 of every 3 shots dodged unless you get really lucky/unlucky). Too little, and those missiles are going to put a lot of hurt on you. Too much, and you'll just be taking power that might be useful somewhere else.

The name of the game in FTL, as in any game that makes you allocate a limited resource (in this case both scrap and power) is something called opportunity cost. Putting the last two shield bars on your ship (usually) costs 180 scrap - the opportunity cost of that upgrade could be a cloaking system and an upgrade to a neglected subsystem, which you now can't get. There's also the opportunity cost of the energy - the two bars you'll put into powering that fourth shield bubble could also be going to power a defense drone, which would make your defense dramatically more versatile (missiles are dirty cheating bastards).

Moral of the story? Choose both. Don't neglect either in favor of the other.

AmoebaMan wrote:There's also the opportunity cost of the energy - the two bars you'll put into powering that fourth shield bubble could also be going to power a defense drone, which would make your defense dramatically more versatile (missiles are dirty cheating bastards).

And Defense Drones think their face is a better way to stop a missile than say... shooting it.

Haven't posted here in awhile.

In any case, I see nearly every reply in this topic comparing engine to shields as opposed to MAX engines vs MAX shields specifically.

to answer the op who likely doesn't care cuz that was 20 years ago, as mentioned, it depends on your current ship. But generally, I get max engines more often than max shields. Basically when I have a horrible RNG game and cloaking devices are NEVER available for the entire game, I get max engines if possible (though after 3 shields, not 1 or anything ridiculous).

I HAVE got 4 shields before 8 engines a few times, and it has been awhile so TBH I can't remember what the scenario was or why I chose it but it was for a reason to be sure.

As for the rest of this thread where there are silly people talking about how they get 3-4 shields before touching engines or vice versa (it's normally people who swear upon foolish amounts of shielding before getting engines), I argue thus:

Balance is of course best, and I say this not because that's an easy to say hard to argue policy for many games. But because regardless of if yo have 4 shields, or only 1 shield, fact is your shields regenerate at the same rate. Combine that and the fact teh cpu is too dumb to NOT shoot things ASAP, and instead sore all their weapons for one big alpha strike to break shielding, and I argue that shield regeneration is as, if not more important than shield-alpha resistance...How does one affect shield regeneration? Well you generally can't, but regardless of if you have 4 shields, or 2, an enemy who shoots and hits you slightly faster than your shields regen, the worst you'll get from having 2 shields instead of 4 is 2 more damage. However, dodging a single shot will allow your shields more time to regenerate more (or at all if empty). This is why balance is best.. because for every shot you dodge that shields can absorb, that's more time for your shields to recover to full power before the next hit. Most enemies have firepower that simply overpowers shields overtime rather than is miraculously coincidental about alphaing at the same moment to overwhelm your current shields but prove ineffective at outpacing their regeneration.

Basically, I think 4 shields is mostly a waste, because anything that 4 shields can survive that 3 cannot is a fluke occurance, plain and simple, and whoever the weirdo was that said bombs and missles are rare...wdf?! I ask honestly, are leto missles only that stupid common for me? *EVERY* game I play, I EXPECT leto missles, or stronger on basically 80% of the ships of the game.. and I don't mean sectors 2+, straight at sector one, I'll be SURPRISED if 3 out of 4 of the first enemies I face do not have a missle launcher... I'm almost positive that they designed the game so that enemies have them with artificially modified frequency.