Ship Defenses

[Arcalane]

Just a quick poll to see what kind of defenses people prefer overall.

Point Defense? Passive Defense? Armour? Shields? Other?

Ed: I vote "other", since I like a combination of PD, armour and passive defenses, with active defenses (flux, rorschach) here and there. Also occasionally tossing in tweaked deflectors.

Which are something I'm -still- working on "fixing", by the way.

[Zancloufer]

A Combination. Depends on the ship though.

[Lizzie]

Mainly Deflectors with a lot of PD backing them up.

[Comus]

Depends on the ship. Some of my ships use deflectors, some just use armor, some use both. The fleet I'm working on right now uses bubble shields. I almost never use active defenses. Most of my ships have at least a little PD.

[Monkey]

combination of point and passive.

[goduranus]

Having ships protect each other's flank, and point the deflector protected ablative front armor to the enemy. And hope that AI will be smart enough spacing ships to allow ships to overlap their puny point defense fire.

[Lizzie]

BTW you should put Ablative armor up there, most people use it.

[Danny420Dale]

Yeah, I combine different defenses. I used to whore Aegis, but now I only use them in strategic areas and as Seraphim Shields. I love PD and Impeders/Nano almost to death, and I also tend to use lots of Deflectors. Lately I've been experimenting with heavy ablative armor and, in the case of my Bastion station, dynamic defense, i.e. rotating it rapidly to continuously present fresh undamaged armor to an enemy.

[Ethril]

I think "heavy armour" would include "ablative armor".
Anyways, I say Other: "small size + high acceleration".
I like the little nimble things with dodgehax.

I happen to be a fan of sh'mups... The topic about the Metal Fox grabbed my attention immediately.

Of course, I'm not terribly good at them.

[Danny420Dale]

I think "heavy armour" would include "ablative armor".
Anyways, I say Other: "small size + high acceleration".
I like the little nimble things with dodgehax.

Ha, forgot about that. I sometimes do that too. The best defense in the game is a well-timed dodge.

[TheBlueEcho]

...The best defense in the game is a well-timed dodge.

Well Put.

[Alreadyunder]

I voted heavy armour. It keeps your ships alive, but doesn't drag out battles for boring lengths of time like deflectors do.

Ablative and point defense are cool too.

[TrashMan]

I like it that each ship in my fleet has a specific function. And alltough some can do a little bit of everything, or are good in more than one function, this is generally rare and ALLWAYS comes at a cost.

For instance, my long-range bombardment ships are VERY vulnerable in a close fight, dedicated caphip killer (aka - one huge frontal cannon) are sluggish and have practilcy no other weapons to speak off.
The Arhcangel, as a battleship, has good offense and defense(some PD guns and beamers), but carries no drones whatsoever. In general the havily shielded ships have little firepower. And there's always the fleet PD ships that are filleld with PD weapons, but you can kill them with a sneeze from another warship.

Too much armor pieces (aka - ablative armor) make everythig more CPU intensive so I avoid it in general - I'll rather just ramp up the ship HP.

I rarely use Aegis shields on my ships, so it's mostly armor and a deflector or two for good mesure

[MadnessX]

Other - My Baron of Ibelin ship uses: 1. semi-ablative armor; 2. deflector shields; 3. nano matrices - It might seem really cheap but fight it and see.

My lesser ships just use the armor and deflector shields. No biggie if you target unshielded areas.

[condorc3]

hey im a newb, what is ablative armour and how do i get/use it?