Kaidun shields as applied to a post-modern worldview

[Amariithynar]

Then why does the Solon shield exist? It's only purpose is to provide near immunity to laser damage early game, when you're facing plenty of kinetic and blast, as well as quite a bit of particle too. Yet it's still quite useful overall. If the majority of the opponents you're going to be fighting use a damage type, being protected against it is a good idea. Having a blast-resistant shield before hitting a cluster of Dwarg colonies or particle resistant vs. a Sung Citadel are all good ideas.

[Drako Slyith]

In a game where the circumstances of fighting changes rapidly, you won't always be able to make it to a station that changes shields between fights. It only takes a few well placed shots to kill you if you don't have shields.

[Amariithynar]

Eh... the only ones whom ccould do that to me were the Ferians, for obvious reasons. Nothing else has given me even a hint of trouble. every last death I've had is because I've lost a cargo drone or done somethng else monumentally stupid and just facerammed into enemies until I died (before I found the self-destruct button). Like telling my fleet of Autons, Volkov, and Sara(?) to wait, then taking off to a huari base... not realizing they were trailing after me because they'd not gated in yet. Queue loss of allies and self-destruct death.

I admit I['ve not got to lategame stuff like the massive dreadnoughts or whatnot. But everything prior has been a cakewalk.

[Aury]

The Taikon 200 +150% excells against even the ares, despite its weakness to positron and ion, given that it has higher HP in its fully enhanced state than any other unenhanced shield, and it has much faster regen than any shield of comparable HP (but OC, this is still enhanced, so an unenhanced taikon 200 isn't all that awesome, but its still a nice shield, just don't expect to take on 4 deimoses & 2 phoboses at once and expect to come off without a scratch on your armor.)

[PM]

Kaidun: I am not fond it because it is too heavy (12 tons) for the Sapphire or Wolfen, and 200 MW is a noticeable drain on fuel even with a Hyperion. It takes forever to recharge.

Lazarus: It is more trouble than it is worth. To make it usable, the player needs to get the Efficiency mod on Lazarus (this drops powerUse from 900 MW to 810 MW), then enhance a Hyperion reactor (for 1.2 GW). Both require tedious Ingenuity spamming to get. After that, Lazarus becomes somewhat usable. Because it takes so much power even with +Efficiency, leaving Lazarus on constantly will suck the ship's fuel dry quickly. The player will need to travel with Lazarus off, and turn it on only during a fight. This means armor must protect against all side effects the player may encounter. This also means the player needs ion-effect immune armor, which limits the player to carbide or Iocrym armor. After the player does all of the above, Lazarus remains less effective at blocking large thermonuclear explosions or Phobos archcannon shots than other shields. Maybe Lazarus would be much more powerful at +150%, but that is out of the question because 900 MW prevents the use of the best weapons, which require 300 MW.

[Resident-Pyromaniac]

Yeah, The Lazarus should be dropped from 900MW, to 650MW. Still sucks fuel dry, but not inhibitively so. Also, the Hyperion is rated level 9, why are there level 10 weapons fueled by a level 9 reactor? an added 2GW reactor would be Something that allows better item usage.

(Or maybe multiple installed reactors...)

On a side note, I was thinking about the V300 armor. I always take V300 at some point, but, being level 8, it's insufficient for Heretic. Couldn't Rasiermesser design some level 10 V850 armor? consuming 40 MW's per segment.