Exosuit Shield Upgrades: Anyone know for sure?

[Bullwinkle]

Many discussions out there speculating about the wonky numbers associated with C-class upgrades having a higher number than S-class for the exosuit defence shield. Some people guess the S-class is better despite having a lower buff number. Others guess the C-class is actually better because it has a higher buff number. Even the wiki says there is something wrong, but doesn't definitively clear this up.

I'm tired of guessing. Does anyone know for sure? Anyone done combat trials or studied the code to find out if a lower buff number actually translates into better combat performance for the very wonky exosuit shield upgrades?

[Mr. Bufferlow]

I have never doubted that S class anything is superior to C class anything. A lot of "clues" like it costs more, you can tell it is working better once installed.

Kind of a pointless ponder...since we are so OP for whatever we face you really only need C class stuff that is fully upgraded.

[Bullwinkle]

Thank you for sharing.

Anyone have data to share?

[knighttemplar1960]

Iirc there is a video on Xaine's world that describes how the math works. The lower numbers actually provide more shielding. Not sure if this is a programming error, a display error, or internal coding that found external display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d21l1XCxbPU&t=335s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhoapriFnk&t=8s

[Bullwinkle]

Thanks for posting, but I don't think you do recall correctly. I've seen both those videos already. The first one at time 4:26, he does go into x-class exosuit shield upgrades, but says he isn't sure. The second one doesn't mention x-class exosuit shields at all. At least that's what I see just skimming them this second time.

[Geldric™]

TIL that "C" class Shield modules can "sometimes" have as good as "S" class... I was curious and on a new save I bought 3 "C" shield upgrades. The first 2 I installed were 93% Shield and 33% health. The 3rd was just 32% health.

I also searched through the json file looking for info about this Gek Korvax-infused shield fuc.... er magic and found nothing. While your health number goes up with each upgrade installed (after eating); the max shield stays at 100. <- what I could not find is where there is any indication of what each upgrade module does. All 6 (installed 3 "C" and 3 "A") modules have a "-1" in the "amount" category.

Final Thoughts
The Atlas is clearly at fault....

[Bullwinkle]

I have some actual data to suggest that a lower shield buff number is probably better. If this is true then there is little to no reason to prefer c-class exosuit shield upgrades over s-class.

I installed an x-class upgrade 20 times. 75% of the time, the buff was a very high number., higher than s-class. At the other end, only once was the number as low as the lowest S-class number. Never was it lower. Now we all know that x-class upgrades are better than s-class only very rarely, So this is indirect evidence that lower is better. It would seem impossible that 75% of the x-class were better than s-class. But flip it over, and it seems entirely appropriate that 1 in 20 was as good as the best s-class.

According to the wiki, s-class can give 80-90. X-class can give 75-95.
The observed numbers for my x-class buffs were: 80, 84, 85, 88, 89, 91, 92, 92, 93, 93, 93, 93, 94, 94, 94, 94, 94, 94, 94, 94.

Based on this data, I'm going to swap out my s-class upgrades that have high numbers, like 89 as soon as I can find s-class with low numbers like 81.

[Lord Yue]

Just tested this by measuring (with a ruler down to the millimeter) the amount of damage taken from both fall damage (jetpacked straight up until my jetpack ran out) and sentinel damage (single hits) before and after replacing my 6 C/X class modules (93-94% shields each) with 6 S class modules (<89% shields each). The damage taken was greater after I replaced all my modules with S class. The difference is pretty minimal though (1-2 mm difference). So shield modules with higher numbers really do protect you more.

Definitely a weird oversight issue on the part of the devs.

[Bullwinkle]

How many times did you repeat each test?

[Lord Yue]

Three times each. Three falls from max jetpack height from the same spot, three ram attacks from a sentinel quad, and three sweeping beam attacks from a sentinel walker (the other attacks from sentinels can't even damage me in both cases). In all cases, damage taken was greater with the S class modules. Seemed pretty consistent so I stopped there.

[Bullwinkle]

A very interesting piece of this puzzle. Thanks for sharing your data!