Chaff Launcher and Point Defense or Shield Boosters?

[Lucius Confucius]

On a large ship say the Corvette or Anaconda.

Which do you prefer and why?

Right now I have two point defense and one chaff launcher on my Anaconda.

Are two point defense overkill? I have one on each opposite end of the ship, one on the belly and one on the top.

Am I better off going full shield booster?

[CMDR WeeJet]

it depends on what your build is. for my PVE vette that i use for CZ's i have 6 G5 shield boosters and 2 heat sinks for example. reason why is that with the engineering on the boosters and bi-weave shields along with the shield cell banks i have never had my shield go down in PVE yet and i have done hundreds of high CZ's in that ship. the thing with large ships is they can just become shield tanks no matter the shield type you use as long of you engineer them well. and the reason behind the heat sinks is because when you use a shield cell bank your ship will get too hot.

[Stelar Seven]

I don't bother with point defense. Heatsinks are a sometimes. With smaller ships I'll use chaff.

My Corvette is all shield boosters and its very tanky. Keeps me killing NPC no matter how many pile on.

[LoboFH]

To be honest if your Corvette or Anaconda is about to lose shields you should be thinking in get the hell out of there. So shield boosters and perhaps one heat sink.

In my PvE Corvette I have all shield boosters, the 3 beam lasers with termal vent can cool down the ship even when I use the cell bank.

In the type 10 I have two point of defence, because the loss of shield is not so critical.

[Agony_Aunt]

I always have a couple of point defense for when the shields drop... which is rare in my conda, but can happen.

Chaff in the conda is just a waste of time. Its such a big ship that even harmless NPCs can hit it when chaff is going.

[Lucius Confucius]

Cool, thanks for the answers, looks like I will be going full Shield Booster then. Doing PvE.

[Rragar]

Originally posted by Lucius Confucius:

On a large ship say the Corvette or Anaconda.

Which do you prefer and why?

Right now I have two point defense and one chaff launcher on my Anaconda.

Are two point defense overkill? I have one on each opposite end of the ship, one on the belly and one on the top.

Am I better off going full shield booster?

Chaff won't help you with big ships, you'll just soak most of the shots even while the chaff is working due to how big a target you are. The only situation in which it might work well for a big ship would be long range combat, but NPCs don't do long range and players doing long range would be using fixed weapons anyway. It could also help in PvP to prevent gimballed guns from hitting modules, but if you got to the point where your big ship modules are being shot directly, you already are in trouble.

For combat, you won't need the point defense in PvE unless you expect your shields to go down (you would ideally want to avoid this with any big ship because they all have big module hitboxes) or unless you are moving around cargo in places with pirates and want to deal with their hatch breaker limpets. If you're flying hull tanks and expect intermittent shield protection, point defence can help you prevent splash explosive damage to your weapons and other external modules. Civilian ships will benefit from point defense as it can be a tool to buy time to escape from NPC interdictions if you're attacked with missiles.

Point defence can be of use in PvP against people that try to use reverberating cascade on you, but the problem with these people is that if they're smart about it and you're on a big ship, they will either do dive bombing with mines (so the window of opportunity to shoot them will be small, and they can try to attack the spots that your point defence doesn't cover) or they will use torpedoes and missiles with multiple launch systems to overwhelm your point defence and ensure that at least some of the munitions sneak in (in this situation, you'd be better off with ECM, but beware of the cooldown). On that note, torpedoes do not get shot down with a single hit from point defence, it takes multiple bursts to destroy a single one.

You generally can't go wrong with shield boosters, but beware of your power draw and thermal load here, and avoid unreinforced armor even if you have good shields so that you get some defense against shield-piercing effects or are able to buy the time to escape if you're shield-reliant and your shields drop. I also don't recommend full booster setups for shield tanks since as a shield tank you will most likely be using complimentary shield cell banks, and the heat output from these will cause overheating if no heat sink launchers are used; this heat factor in particular will be significant in PvP. Full booster setups can also potentially require overcharged power plants, so make sure you have ways to compensate for the increased heat buildup. If your ship overheats in combat during normal use, it is not a reliable ship.

[Lucius Confucius]

Thanks a ton for that in-depth answer! Always more to learn in Elite Dangerous :)

[Sapyx]

Will also add that point defence turrets have other uses for situations where shields are irrelevant. When someone (NPCs or CMDRs) are spamming hatchbreakers at you, for example. Another specialist use is on Guardian raids, where they take out incoming missiles for you (provided you've planted them on top of your ship).

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Sapyx:

Will also add that point defence turrets have other uses for situations where shields are irrelevant. When someone (NPCs or CMDRs) are spamming hatchbreakers at you, for example. Another specialist use is on Guardian raids, where they take out incoming missiles for you (provided you've planted them on top of your ship).

They are super handy for guardian sites, if you are dealing with hatchbreakera, roll, you will break them.