Shields and block armor types?

[Zell]

I understood the costs previously in the game, with heavier armor and more durable blocks costing more resources, and making your vehicle heavier and more unwieldy. But with shields now a thing, is this still important? Do shields just absorb 100% of the damage an attack would do, or is there some method it uses to detect the percent of block health it would have done and stop that?
Is there any reason, aside from fuel use for the shield, to not have your ships be made of the cheapest, lightest, flimsiest material available? This would not only shorten construction time, but dramatically reduce fuel usage for movement, and increase it's agility and speed.
Is there any incentive to even use hardened or combat steel anymore?

[BlazeD]

These are all questions you must answer yourself. Build. Test. What is acceptable performance for me is not the same for you.

[margalus]

Shields have a small finite amount of damage they can take before they are gone. Then they have to stop taking damage for a set amount of time before they can recharge. The stronger blocks are still needed.

[ravien_ff]

Depends what you're doing and how careful you are.

Shields burn pentaxid and energy to recharge themselves and they can only absorb so much damage. For an exploration ship it's probably enough protection. For anything seeing combat you'd probably still want armor.

[Zell]

Ahhh. So if things are capable of doing, for the CV, 18 K damage before they are killed, no matter how much pentaxid I have the shields still fall and need to recharge. That makes sense. So armor is still important, just less so for short battles. Thank you much!

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by Zandalar:

Ahhh. So if things are capable of doing, for the CV, 18 K damage before they are killed, no matter how much pentaxid I have the shields still fall and need to recharge. That makes sense. So armor is still important, just less so for short battles. Thank you much!

Shields begin to recharge 10 seconds after not taking any damage, so if you can back up and let your shields recharge you'll still be fine. Of course sometimes you don't have the option to retreat or you're not paying attention.

Some alien weapons also do bonus damage to shields.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Shields begin to recharge 10 seconds after not taking any damage, so if you can back up and let your shields recharge you'll still be fine. Of course sometimes you don't have the option to retreat or you're not paying attention.

Like being in a PvP battle.