Beyond the fact that shields are hit first, is there a difference between shields and hull? Is more damage comparatively done to the hell than shields for the same shot?

I ask because it seems less expensive to beef up your hull - at my level, 13 spaces for 90 hull, or 22 spaces for 77 shields.

And you can just pay gold to heal your hull... so if there's no difference, do people USE shields?

Realistically, other than paying for hull repairs, there is no big difference. Hull takes up much less space on your ship than shields. Shields regenerate over time plus there is a very common artifact that will give you 2x shields for 24 hours.

I would suggest a mix of both. Although, I am installing more shields than hulls now because it is much cheaper to restore them (or let them regenerate) than to pay for hull repair.

When you get further on, you will regenerate fast. I'm at about 111 shield regen per minute.

Whether you use Hull or Shields depends on your play style really. But your decision on what to use will likely also depend on how far into the game you are as well. As you've noticed, shields give you less bang for your buck than hull. Repairing seems to be cheap as well - but this is only true of the repair costs early on in the game, because the amount of credits that you pay per hull point repair increases as your level increases. This increase isn't particularly noticeable until about level 130, but from that point on it starts to get increasingly expensive to repair your hull, which makes the free repair of shields much more attractive.

As an example, my ship has currently taken 60 hull damage, and it will cost me 2,192,563 Credits to repair it, or roughly 36,543 credits per hull point. And my ship has considerably more hull than that, so it would cost me a small fortune if I had to completely repair my ship. Try working out the cost of repairing your own ship as a comparison to my own costs after you've taken some hull damage (I'm level 254). Just divide the repair cost by the amount of damage your hull has taken to get the per-hull-point cost.

Since shields repair themselves, there are no repair costs. As ODragon said above, there's a fairly common artifact that doubles your shield strength as well - the equivalent Hull artifact only increases your hull strength by 50%, so shields get a better buff. The rate that shields repair at is always a constant percentage as well - so the more shields you have, the more shields that will repair per "tick". I believe it takes about 1 hour 40 minutes to completely repair your shields early in the game. Later on in the game though, you can also find some artifacts that reduce the time between ticks, which significantly reduces the overall amount of time needed to fully repair your shields. My shields take about an hour to fully repair, and I know that I haven't got all of the shield recharge artifacts yet.

So as you get further into the game, shields will become increasingly valuable. But at your current level, you're better off just sticking with hull.

And in answer to your other question, no, there is no known difference in the damage calculations between shields and hull. Damage is treated the same regardless of what the damage hits. So all that matters to you as the player, is how that damage gets repaired later. Hull allows you to take more hits but costs Credits to repair. Shields can take fewer hits but repair themselves over time for free.

I don't believe this is quite accurate. I don't think you pay for the amount of hull you repair, but the fraction of your total hull you repair, so you shouldn't look at it as cost/point but instead cost/(percent of total hull).

But his general point is definitely correct, it starts to cost a lot more to repair, which is why defenses become more important later. For a while I could fight NPCs without any defenses, but eventually it became too expensive.



This is even more true because the shield artifact lasts for a day, but the hull artifact lasts for only two hours, making the gap in buffs much larger.

Thank you all. I'm sticking with Hull for now, but will reconsider later as the cost to repair rises.

Hull rules....you need extra space if you want shields. Stick with pure hull until you have enough extra space for shields. So go high hull and high defense...make yourself an expensive kill.

Heh. Most obvious difference between hull and shield is debuff feature.. You can debuff enemy shield down to 0 for a short time and kill him off while there is NO way to debuff enemy's hull so hull is your best protection against any debuffing artifacts.. Shield is also too much dependent on shield amps to be attractive but players almost always shoot you with missile to remove that making your shield weak once again.. People don't rely on hull buff at all to survive well. Unbuffed hull is already very attractive and the buff hull last too short anyway..