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Shield resists and hardness, same thing?
eradicator84
Member Posts: 1,116 Arc User
Just wondering, with the newer shield "hardness" terminology, what does it mean exactly. I've been playing STO for so long I feel I should know this but with Cryptic's recent re-factoring of some terminologies, this split between shield resistances and hardness remains, so I'm beginning to think they do two separate things.
Is shield hardness what armour is to hull?
Many rep shields have built in resists, say 20% to all or some energy types. Is that just considered energy specific shield "hardness"? Just not called that?
I recently read Borticus saying shield hardness is the direct counter to shield penetration. I always thought of shield Pen as a scaling shield bypass type effect, yet the tribble info box for hardness suggests it's more related to resists than shield pen negation.
So yeah, I'm confused
EDIT: Then there's the shield pen skill which suggests pen is a scaling bypass like I originally figured, making it basically act on the shield "bleedthrough" factor, yet another term talking about the same thing as Pen.
Having these things show in you ships stats screen would go a long way to explaining it a bit better...
Is shield hardness what armour is to hull?
Many rep shields have built in resists, say 20% to all or some energy types. Is that just considered energy specific shield "hardness"? Just not called that?
I recently read Borticus saying shield hardness is the direct counter to shield penetration. I always thought of shield Pen as a scaling shield bypass type effect, yet the tribble info box for hardness suggests it's more related to resists than shield pen negation.
So yeah, I'm confused
EDIT: Then there's the shield pen skill which suggests pen is a scaling bypass like I originally figured, making it basically act on the shield "bleedthrough" factor, yet another term talking about the same thing as Pen.
Having these things show in you ships stats screen would go a long way to explaining it a bit better...
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The shield resist is how much damage is reduced before doing damage to a shield. Shield power, shield mods, and some skills affect this.
penetration is what bypasses the shield altogether. Weapon mods and some skills can affect this. This increases bleedthrough on your target.
Hardness is the "bleedthrough" that all shields have built in. This is damage that when thrown against the shield goes to hull. I seem to remember somewhere there was a short duration effect of "perfect shields" (0% bleed) somewhere. So if you hear that, that's what it means.
Now the thing I don't understand is how this is calculated. When X damage is put against your ship (or anyone else) does the bleedthrough % get calculated before or after the shield resist? Is the bleedthrough damage taken away from the final calculated total shield damage or does the bleed % end up as bonus damage? I'm sure someone has these answers.
So Pen and Hardness both slide the scale of your shields bleedthrough, resists are like regular armour for hull, but shield instead.
Also some valid extra questions there.
Two more questions:
1. Do shield resists have diminishing returns like hull armour/plating?
2. How high can shield hardness go? (I guess without live in game stats on that we'll can't tell)
#1 is a good and valid question that I have no answer for. It does make sense that it would be diminishing returns on shield resists to prevent someone from achieving 100% damage reduction.
#2 there isn't much in game right now that affect shield hardness in space, if there is anything at all. Resilient shields have a 5% bleed and a 5% absorb. I assume half of what would be bleedthrough is thrown away. All other shields have 10% bleed. I think the new skill system has some things in there that can affect hardness but I haven't looked at it seriously. If you could get an always on 5% less bleedthrough the resilient shields would be "perfect" all the time and, I believe, unbalance shields in general. Of course, someone that has the answers may come along and correct me.
Here's a thread with some official replies from Borticus:
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/12872528/#Comment_12872528
Actually, there is a fair bit in game that gives Shield Hardness in space. There's several consoles, though most are usable only on certain ships, such as the Battlecruiser Pack and the Nandi consoles. There's a Reputation Trait that gives a stacking Hardness buff when hit, and one of the Xindi-A/1 space trait gives a stacking buff while under Red Alert. I think one of the less-used Reputation shields has a stacking Hardness buff too, but I can't remember which one.
Unless I'm mistaken, the Battlecruiser pack console gives 5% Shield Hardness as a passive, but it doesn't make my Kurak, Arbiter or Morrigu have perfect shields. It does, however, based on anecdotal observations, seem to give my C-Store T6 variants shields on par with their T5 Fleet variants which have .1 higher shield mod.
That science specific ground trait Medical Vanguard is probably where you heard it. Basically when you use heals, it heals your shields, reduces damage to your shields, and makes your shields "perfect" for 4 seconds. Pretty good trait.
The Delta Reputation shield is probably the one you're thinking of, it has that stacking shield hardness boost when you fire weapons. The Elite Fleet shield also has a stacking boost but it doesn't specifically say shield hardness. I think it's just a 20% damage resistance boost.
Shield resists supposedly have diminishing returns up to 75% like with hull resists, however it's actually possible to get higher than 75% for both hull and shields during a battle. This won't last long though. I know for hull the things that will send your resists over 75% include active hull hardening combined with advanced hull reinforcement, there's probably more that I don't know about. For shields maybe inelastic collisions does it, that trait gives a very high boost to shield resists.
I've tested inelastic collisions w/ extend over the last months and my result was that you can give a target perma 75% (or 99% if tooltip is correct and skill doesnt care about hardcap) in shield resist, the top way to avoid basically all dmg is to use metaphasic shielding, +600 all DRM and RSP effect too.
About hardness and res: I dont know about it. I think it might be different as pattern recognition has its stats as % and thus it cant be counted like normal res. Add 6% to 10 DRM, zero DRM, 120 DRM, idk.
Just tagging some people who know about it, dont know whether they still look at the forums or even know the game still exists.
@maxprange
@ray339
@onur1701e
@nandospc
These people are imho the top healers in the game (or were, not everyone still plays) and might know about it, hope someone of them finds the notification^^
For reference, inelastic would "supposedly" set shield hardness to 99%, but if I were to guess, its putting it closer to 75%. Look at a target who has extend shields on them for reference.
As well I'm pretty certain resist and hardness are basically the same thing, just the devs loving to use different terminology.
Inelastic Collision does does suffer from the 75% hardcap, despite its tooltip.
And Hardness and Resistance are identical. Just differently termed. Who knows why.
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I finally found again what @borticuscryptic wrote that I mentioned in the OP, pasted it below, which he later backed away from but didn't then clarify what hardness actually meant if not anti penetration.
It also means there's nothing we can do to affect the bleedthrough/penetration of our shields short of simply using resilient shields all the time. A piece imo sorely missing from defensive player toolboxes.