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ShieldsCircle Shields are a system that projects a protective barrier around your ship, which absorbs damage until it is removed.

Overview[]

  • Sustains up to 4 damage-absorbing barriers around your ship.
    • Some enemies can have level 9 or 10 shields (up to 5 shield layers).
  • Each barrier blocks one shot regardless of the shot's damage. Lasers, flak, and asteroids will remove one layer of shields or damage the ship if shields are down.
  • Beams cannot reduce shield layers by hitting them, but can damage ships through shields if they are strong enough.
    • For example, the Glaive Beam does three damage to each room it hits, or two damage per room through one shield layer, or one damage per room though two shield layers.
  • Missiles, bombs, and the Artillery Beam bypass all shields.
  • Crew Teleporters, hacking and boarding drones ignore shields entirely.
  • Crystal weapons and Heavy Pierce Laser bypass 1 layer of shields.
  • Ion weapons apply full ion damage to shield system, and can stack; hence, ions can remove multiple barriers.
  • Having shields up reduces number of fires and hull/system damage due to solar flares.
  • Upgrading will increase your maximum barrier count by 1 for every 2 system levels.
  • Shields system must be powered to support shields barriers.
  • Shields base regeneration rate: 1 and 2 layers restore in 2 seconds, 3rd layer - in 1.72, 4th - in 1.5, 5th - in 1.33 seconds.
  • Recharge time is the inverse of recharge rate.
    • Manning increases shield recharge rate (10->20->30%, depending on the crew member's level of experience). Fully trained shields crew multiplies the recharge time by (1 / 1.3).
    • Shield Charge Booster augmentation improves recharge rate by 15% each, and can stack additively - so three of them improve recharge by 45%. Three Shield Charge Boosters multiply the recharge time by (1 / 1.45).
    • Shields crew skill and Shield Charge Boosters bonuses are calculated separately and then multiplied together. The maximum bonus is (1 / (1.3 * 1.45)) = 0.531 multiplier. (the 1st/2nd shield layer takes just over 1 second to recharge) (Shield layer recharge time calculator)

System upgrades[]

Level Cost Shield
1 -
2 100*/125** Ftlgame-scrap 1 layer
3 20 Ftlgame-scrap
4 30 Ftlgame-scrap 2 layers
5 40 Ftlgame-scrap
6 60 Ftlgame-scrap 3 layers
7 80 Ftlgame-scrap
8 100 Ftlgame-scrap 4 layers

* Zoltan Cruiser Noether (Layout B) starts with Shields system at level 1 (or, simply, Shields-1), which can be upgraded to Shields-2 for 100 scrap without a need to visit a store.
** Stealth Cruisers start without Shields system, and can buy one at a store for 125 scrap. This gives them Shields-2.

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