Railjack shields

[DrakeWurrum]

Out of all the stats for our Railjacks... I feel like shields is the one that needs to be touched the most. It's pretty simple why, and actually is a relic of why shields on warframes are still pragmatically useless compared to stacking HP and armor... damage on our shields isn't reduced by armor.

Now this makes sense, and shouldn't change. But because I can boost my HP and my armor significantly higher, faster, cheaper than I can shields... I have no incentive to improve my shields. Shields just don't provide enough of a buffer.

Thanks to Avianocs, my ship's Hull is nearly FOUR TIMES that of my Shields... plus I have armor to reduce the incoming damage. So in terms of Effective HP, my Hull is worth significantly more than Shields. It doesn't help that the best shield array I've found right now would only add 200ish - but mind you, I do still need to repair it, it's just that I don't feel 200 extra shields justifies the resource cost, so I'm focusing on guns, reactor, and engines first. The result is that I spend 90% of all Railjack combat with no shields, and it's up to the folks repairing to keep HP from getting too low.

I think if shields are going to matter on Railjack, they need to be dramatically improved. For starters, we need to have more Shields than Hull, at least at the baseline (I also have not found an avionic that boosts shield value, but I might have overlooked it in my inventory). Beyond that, we need ways to regenerate shields besides hiding behind debris for 50ish seconds (yes, avionics shortens this, still calls for hiding). I think it could help if shields were constantly regenerating, but if we've been shot at in the last 5 seconds, it's at a lower rate. It would also be useful if a Vector evasion caused a burst of shield regen, or at least a Vector drift, giving ways to actively manage our shields as a defensive tool.

I'm sure there's Tacticel or Battle avionics that deal with shields somehow, but I haven't found them yet, and... frankly, I already feel like they won't be worth it, if the actual max shield value is tuned this low.

Edited December 17, 2019 by DrakeWurrum