Shield Rating

Shield Rating is how much damage a unit soaks up before anything reaches its hull. Every ship and every defense has one. Shields take the hit first, and only what is left over touches the hull.

Where the number comes from

Unlike Hull Rating, shields are not worked out from what a unit costs. Every unit simply has a set number, and some carry far more shielding for their price than others. The Particle Cannon costs 8,000 resources and has 500 shield. The Gauss Cannon costs over four times as much and has 200.

Ships

Ship	Base Shield
Hermes Class Probe	0
Shadow Probe	0
Helios Class Solar Satellite	1
Genesis Solar Satellite	1
Zagreus Class Recycler	5
Artemis Class Fighter	10
Atlas Class Cargo	10
Dionysus Class Recycler	10
Apollo Class Fighter	25
Hercules Class Cargo	25
Poseidon Class Cruiser	50
Gaia Class Colony Ship	100
Carmanor Class Cargo	100
Athena Class Battleship	200
Hades Class Battleship	400
Ares Class Bomber	500
Prometheus Class Destroyer	500
Zeus Class	50,000
Hephaestus Class Attack Platform	150,000

Defenses

Defense	Base Shield
Anti-Ballistic Missile	1
Interplanetary Ballistic Missile	1
Missile Battery	20
Laser Cannon	25
Pulse Cannon	100
Gauss Cannon	200
Plasma Cannon	300
Particle Cannon	500
Decoy	2,000
Large Decoy	10,000

The two decoys are pure shield. They have no weapon at all, so shielding is the whole point of them.

Shield Tech

Shield Tech adds 10% of the base shield for every level you research, and it does not compound. Level 1 gives you 110% of base, level 7 gives 170%, level 10 gives 200%. There is no cap.

The Shipyard shows both numbers. Base is the figure from the table above and Current is what you actually get with the Shield Tech you have. Here is the Athena at Shield Tech 7.

Defenses work the same way. The Defense page shows the same two columns.

Shield Tech lifts your ships and your defenses at the same time, and it counts wherever those units fight, at home or on a raid. If you want to know what a target is carrying, a spy report lists their Shield Tech level once your Espionage Tech is high enough.

How shields work in a fight

A battle runs for at most six rounds. Every shot hits the target's shield first. If the shot is bigger than the shield the unit has left, the shield drops to zero and the rest of the damage comes off the hull. If the shot is smaller, the shield just drops by that much and the hull is untouched.

Shields refill to full at the start of every round. Hull damage does not. A unit's shield is not one pool for the whole battle, it is a fresh allowance every round.

That is what makes shields good against a lot of small shots and poor against a few big ones. Enough small hits in one round grind the shield down and everything after that lands on the hull. One huge hit blows past the shield in a single shot and wastes almost none of its damage.

The 1% rule

There is one kind of shot that does nothing at all. If a weapon's rating is 1% or less of the target's full Shield Rating, the whole shot is absorbed and the target takes zero damage. It does not even dent the shield.

It also kills a rapid fire chain. A shot that bounces ends that attacker's turn against that target, so no follow-up shots come.

The threshold is 1% of the current rating, so the defender's Shield Tech raises it and the attacker's Weapons Tech is what has to clear it.

Unit	Base Shield	Bounces any shot of
Hephaestus Class Attack Platform	150,000	1,500 or less
Zeus Class	50,000	500 or less
Large Decoy	10,000	100 or less
Decoy	2,000	20 or less
Ares, Prometheus, Particle Cannon	500	5 or less
Hades	400	4 or less
Plasma Cannon	300	3 or less
Athena, Gauss Cannon	200	2 or less
Gaia, Carmanor, Pulse Cannon	100	1 or less

At equal tech that works out like this.

Against a Large Decoy the Artemis, the Gaia, every cargo ship, both recyclers, both satellites, the Missile Battery and the Laser Cannon all bounce. The Apollo and anything stronger gets through.
Against a Zeus everything up to the Poseidon bounces, and so do the Laser Cannon, Missile Battery, Pulse Cannon and Particle Cannon. The Hades and up get through.
Against a Hephaestus the Athena, the Ares and the Gauss Cannon bounce as well. At base tech only the Prometheus, the Plasma Cannon and the Zeus do any damage at all.

These are not small effects. Ten thousand Artemis attacking one Large Decoy do not take a single point off it in six rounds. Ten thousand Athena do nothing to a Hephaestus, while five hundred Prometheus kill it. Five thousand Poseidon cannot scratch a Zeus and lose about 190 of their own trying, but five hundred Hades kill the same Zeus in two rounds.

Weapons Tech is the way out. An Athena at Weapons Tech 5 hits for 1,500, which is exactly 1% of a Hephaestus's 150,000 shield, so it bounces. One more level takes it to 1,800 and the shots start landing. Two thousand Athena at Weapons Tech 6 kill an undefended Hephaestus in the first round.

What shields do not stop

Damage from an Interplanetary Ballistic Missile is not absorbed by shields at all. A missile strike goes straight onto the hull of the defenses it hits. Armor Tech still counts against missiles, Shield Tech does not.

Group attack and group defend

In a group attack or a group defend, the whole side fights at the best Shield Tech in the group. One well researched member lifts the shields on every unit on their side, including a partner who has never researched shields at all.

Test it yourself

The Calculator has a Shield Lvl field for both the attacker and the defender, so you can run the same fight twice and see what the research is worth.

Here is one. Four hundred Apollo Class Fighters on Weapons Tech 8 and Armor Tech 8 attacking three hundred Pulse Cannons on Armor Tech 8. Only the defender's Shield Tech changes.

Defender Shield Tech	Result	Apollo lost	Pulse Cannons lost
0	Attacker wins	about 266	all 300
4	Draw	about 347	about 270
8	Draw	about 370	about 236
12	Draw or defender wins	about 398	about 152
16	Defender wins	all 400	about 129

Same fleet, same wall, same armor on both sides. Sixteen levels of Shield Tech turn a clean attacker win into a wipeout.