Shields

Shields are your ship's first layer of defence. All incoming damage hits shields before reaching your hull and blocks. When shields are depleted they enter a recovery lockout before recharging.

Shield Capacitor Blocks

Place Shield Capacitor blocks on your ship to add shields. Each block contributes:

Stat	Value per block
Capacity	250
Recharge rate	5 / sec

Shield radius (the zone around your ship that the shield covers) scales up with block count on an exponential curve — small ships get good coverage quickly; large ships need proportionally more blocks for full hull coverage.

Damage Flow

Recharge Behaviour

Shield recharge has three distinct states:

State	Recharge rate	Trigger
Normal	100%	No recent damage
Under fire	25–50%	Any hit within last 30 sec
Lockout	0%	Shield broken; lasts 10 sec

Under fire recharge reduction scales with current shield level — low shields regen slower (25%) than high shields (50%) while under fire.

Power Upkeep

Shields consume power continuously: 0.4% of total shield capacity per second, regardless of current shield level. A ship with 10,000 capacity uses 40 e/s just to maintain its shields at idle.

While actively recharging, shields consume additional power per point of recharge.

Turret Shield Interaction

When a turret (rail-docked ship) takes damage, the host ship absorbs the hit through its own shields as long as the host has more than 25% shields remaining. This means large turret loadouts can quickly drain a mothership's shields.

Improving Shields with Chambers

Shield-related chamber trees can boost: - Total capacity (more buffer before breaking) - Recharge rate (recover faster between engagements) - Recovery time (shorter lockout after shield break)

See the Chambers guide for details.