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I'm not too clear on what shields do. it's apparent they reduce damage by about 50% when fully up but why do they even go down? Why does the "exec" mode always lower them to 50% even in mid battle? Why can't you 'knock down' someones shields with repeat hit and i've never been able to damage a shield subtarget though 4 campaigns.

Shields stop much more than 50% damage when up all the way, they stop most laser damage though torpedoes and missiles still do reasonable damage through them. The down side is that you lose most of your maneuverability when they're set that high. Shields are often too heavily protected within the ship to be damaged, but there are several ships with critical systems like fusion reactors that are vulnerable to enemy fire.

I am finally starting to read the manual, after 15 hours of play, and it looks like shield energy management is a key tactical consideration in combat. your xo probably lowers the shields to 50% in order to provide more power to thrusters and weapons in order to help destroy enemy ships. more energy to shields means slower weapon recharge which means less energy hitting the enemy's hull. at least that is what i think so far. so if you go even lower than 50% then you will probably have more energy for weapons at the rick of sustaingin more damage yourself. i am actually right in that section of the manual and I am intrigued...i always went to 100% whenever combat started.

You will notice the effect that the energy guzzling shields have most on speed.

If you intend going anywhere in a hurry in a captial ship, turn the shields off

The energy they use is also a big issue if your fusion reactor gets damaged or your aux. reactor goes down and everything is thrown onto fusion.
Of course if everything ends up running off battery you'll find that shields use all the power and everything else goes dead!

Weapons and such are normally on the aux. reactor, so they are unaffected by the shield energy drain (which is on fusion).

- Deathifier

Some ships are far more sensitive to shield power drain than others. For instance the Spectre class DD can barely run its drives at all when its shields are all the way up.