Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I'm wondering if someone would be able to explain what part resistances play in preventing damage?

I get there are different types of weapons that deal different types of damage but am fuzzy on resistances.

Am I correct in thinking that if my un-modded shield generator has a Thermal Resistance of -20% and I am shot with a thermal weapon with a damage stat of (say) 100, I actually receive 120 damage to the shield?
Whereas it has a 50% resistance to explosive damage so would only receive damage of 50 to it if the weapon dealt 100 base damage?

From my understanding, your example of resistances is correct. Most of the shielding advice that I have seen involves maximizing resistances for a shield generator and a booster, then throwing on a second booster to up the overall shield health. I tested this on my Conda's bi-weaves and the darn thing feels like a truck in the shield department.

Yup, and so most pve'rs go for thermal resist on the shields, can get an almost 50% boost to thermal resist so those -20% becomes +30.

Suddenly you take half damage from lasers...

Yep, that's basically how it works. If you increase your damage resistance from 0% to 50%, you take half the damage which effectively doubles your shield strength.

A consequence of the damage reduction is that your effective shield recharge rate is increased as well:

• A 200 Mj shield with 0% resistances would take around 100 seconds to fully recharge.
• A 100 Mj shield with 50% resistances would be able to absorb the same amount of damage, but would only take 50 seconds to fully recharge.

Resistances from multiple sources are calculated as multiple damage multipliers - a 20% booster and a 30% booster would give you a damage multiplier of 0.8 * 0.7 = 0.56.

Beyond 50% resistance, there are diminishing returns - achieving 70% resistance is very hard, and 75% is mathematically impossible even if you had a million shield booster slots. In many cases, 50-60% is a good sweet spot.

Beware though that 40% of a Plasma Accelerator's damage ignores resistances. If you're relying purely on resistances for protection, you may find yourself very vulnerable towards PA armed enemies.

That's basically shields in a nutshell. My general rule of thumb is to get resistances (especially thermal) above 50%, and then stack shield strength after that.

Thanks guys, glad I was on the right track!

Been unlocking engineers recently and while I'm there, I do some low level rolls as I usually have the mats to hand. Managed to get my 5A shield to +4.4% thermal while only sacrificing kinetic resistance by 2.2% and regen rate by 5%. That's a G2 roll, pretty good I thought