TLDR: I think that outfitting tools are displaying Shield Resistances incorrectly when they go above the 50% (diminishing returns) mark. But I'm far from sure.
I’m hoping someone has some additional information or can confirm if I have gone insane. I’ve done all this research in the various outfitting tools online, not in game. Not rich enough to afford all this engineering to test this.
Over the last week or so, I’ve finally started to understand shield resistances and have been interested in learning how the “diminishing returns” feature of stacking them actually works.
For those that don’t know, according to the wiki and a forum post by the devs, stacking shield resistances past 50% start to have diminishing returns. According to the dev post, it’s impossible to exceed 75% ACTUAL resistance for any given damage type.
What I’m interested in is if sites like Coriolis and EDSY are correct when showing you the total resistance AS IT GOES OVER 50%. Prior to 50%, both sites seem correct. But after, they start looking… wrong. And this could be important if people are planning builds out of game before investing materials and time and money into their ships.
Here is a link to a Corvette, with full thermal resistance engineering on both it’s shield and all it’s boosters. According to Coriolis, the Thermal Resist is 78.8% and EDSY says the same.
Doing the math myself for thermal resist, following the formula laid out by the dev, if you added all the resistances of the shield and boosters, the resistance, BEFORE ACCOUNTING FOR DIMINISHING RETURNS, would be roughly 96.21% After accounting for the diminishing returns after 50%, following their example, I get a total of 73.11% resistance, just under the cap of 75%
Edit 1: Forgot to conclude this. I think the outfitting sites should show the 73% (if that's correct). This shows users that stacking resistances starts to not be worth the effort.
Adding the math below for anyone to proof my work and tell me where I messed up…
Even if my math is wrong, and I'm willing to bet I screwed up somewhere, how can the total resistance be above 75% if that's the stated cap. Or is this just engineering being broken?
The only way I see to know the truth is to actually recreate these builds in Elite and see what the numbers say.
IN SUMMARY
I see a few possible answers.
- I'm right (laughable), following the dev's math, and these outfitting sites have a problem.
- I'm wrong cause math reasons…
- This is one of those "Engineering is broken" things and Coriolis/EDSY are right, despite the devs thinking 75% is the max.
I have no ego in this. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Thanks!!!!
Warning!!! Math Below!!! Read at your own peril!!!
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Using the Corvette build from the Coriolis link.
Taking dev’s advice, converting the resistances to damage multiplier for ease.
Shield Thermal Resist: 44.8% = .552 Damage Multiplier.
Booster Thermal Resist: 28.46% = .7154 Damage Multiplier.
Multiply All Damage Multipliers together.
.552 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 * .7154 = roughly 0.03787 damage multiplier
That damage multiplier translates roughly to 96.21% Resistance.
After 50%, we diminish. So 96.21 – 50 = 46.21% extra resistance.
From the dev example, they basically remap 50-100 as 50 -75. So roughly, divide the extra resistance by 2 and I got the same numbers the dev did.
46.21 / 2 = 23.11% with some rounding.
Add 50% and 23.11% and I got 73.11%
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/lmuf1p/do_outfitting_tools_like_coriolis_and_edsy/
