#13
by Dendrite
In the description of ion cannons, it says "Due to the cannons highly improved shielding system, this cannon provides improved protection for your larger, more destructive defense weapons."
Do shields 'overlap', protecting other units if this one is not being directly targeted? Or is that just flavour text.
Edit: I thought of a scenario to test it, but can't figure out how to explain the results.
both sides have weapon, shield and armor tech level 10. 1 attacking cruiser vs 1 light laser and ion cannon as defence.
At the start, the cruiser has 800 weapons, 89 shields and 6,500 armor. Defending LL has 52 shields and 200 armor, ion 970 shields and 1,500 armor.
"The attacking fleet fires 1 times for a total of 800 damage on the defender. The defender shields absorb 451 damage."
At the end of the round, LL destroyed, ion has 494 shields and full armor.
The cruiser targeted the LL, with the ion's shields absorbing 476 damage, but that didn't prevent the targeted LL from being destroyed. It seems that some of the 'excess' damage hits shields of other units, wasting it.
Even increasing the number of ion cannons doesn't stop the LL from being destroyed if targeted. However, I've also seen decreases in the ion's shields that can't be entirely explained by the attacker's damage, so the randomness is confusing.