So I'm going to write up a guide to shields because I keep seeing people not using them.

Well a good number of people at least.. By not using I mean not managing them at all and just getting taken out of a fight for little reason.

Basically, I'm going to talk about how you can manage your own ship's shield so you can maybe not have it explode so much. As always I give you no guarantee as I cannot manage the shield for you of course.

Just so it is said.. There is an on screen widget for shield status and a clickable redistribute shields button.. You just click your ship in the center there and it redistributes the shields for you once.

Aside from your actual bridge officer tray there is only one key binding you want to go set.

Esc -> Options -> Key Binds
Be sure its set to space in the top right first.
And now scroll down a little until you see this.



Why? Well to put it simply, this singular key bind has saved my ship countless times in any number of combat scenarios, especially when out gunned and all my other heals are on cool down.

So what does it do? Well this takes shield points from all the facings and averages them out to be the same. This is often the most valuable button as you often have only one or two shield facings down.
There are four.. well here. The white bars on this are shield facings.


Or on this...those blue bar's around the ship there are shield facings.
These however change in combat and can be harder to see.


I admit that sometimes I find myself just not even thinking and tapping the distribute shields hotkey I setup, even though I probably don't need to at that time...

By the way, using this ability is a good idea BEFORE you activate a shield heal on yourself. Why? Well simple, over healing a shield facing will just drop all the extra points it burns on that facing. Imagine if you took points out of the full ones and filled in some of the low facings before you did that.
The effect of over healing is not talked about on powers, but it is there.

I'll just go over the basic four as there will always be unique ones from sets or reputation gear and other sources..

You have a Standard array, a Regenerative one, a Covariant, and a Resilient.

Standard
The normal one that will come with your ship when its brand new (for you)

Regenerative shield
These favor a faster regeneration rate at a cost of their capacity.
It would be wise to put more power into the shield subsystem so at this shield type actually works
as intended.

Covariant (its how its spelled in game)
These favor a higher capacity at a cost of regeneration.
These work better when you use bridge officer powers to refill the shield points.
Power levels into the shield subsystem really do not help so much with these.

Resilient
If you notice the enemy shooting you, and your hull is taking damage still.
Congrats, you know what shield bleed through is now.
This particular shield is design to attempt to counter the shield bleed through effects.
It is however otherwise mostly like a standard shield array, just slightly less cap and regeneration.
Like standard, you'll still want some power into the shields with these.

Okay, yeah there are skills you can get as you level up or pick skills if you retrain, that impact the performance of your shields.

For those of us who don't wish to read on about every last detail however. It is not so important to put every point you can into these skills. In fact I often only do two points in some of the various skills.

Since I don't wish to write an advanced guide, here is just my current example of what I'm talking about.

Well yeah there is a lot of gear you can get to adjust the shield values shown in the starship stats window.

Here I can show mine so I can explain things a little better.


So this window if you are in space, not on ground or in sector space...

Will show you real time values on your ship based on your current gear, your power levels, and what the buffs will do to these values.

There isn't a whole lot I wish to explain here. As I wish to keep this guide rather simple as optimizing your own gear should be something you setup so your own ship feels better to you. Meaning I will not give you a cookie cutter gear setup.

If you wanted to know however..
In that particular picture I don't actually use any shield specific science consoles.

This section is not meant to go into extreme details, however..
A few pointers..

Gear that gives you passive shield power bonuses are a great start. And you can find shields which also block extra damage on their own. Here is my own shield at the moment for an example.

This is not 'as' important as it may sound.
By this I mean you don't actually have to have a bunch of power into your shields to be combat effective.
I would however recommend a minimal of 50 shield power (actual number not minimal)

Here I shall explain basic power settings widget in game.


So if you did not know this, that little three boxes on the top right button there is the widget mode to bring up more options. Go to the third one to get the window show here.

Okay so when I say actual power level, that is the first number when you mouse over one of the power bars.

Why? Simple..
Having shield power above 50 tends to actually allow your shields to regenerate on their own, not to mention adds to the shield resiliency.

Okay so you've said "Resiliency" a few times, what is this?
That is the amount of damage the shields will innately block on their own before damage values subtract from their current capacity on each hit.

There are a few but to save time and simplify things for everyone reading this I'll just go over the more important ones that I personally use.

Tactical team I (Yeah serious)
+ This single bridge officer power takes an ensign tactical station to start with.
+ Re-distributes shields to shield facings that are actually taking damage automatically.
+ Can be used on others as well, including npc and hanger pets.
+ Tac team also gives you a buff to other things too.
+ Works for the entire duration listed on tactical team
- Only works for the entire duration listed on the power
+ Bonus: removes boarding parties from your ship, no more randomly disabled systems!

Emergency Power to Shields I
+ Heals a small portion of the shield
+ Gives the shield a small buff to their regeneration and resiliency
+ Fixes shields offline from hostile actions against your ship.
+ Ensign rank power is often enough
- Fairly weak overall

Reverse Shield Polarity I - III
+ Magically (lol not really) heals your shield facings taking damage
+ Combined with the hotkey for redistribute shields, will actually be capable of fully restoring the
shields on all facings.
- Doesn't actually give the shields resiliency but meh..
- More importantly the damage is done before the shields are restored with this, so big hits can still
hurt!

Transfer Shield Strength I & II
+ Heals a small portion of the shield
+ Can be used on others as well, including npc and hanger pets.
+ Less duration for recharging than Science Team!
- Won't bring the shield subsystem online again on its own.
- Fairly weak overall

Science Team I - III
+ Heals a small portion of the shield
+ Can be used on others as well, including npc and hanger pets.
+ Fixes shields offline from hostile actions against your ship.
- Fairly weak overall

Extend Shields I-III (use this to support someone tanking)
- Does not work on your own ship
- Not instant shield heal
+ Gives the target shields regeneration
+ Gives the target shields resiliency

Well this section is perhaps a little off topic but..

Q: What do you use when you have your shields completely stripped of power now?
A: Well I like to use hull resistance buffs from various healing sources and powers.

A good example of this is polarize hull and brace for impact.
Both add a large amount of resistance rating to your ship for any incoming fire to have to get through.

The standard hull heals I use can also provide a momentary resistance buff.


However the more obscure sources for resisting destruction... Come from the stranger things..
Like the cruiser ability attract fire, as that gives a constant damage resistance buff.

Somewhat recently, STO had some minor changes to shields.
Nothing too big, but the "Emergency Power to shields" and "Reverse Shield Polarity", powers will now stop the Borg shield neutralizers immediately.

Ok so if you take nothing else from this guide...

Tactical Team is your friend for automated shield management!
Or if you wish, a single reverse shield polarity is not a horrible idea either..

The Bridge officer powers section is the more details list of what to use.

although.. even a tap of redistribute shields hotkey would save many people a death.