Hull and shields are two stats in the game Galaxy Legion with essentially the same purpose: they increase your maximum health. The two stats have a couple important differences but it really feels like one or the other should be superior most of the time. Both ships and bases use the two stats but they use them in different ways so it's possible what's right for one is wrong for the other. So, what are the differences between these two stats? Which should we use?
At any given level of research hull is more efficient on a per-space basis than shields are. For example, in a mid-high range (best one with an upkeep less than 1M) you can get either 222 shields in 39 space or 470 hull in 29 space. At the very top tier you can get 559 shields in 52 space or 1105 hull in 43 space. Hull is just better at increasing your maximum health. Is there something else going on to make shields better?
First of all there are artifacts which can temporarily buff each stat. I get enough of them that I can pretty much have both up the entire time I'm fighting if I want to. The shield buff is +100%, the hull buff is +50%. That chews up a lot of the gap between the two for sure, but not the entire thing. And to mitigate some of that advantage I actually have special modules which give me a flat +10% hull off the top...
The actual important difference is how you heal up damage to the two. Hull can be repaired to full by paying 1/6th of your upkeep cost. (You pay a proportional amount so if you were only half damaged you only pay 1/12th of your upkeep cost.) You can make this repair once every 5 minutes. Shields can't be repaired but instead recharge naturally. By default you recharge 2% of your maximum shields every 2 minutes but you can get modules which decrease the time between shield recharge ticks. (I'm down to a tick every 74 seconds.) So I can spend around 200M to repair my hull every 5 minutes or I can wait 62 minutes to heal my shields to full for free.
Also there are consumable artifacts that restore all of your hull, or all of your shields, or all of both. And when you level you get all of both. Optimally you'd probably focus on one of hull or shields and trade consumables with someone focusing on the other one but I'm too lazy to bother with that. I just use both when I feel the need to do so. (Typically when fighting a powerful enemy base!)
Which of those is better? Well, it depends on how you're playing. If you tend to do a lot of combat in a short period of time then paying for that repair is probably pretty good for you. The shields will probably only tick a couple times before you're done so they're really not very good at all. On the other hand if you're attacking sporadically throughout the day (say, for example, you're killing players off and on for red and yellow badges) then the shield recharge is a really substantial thing.
Personally I don't have any researched shield or hull modules equipped at all. I do have a bunch of mission reward stuff of both types equipped and would be more apt to equip a shield module than a hull module at this point because I tend to do a lot of periodic attacking throughout the day. Mostly I'm just making both of those numbers bigger with one-shot artifacts that permanently add to those stats without taking up any space at all.
Bases work a little differently. There's no way to speed up the rate their shields charge. Hull is always 50% better than shields are in terms of raw maximum health. There are no consumables to instantly restore either hull or shields. You can still repair to full but it has a 4 hour cooldown. You have an extra ability to heal hull, but not shields, based on how many fixer professions are in your legion. And perhaps most importantly you don't get to choose when the fight is happening. They do. It takes 50 minutes for the shields to charge up enough to break even with hull if you don't repair at all. If you do repair it takes 200 minutes for the shields to break even. Note you can actually repair a second time after 240 minutes so there's a pretty small window where shields could possibly beat hull. Nevermind the fact that pretty much every time our base has died most of the damage has come in a very short window of time, much smaller than 50 minutes. Massive shields can be demoralizing to legions that don't plan ahead and therefore get Bunged when they start attacking without realizing that they could win but they don't actually keep you alive better than equivalent level hull would.
So while I think shields vs hull is an interesting decision when it comes to how you build your ship I think it's a no-brainer when it comes to building a base. Shields are terrible. Unfortunately no one in my legion has researched hull high enough to build anything good at this point so we're stuck with shields. (Shield research helps defend planets and as such I've actually almost finished off the shield tree.)
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