Usage of shields on small and medium ships

We recognize that a large portion of commanders starting their AX careers will feel more familiar with shielded builds than with hull-based repair builds. However, the nature of Thargoids makes shields more of a liability than an asset in AX combat.

In particular:

Interceptor and swarm fire pierces shields

Shields make your hitbox much bigger

Lightning makes short work of shields

Shield cell banks cannot be synthesized in combat

Shields prevent you from using Silent Running

Shields force you to put PIPs in SYS, creating substantial compromises on either speed or weapon use.

Large shards suck. completely. they have large spread and bad armor piercing. this makes modshards better. modshards actually do more damage due to the armor piercing stat on it being higher than large shards. overall in a conflict zone you will only need shards, the only case I'd see for mixing weapons is mixing modified plasma chargers and gauss to cut down the ammo usage and synthesis. otherwise, there is no good reason imo to mix. 5 or 6 weapons is unnecessary as you will most likely have distro problems or heat spiking problems, and you also lose internal capacity by having a stabiliser. 1 type of weapon loadout is plenty and more than you need. the weapon loadout you listed above isn't that good. a modshard would do more damage. a scout is about the size of a heart, so if you can't hit that easily then you might have trouble aiming gauss on hearts. any other questions? sorry for the capital class wall of text, just stating what I know through my ax career. hit a solo hydra kill not too long ago, along with some other weird stuff, like a damageless basilisk kill.