Game Mechanics Revealed: Shield Power and Damage Resistance

Welcome to the fourth installment of Game Mechanics Revealed.  Star Trek Online is filled with vagaries; the devs are not forthcoming with clarification; the forums are a source of confusing and contradictory knowledge; the chats are rife with conjecture and misinformation.  In this series, I will attempt to find the answers and dispel the myths that plague our game.

My partner in science is the ever patient and ever enthusiastic @JeanLPicard.

Game Mechanics Revealed: Shield Power and Shield Damage Resistance

In several places both in game and online it is stated that damage to the shields varies inversely with shield power, yet there is no place to verify this on any display for your ship.   This has led to some argument about whether this effect is actually in the game.

Premise

Shield damage increases as shield power decreases.  Therefore we should be able to see a difference in the damage readouts in the combat log.

Experiment

A single polaron cannon is fired once at an opponent cruiser running at 50 shield power plus (unrecorded) bonuses and the combat log is reviewed for damage.  The test is repeated at 100 shield power with bonuses maxing out at 125.

Results

	Shield damage per hit
Hit	50+ power	125 power
1	376	245
2	369	267
3	367	325
4	378	290
average	372.5	281.75

Conclusion

It appears that shield damage does indeed scale with shield power as is stated in the documentation despite not showing the modifier anywhere.