EMP bombs,lasers/plasma,rockets...
If you cannot build that stuff yet,you need to postpone taking on shielded POIs.

Bases often have blind spots you can get an sv into and then take down their shields then destroy the dome shield generator. Other than that an easy way to take shields down is by using terrain to hide most of your ship and then just hold click until shield goes to 0. I have a couple SV designs meant to make their own holes to do this with in case it's just flat all around the POI. If those sound too cheesy then make a ship with enough acceleration to dodge lasers and missiles then you can just fly around as you disable its defenses. It really doesn't take much to get the job done.

Didn't know EMP bombs were a thing, so I'll have to try that out.

Nope, still took too much damage. It's just bad with damage going through shields now.

Go watch Spanj's RE2 series.. but those big domes on top are as susceptible to shield penetration as you are..

Taking down POIs demands lots of patience and reinvent old strategies..
When i came from RE1 to RE2 i was very disappointed about some RE2 new mechanic like thrusters, cpu, shield but i gave a chance and now i love RE2.
About POIs, i had to learn how to build and control a HV ( always hated HV in RE1) and now is my first choice to defeat any POI. Also, i use SV too but mainly to down Kiuvera Patrol Vessel.
HV has a lot of advantage: can be a real tank with combat steel + shield, deadly with medium weapons (railguns, plasma and laser/gun turret) and fast with plasma thrusters. Its hard and tricky in the beginning but really worth and fun.

Edit: I forgot to mention

POIs cannot repairing itself and can be damaged trough the shied. (You can disable POI's turrets even if shield is up and reapir your ship if needed)
Beware the Flak turrets. Flack turrets can damage your ship quickly even with shields on .
Take advantage of terrain and natural barriers to attack, engaging the targets safe like a sniper

Originally posted by nevryn:

Go watch Spanj's RE2 series.. but those big domes on top are as susceptible to shield penetration as you are..

Doesn't matter if they're the same. The player cares about attrition from taking constant damage, the AI doesn't. It just results in more down-time, more tedious repairs, all the stuff that shields were supposed to prevent.

Originally posted by Midas:

It just results in more down-time, more tedious repairs, all the stuff that shields were supposed to prevent.

Shields are keeping chunks of your ship in one place.They are lessening the cost of combat, not negating it

Originally posted by Gollgo:

Originally posted by Midas:

It just results in more down-time, more tedious repairs, all the stuff that shields were supposed to prevent.

Shields are keeping chunks of your ship in one place.They are lessening the cost of combat, not negating it

Which is a downgrade from negating it like they used to (and even then, it still cost pentaxid and fuel). I can understand wanting to balance the utility of shields vs armor, but completely killing the ability to run a light fast vessel that relies on shields for its defense is just a bad way to go about it.

You can run a light ship with shields to take out pois? It's a ♥♥♥♥♥ to do and you need a *lot* of thrusters to stay mobile enough to dodge incoming fire, but strap on some large weapons that also get shield penetration and you are good to go.

You are correct, unless you build a gigantic ♥♥♥♥ off brick of armor the mod design is not meant for you to tank damage and go shot for shot with the enemy, but a shield lets you get away with taking more damage than you could withought.

Originally posted by Gollgo:

You can run a light ship with shields to take out pois? It's a ♥♥♥♥♥ to do and you need a *lot* of thrusters to stay mobile enough to dodge incoming fire, but strap on some large weapons that also get shield penetration and you are good to go.

You are correct, unless you build a gigantic ♥♥♥♥ off brick of armor the mod design is not meant for you to tank damage and go shot for shot with the enemy, but a shield lets you get away with taking more damage than you could withought.

It's also potentially all over if you take even one good hit. The POIs I've seen that are shielded often have a mix of fast and slow weapons, homing missiles, big cannons, small lasers, and typically have 2 turrets on every corner for lots of overlapping lines of fire.

Maybe an SV could be built for that if I had all the antimatter/quantum materials to just have the most efficient thrusters possible and still have enough CPU to still carry weapons, but taking out a POI shouldn't need that much end-game stuff and still be at risk of being destroyed if it takes a bad hit somewhere.

The reason I made this thread is because I wanted to know what is 'expected' to take on a POI like this. So far it seems like the solutions are:
A) Wait until you have end-game stuff
B) Build a brick of weapons and armor and brute force it
C) Cheese it

This was already bad in vanilla ever since shields were introduced, and RE2 just seems to make it even worse. Even more limited options, even more forced playstyles.

Originally posted by Midas:

It's also potentially all over if you take even one good hit.

If you have an exposed cockpit/bridge, yes. Flying a vehicle from a protected compartment in third person makes it much harder for any single hit to one shot you or your ship. Engines explode, protect them. Pilots are squishy, keep them inside.

Originally posted by Midas:

The POIs I've seen that are shielded often have a mix of fast and slow weapons, homing missiles, big cannons, small lasers, and typically have 2 turrets on every corner for lots of overlapping lines of fire.

Most big shields are on the roof, use a shield penetrating weapon to knock it out, same goes for weapons. Shield penetration goes both ways, there isn't anything the npc's can do you can not.

Originally posted by Midas:

Maybe an SV could be built for that if I had all the antimatter/quantum materials to just have the most efficient thrusters possible and still have enough CPU to still carry weapons, but taking out a POI shouldn't need that much end-game stuff and still be at risk of being destroyed if it takes a bad hit somewhere.

On planet? I use a maneuverable HV when i'm alone, biggest priority is taking out any weapons I am unable to dodge. You are right those missiles hit like a truck, if I can't see an exposed shield gen they are my #1 target.
Playing with friends we have one guy in a tank, another in a super maneuverable sv drawing fire/dropping emp's.

I have found pilot skill has been more of a deciding factor in our victories than having an overbuilt vehicle.

Originally posted by Midas:

The reason I made this thread is because I wanted to know what is 'expected' to take on a POI like this.

Sounding like you are fighting above your weight class, If the poi is too difficult I would go back to an easier sector to get better loot/refine the performance of a vehicle. There have been more times than I can remember where I simply did not have a good enough ship/skills to take on an enemy in this game, I come back later hopefully learning why I died and try again. It is the reason I play this mod, not many games have punched me in the face this hard and allowed me to understand what happened when I review the footage.

Another big thing I have found is finding "wasted" cpu. My combat ships have no QoL amenities, I don't expect to find a fridge on an F-16 fighter jet, so I keep it on a carrier ship.

The position of your thruster matters almost as much as how many thrusters you have, going hard on the building system allowed me to trim weight and unnecessary devices to further optimize my builds for the role they fill. They made it so you even have a choice of different thrusters to balance weight-to performance ratio's. A lot of my failings have been because I simply did not make a vehicle capable of what I was fighting, reworking the builds and pinpointing exactly why I was dying has helped tremendously.

You have shield penetration too.
If you destroy the shield generator that's making that dome, the shields will be permanently disabled.
That is in fact the intended combat method: Either bring the shields down with lasers/plasma/EMP and then destroy the shield generator or hit it with rockets/railguns/artillery through shields and destroy the shield generator that way.

If you're hovering in front of a POI, in full view of the guns, you will die; and you will deserve it.
Heavier armors will tank damage. A single layer of combat steel on an SV will take 50 rockets through shield penetration before it breaks.

Shame that some POIs spawn deforms the terrain where you have less options. I still disagree with shield penetration, imagine your favorite Sci fi ship taking damage before the shield went down.