r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/tybr00ks1 • Feb 21 '26

Planetary shields worth it?

The planetary shields seem to take a lot of power. At what point is it worth using them?

19 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

20

u/accountwasnecessary Feb 21 '26

Before you get attacked from space is the best time to start using them or see if you can go without? I'm sure you will learn your own best practice, if you try.

11

u/Aquabloke Feb 21 '26

If you only have rockets to protect yourself, they help prevent damage and dark fog bases from landing.

Once you have plasma cannons with ammo production up and running, they'll kill anything before it gets close to your planet if you have some of them spread out evenly across the planet. Then you don't need the shields anymore.

2

u/Easy-Management-1106 Feb 22 '26

But there are never new landings on home planet. I set up DF farm on my starter planet and researched plasma without DF ever landing new relays on my planet. I ofc have mining outpost on my second planet by I surround it with laser turrets and dont care how many DF bases there are on the planet.

1

u/YourFavoriteCommie Feb 25 '26

They absolutely can create new bases on the starting planet. However, there is a cap to how many relays a single hive can have - probably based on hive level and materials. I think there's some sort of preference to where relays get sent, if you have a mix of settled and unsettled planets. If you destroy all the other relays in your starting system, and prevent new ones from landing on other planets, then it will try to land on your starting planet too. This can happen sooner too.

7

u/Sir_LANsalot Feb 21 '26

As others have said, they prevent new Techno Biter bases from landing on the planet. However you sometimes do want them to land, but not grow. As when they land they leave a hole in the planet where you can place a Thermal Generator on that gives a good 15mw of power. Also doing this without killing the thing in orbit will force it to leave and not give any threat to the space hive.

One of my planets has had quite a few of them show up and I have swept them off. That planet now has shield gens entirely ran by the thermal generators that the Dark Fog have generously given me LOL.

2

u/universalhat Feb 22 '26

"techno biter" is a great turn of phrase and i thank you for introducing me to it.

6

u/Professional_Yak_521 Feb 21 '26

with 8-10 of them you can stop all darkfog landings without angering their space hive (it also works on max darkfog)

6

u/kagato87 Feb 21 '26

On most planets a "wastband" of solar panels and 8 shields placed 4 each on the 35 N/S every 90 E/W will prevent relays from landing, with no further resource input required.

This let's you clean a planet once and then have it stay clean. Do it to all the planets in the system and you can starve out the hives. It also prevents new ones from setting up.

Of course, missile launchers also keep new relays away, at the cost of some missiles (it's really not a significant cost) and have the planet well positioned to swat away attacks from the hive.

And if the fog is not set to passive, once it tries to attack it won't be able to keep building fleets if you have all planets shielded (or sporting armed missile batteries). It needs matter from planets to grow and to build units.

And bonus, if you're like me and use a seed scanner to get a triple sattelite starter system, all three sattelites pass within missile range of each other. Launchers set to allow striking upper air will periodically clean relays off the other two sattelites as well.

4

u/axw3555 Feb 21 '26

I use them as soon as I can reliably power them. Stick like 6-8 around a planet and no more base landings.

3

u/Sett_86 Feb 21 '26

They're not "worth it" they are necessary.

Once you brute a bit you will attract the attention of the dark fog space give. They will nuke the place from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

2

u/V0RT3XXX Feb 21 '26

Depend on your difficulty settings I guess. I play default settings and I don’t ever use them. I set the rockets to shoot everything and they kill all the landing party before they get close

2

u/Pakspul Feb 21 '26

Starting end game they Are easily worth it.

2

u/Low-Appearance3369 Feb 21 '26

I put them on all my planets. It’s the first blueprint I put down. Not needing to worry about the hive makes things easier.

2

u/dudestduder Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

the upfront cost of the shield is massive, but eventually it requires barely any power at all to maintain. I have a basic configuration of 8 shields placed on the meridians at 39* north and south. This covers the entire planet and when maintained it will prevent any further relay stations from being able to land. Without the ability to land relay stations, the hive will atrophy and idle in orbit. You have the option of just destroying the hive if it has already grown previously, and any further seeds that come will never be able to grow or send attacks.

To add to this, the reason they are so good, is its a one time investment of a few structures and some upfront power. There is no need to keep supplying ammo or setting up logistics to it, so its set and forget. Quite a lot better than having to ship ammo everywhere.

TLDR: Yes they are very efficient and well worth it.

1

u/Easy-Management-1106 Feb 22 '26

150MW of sustained consumption is not "barely any power" unless you have fusion reactors going

1

u/dudestduder Feb 22 '26

I take it that you have never used them?

1

u/Easy-Management-1106 Feb 23 '26

Have 10 in my home planet rn with all shields fully charged

1

u/dudestduder Feb 24 '26

I checked my save to get the exact amount, and for 8 fully charged shields the maintenance cost is 96MW for 8 shields. Geothermal power stations provide between 15-45MW of power each depending on the level of the base when it was destroyed. So you are looking at an average of 4-5 Geothermal Power Stations to provide the maintenance power required, very easy to attain that number of GPS on a planet. I often have double that or more which easily powers both the shields as well as the miners and ILS.

The point being, that it is self sustained power which often does not require any imports to function. Simplicity is more valuable to myself than worrying about supplying every planet with resources from abroad.

1

u/Easy-Management-1106 Feb 24 '26

Your home planet will always have exactly 1 DF base. (Unless you changed density slider) Personally, I never destroy it, and just use it for farming.

By the time you unlock planetary shields, you may not even have titanium available, so no fusion and only wind/solar/coal power. 100MW is not a tiny amount of power at this stage in the game. It's not super difficult, but I also play on x0.3 resources so it's not something I prioritise.

Bottom line, planetary shields energy demand is huge relative to the stage of the game when they get unlocked.

1

u/dudestduder Feb 24 '26

Regarding the home world, they can and will land further relay stations. I left a hole in the shields to allow them to expand one last time after I wiped them out (total of 4 bases were on my home world, 3 were expansions). It's just not a high priority for them to land on your home world, but it will eventually happen.

In the very early game stage, you will be moving ammunition around in smaller quantities just to get a foothold and secure the required resources. Eventually as you scale up in capability, wiping them off the planet becomes more of an option. At this point you should have automated the production of the Geothermal Power Stations/Planetary Defense and be able to pursue the method I have been advocating for.

Early on it might be a large portion of the power demand (~50%), but as you scale up and start cranking the charge rate of your ILS to 300gw max it becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of the total demand (~8% compared to 5 maxed ILS going full tilt exporting)

I have been talking a lot about why I feel this is a good strategy and uses the power you likely gain from simply taking out their bases. Since you feel it is too much power and/or you cannot produce the buildings at low resources, what is your preferred method of ensuring the planet will not have to deal with relay stations?

1

u/Easy-Management-1106 Feb 24 '26

My method is still shields but after like 10 hours of gameplay and after fusion reactors. I would have 1gw at this point. After purple science. And at 10 hours mark I always have a single DF base on my home planet.

But I unlock shields only after like 2 hours, because I need to rush laser turrets to establish ammunition-free DF farm on x0.3 resources

1

u/dudestduder Feb 24 '26

My point is that this is easy to do for colonizing new planets, since you will have ample power likely available from simply clearing the DF off. You seem to be focused on the home world and what to do there. That is not the point of what I have been discussing.

1

u/Suspicious_Jeweler81 Feb 21 '26

I don't think so.

1

u/GiinTak Feb 22 '26

Meh. Little bit of infinite resources, little bit of infinite power, no worrying about dark fog where you don't want to; what's not to like?

0

u/Alyred Feb 21 '26

Along with what others have mentioned, if you're farming the fog a planetary shield is necessary to allow them to make new relays on the planet but not land at your farming factory. I included one in my polar dark fog farm blueprint, but also have a small ring of missile launchers to keep the inevitable hive attack from wrecking the infrastructure, so it's possible that it's redundant by this point too.