First: I took the shield feats as early as possible, in hindsight this was a mistake since the shield is pretty mediocre offensively without spec points (around 100 base damage for 15 AP at level 10 with max boarding up stacks & a quality ~55 shield) & is unreliable defensively.
Second: Deciding on base abilities was a pain since shield feats require you to have 8 strength minimum, deciding on weapons was a bit difficult as well but ultimately I settled on knives.
My thought process while going through weapon options was this:
Swords - Requires spec points, while shield also requires many.
Spears - Very feat heavy, shield costs 3 feats on its own, 4 if you count nimble due to shield having high armor penalty, will also usually take 2 turns to stack boarding up due to high ap cost.
Fists - Very feat heavy and forces you to either use a weaker shield to get lightning punches or spend spec points on lightning punches & a feat on armor sloping.
Ultimately I settled on knives due to them being very light on feat cost while costing low ap meaning I can get boarding up online and start shield bashing from turn 1, I also took significant investment in Temporal Manipulation to ease encounters against robots and to let me bash twice in a turn by combining LTI + shield cooldown spec.
On defensive effectiveness of shields: Surprisingly, even with only 3 con shields are very effective defensively if a bit unreliable due to only having 50 block chance, early on you are likely going to be able to block around 100~ damage (quality ~55 tungsten) with your shield after boarding up and by midgame I was able to craft a shield that can block up to 220 damage (~140 quality tungsten)
Cons of shield: Firstly the armor penalty for riot gear and a tungsten shield is notably high at 46, which pretty much forces you to take nimble if you want to sneak / have significant movement points, I originally planned on taking armor sloping as well but decided 9 armor penalty wasn't worth a feat due to shields being so feat heavy already.
In the early game and until you get specialization points into shield bash to lower its cooldown and ap cost, the build is mediocre in almost every way, with high armor penalty limiting mobility and stealth as well as below average offense and defense due to taking shield perks & nimble early.
Build I used:
https://underrail.info/build/?EQgOBwMDAwYALwBfKAA8RS4AAF9FDjAaAAAAXwAAOCTCgis_JsKqPMKrMRPCiOK2tQLfvgIf anyone else has tried playing with riot shields it would be interesting to see your builds & thought processes making them, especially since there are very few riot shield build posts to be found online.
