View source for Talk:Explorer/@comment-25981159-20150512234133/@comment-67.186.92.128-20150516060053

The auto field maintainence unit is a safety measure in case you take too much module damage from overheating and from emergency drops to nomal space from supercruise (example: jumping into a new system next to a white dwarf star and were captured by its gravity well before being able to slow down and/or manuver away)  The field maintainence unit will allow you to repair thrusts and FSD and other systems so that you can continue exploring or have the range to get back to civilazation instead of relying on the reboot/repair to maybe get operational long enough to get repaired.

As for shields, they will give you extra protection against collisions as well as the frustration of just barely making it back to civilization just to die from pirates or bumping into things as you dock.  Those who travel without any shields must be very careful if they are carrying any valuable data because if you have been traveling for a long time your hull integrity may have dropped down to a maximum of 50% of full strength even before taking any damage from overheat/emergency drops from supercruise/interdictions/collisions/combat.  This will greatly shorten the amount of time you have to get out of danger.  The drop in hull integrity is not shown by any display on ship, it has to be diagnosed by stations and outpost with repair capability as it represents the wear and tear of use such as metal fatigue.  Thus you can still show 100% hull with ship displays and have at minimum only 50% of the total available hull hit points.