Ship Builds & Load Outs Shields: are recharge times right?

[KayAitch]

When you first start in a Sidewinder or Eagle weak shields are quick to go down but also fairly quick to recharge. In an Eagle I've pulled maneuvers like hiding behind an asteroid while my shields recharge and then gone back into combat with the same enemy.

However in larger ships shields take an egregious amount of time to recharge - I've lost shields, put 4 pips in SYS, hyperspaced away from a CZ, hyperspaced back to the same system, traveled to a station and docked, and my shields still haven't recharged yet!

This means that it's just about impossible to recharge shields during a combat engagement, which is especially frustrating as NPC don't appear to have the same wait. I've seen an NPC Anaconda restore shields in about 30 seconds.

This means that there aren't really any shield use tactics - you can't really back away for a bit and come back, you just have to FSD away.

In PvP this seems to lead to very shield-centric combat: loads of shield boosters and stacks of shield cell banks, first to lose shields loses the fight.

Shield boosters seem like they should add a choice between larger or slower shields, but as recharge rates are so slow boosters are a no-brainer: everyone carries as many of them as they can afford/power.

Is this as intended by the designers? It seems like there would be a lot more tactical options if shields regenerated at the same rate as NPC ones, but maybe have some choice: have a choice between slow to charge big shields and fast to charge weak shields for the same ship, or make shields recharge much quicker and weaker by default, but also make boosters add more protection but cost a lot more recharge time.

 

[KevinMillican]

No they're not. Ignoring SCBs, the shield charge rate seems to be the same across all ships. Higher rated shields and the addition of boosters just appears to increase the size of the shield reservoir you have to start off with (or level you can achieve by waiting or using SCBs).
IMHO shield boosters should not affect the total capacity of shields you can have but just the recharge rate.
I would also restrict the number of SCBs any ship can have to one slot, and make the initial charge rate dependent on the class/rating of the shield generator. There would still be room to make a sidewinder shields always regenerate the fastest and the largest shield generator on an Anaconda the slowest, but it is a bit silly to have exactly the same rate (in terms of energy/time) regardless of powerplant/distributor/shield size.

 

[KayAitch]

No they're not. Ignoring SCBs, the shield charge rate seems to be the same across all ships. Higher rated shields and the addition of boosters just appears to increase the size of the shield reservoir you have to start off with (or level you can achieve by waiting or using SCBs).
IMHO shield boosters should not affect the total capacity of shields you can have but just the recharge rate.
I would also restrict the number of SCBs any ship can have to one slot, and make the initial charge rate dependent on the class/rating of the shield generator. There would still be room to make a sidewinder shields always regenerate the fastest and the largest shield generator on an Anaconda the slowest, but it is a bit silly to have exactly the same rate (in terms of energy/time) regardless of powerplant/distributor/shield size.

Those are all quite complex changes - I think they don't need to do anything that complex:

• Internal components are more protected by armour.
• Broken shields (by default) are quite quick to recharge - in the ball park of 30s with 4 pips in SYS.
• Shield boosters significantly slow down recharge.
• Possibly make SCB either use a lot of SYS to reload or generate a lot of heat

I think that would be enough to make evasion during recharge a viable alternative combat ships.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

As far as broken shield regeneration is concerned, yeah that bothers me too. Personally I'd like to see boosters reduce the shield capacity of broken shields instead of increase the capacity of both, so that smaller (fragile) ships can trade a relatively considerable amount of power to bring their broken shields up in seconds and larger ships can shave minutes off their downtime.

As far as PvP is concerned, being able to lose without dying is a very good thing. Fleeing on shield loss isn't a bad thing I think. Besides, unless the target is a shield spec multi-hundred million credit ship, a good PvP build can punch straight through shields and SCBs in seconds.

 

[Mephane]

Shield regeneration should simply scale with the class and rating of the shield generator, for example:

- 0.5 MJ/s per class for E rated shields.
- 1 MJ/s per class for A rated shields.

E2 = 1 MJ/s
A2 = 2 MJ/s
A3 = 3 MJ/s
A4 = 4 MJ/s
A5 = 5 MJ/s
A6 = 6 MJ/s
A7 = 7 MJ/s
A8 = 8 MJ/s

As an example, an FDL with A5 shields and enough shield boosters to reach a capacity of 750MJ, that would still mean a regeneration time from barely failed to full of 750 MJ / 5 MJ/s = 150 s = 2 minutes 30 seconds, which is much more reasonable than the current 750s = 12 minutes 30 seconds.

Just look at that last number. That is almost quarter an hour you'd now have to wait at the moment!

 

[Calaban]

The shields on my Fer De Lance take for-ever to recover.

BUT I realize that is because I up-shielded it beyond its normal specifications.

The stock FdL has a E4 shield, and a size 5 cargo hold. What I (and probably most combat oriented pilots) did was sell that gen, and get a class 5 shield Gen.

So right there I am straining the power grid of my ship. I imagine if I went back to class 4 shields, the recover time would be better... but cannot find myself willing to do so (some more informed number crunching to talk me out of it would be appreciated, if there is a reason)

 

[goemon]

npc shields don#t recharge faster, btw.

they simply have smaller shields fitted than a cmdr would do.

 

[Mephane]

The shields on my Fer De Lance take for-ever to recover.

BUT I realize that is because I up-shielded it beyond its normal specifications.

The stock FdL has a E4 shield, and a size 5 cargo hold. What I (and probably most combat oriented pilots) did was sell that gen, and get a class 5 shield Gen.

So right there I am straining the power grid of my ship. I imagine if I went back to class 4 shields, the recover time would be better... but cannot find myself willing to do so (some more informed number crunching to talk me out of it would be appreciated, if there is a reason)

Well, there is relative and absolute shield regeneration. Relative regeneration, i.e. what fraction of the capacity is regained per time unit, is higher for smaller shields, but that is only because absolute regeneration, how many megajoules the shields regain per time unit, is constant, across all ships and shield regenerator sizes and ratings.

In other words, in 100 seconds, the A5 shield and E4 shield regenerate exactly the same amount of "hitpoints": 100 MJ. This makes it a complete PITA with bigger shields unless one succumbs to the SCB spam meta.