Engineering Shield Boosters

[Ian Skippy]

FD proposed soft caps two years ago or so. It would mean diminishing returns beyond two HD boosters. It means the Uber Invincible Godshields would be nerfed (although still absurdly strong) so of course the forums burned down.

Any idea that adds any challenge, effort or consequence to anything will result in 200+ pages topics here. Since the Shield Incident FD has been silent on the topic. Lets hope they show a bit more of a spine with the current riots about the FSS...

 

[Stabby_Dave]

Also, depends if you're intending to go PvP or PvE - npcs tend to use thermal weapons IME.

 

[galahad2069]

Also, depends if you're intending to go PvP or PvE - npcs tend to use thermal weapons IME.

Not if you have high thermal res. They always seem to know your loadout before they take off. Go there in a shieldless hulltank and they're gonna spam missiles at you. Equip a point defence and not only are they going to stop launching missiles, they won't even have missile racks.

 

[Stabby_Dave]

Noted. Thanks for the heads up. I stand corrected. o7

Just been playing around on Coriolis with a 4 booster set up. Currently using all 4 thermal resist. Changing 2 to heavy duty makes a hell of a lot of difference, but adds 21 tons to the weight.

Not sure what effect this would have on a Mamba's already naff manoeuvrability.

 

[Hacker#451563]

The law of diminishing returns on the resists kick in hard at around the 58% mark, and it's almost impossible to go beyond the 66% mark for most builds.

 

[pzykozomatik]

Noted. Thanks for the heads up. I stand corrected. o7

Just been playing around on Coriolis with a 4 booster set up. Currently using all 4 thermal resist. Changing 2 to heavy duty makes a hell of a lot of difference, but adds 21 tons to the weight.

If you use lower grade SBs for the heavy duty modding you can still get a decent boost while greatly reducing the additional weight and power draw that come with the mod. Naturally this is especially useful on smaller ships which react more to mass changes and have not as much power to spare.

Example:

0A booster, heavy duty G5 / super cap: 73,9% boost / 14t / 1,50 MJ
0E booster, heavy duty G5 / super cap: 50,7% boost / 2t / 0,25 MJ

Edit: Same goes for other mods of course, a G5 resist augmented SB always gives you 17% resistances across the board regardless of being class A or E, you just lose on the shield boost percentage.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Noted. Thanks for the heads up. I stand corrected. o7

Just been playing around on Coriolis with a 4 booster set up. Currently using all 4 thermal resist. Changing 2 to heavy duty makes a hell of a lot of difference, but adds 21 tons to the weight.

Not sure what effect this would have on a Mamba's already naff manoeuvrability.

If you scroll down you can see agility with the current loadout across all three axes. Make sure to set all pips to ENG to see max agility.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

If you use lower grade SBs for the heavy duty modding you can still get a decent boost while greatly reducing the additional weight and power draw that come with the mod. Naturally this is especially useful on smaller ships which react more to mass changes and have not as much power to spare.

Example:

0A booster, heavy duty G5 / super cap: 73,9% boost / 14t / 1,50 MJ
0E booster, heavy duty G5 / super cap: 50,7% boost / 2t / 0,25 MJ

Edit: Same goes for other mods of course, a G5 resist augmented SB always gives you 17% resistances across the board regardless of being class A or E, you just lose on the shield boost percentage.

Ran the numbers on this on my Cutter with g5 reinforced 8c bi-weave and the results are ridiculous. Shield strength dropped to 2700mj from 3800mj (this only drops to 3250mj if I only use 3 e boosters with heavy duty and 3 a boosters with resistance), which is still way more than I need, and power use with weapons deployed dropped about 20%. Thermal resistance across all 3 is 31%, so I'm going to have to do something fairly silly to have these drop in PvE.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's E rated boosters if I want heavy duty from now on.

 

[Stealthie]

Ran the numbers on this on my Cutter with g5 reinforced 8c bi-weave and the results are ridiculous. Shield strength dropped to 2700mj from 3800mj (this only drops to 3250mj if I only use 3 e boosters with heavy duty and 3 a boosters with resistance), which is still way more than I need, and power use with weapons deployed dropped about 20%. Thermal resistance across all 3 is 31%, so I'm going to have to do something fairly silly to have these drop in PvE.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's E rated boosters if I want heavy duty from now on.

Hmmm...

I guess it depends on the ship but, on my Cutter swapping from A-rated boosters to E-rated boosters gives me 600MJ less shields and the payoff is a reduction in weight of 48t, which yields an extra 3m/sec speed and an extra 0.4Ly jump-range.
On a Cutter, I'll take the extra 600MJ of shields.

On a smaller ship (or a ship that was marginal for power) I guess it might be a useful thing to do but, I dunno.
Personally, I just always use A-rated SBs and I only ever engineer them for G5 HD or G5 RA, both with the super-cap XFX.
That way, I have pile of "standard" SBs in storage for use with any ship.
To me, that's more useful than trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from a specific build.

 

[Bortas]

I guess it depends on the ship but, on my Cutter swapping from A-rated boosters to E-rated boosters gives me 600MJ less shields and the payoff is a reduction in weight of 48t, which yields an extra 3m/sec speed and an extra 0.4Ly jump-range.
On a Cutter, I'll take the extra 600MJ of shields.

Yes, definetely not worth it on big ships or generally on ships that don't rely on maximum speed and maneuverability. I'm using e-rated shield boosters only on my max-jumprange taxi and on my enhanced performance Courier.

 

[pzykozomatik]

On a smaller ship (or a ship that was marginal for power) I guess it might be a useful thing to do but, I dunno.
Personally, I just always use A-rated SBs and I only ever engineer them for G5 HD or G5 RA, both with the super-cap XFX.
That way, I have pile of "standard" SBs in storage for use with any ship.
To me, that's more useful than trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from a specific build.

That's what I usually do too. I've just recently revisited some builds and some of my more power-deprived small and medium ships really did benefit from downgrading the SBs, especially since I've coverted to the Church of Armoured PP recently and try to switch over from OC where I can.

But like you said, on ships like the Cutter or Corvette I don't feel the need to use anything other than A-rated.

 

[Stealthie]

Yes, definetely not worth it on big ships or generally on ships that don't rely on maximum speed and maneuverability. I'm using e-rated shield boosters only on my max-jumprange taxi and on my enhanced performance Courier.

Was just browsing through the builds I have stored on Coriolis to see if there's any that could be improved by swapping to E-rated boosters and, I dunno.
Basically, all the ships I have which need good shields already have sufficient power to run A-rated boosters and won't really see a significant benefit from the weight reduction.

Interesting stuff, though, and I do have ships such as a Viper 3 and iCourer which are below the thrusters' minimum mass and could have E-rated boosters added with no penalty. [up]

 

[Stealthie]

That's what I usually do too. I've just recently revisited some builds and some of my more power-deprived small and medium ships really did benefit from downgrading the SBs, especially since I've coverted to the Church of Armoured PP recently and try to switch over from OC where I can.

But like you said, on ships like the Cutter or Corvette I don't feel the need to use anything other than A-rated.

Heh,

Was going to mention the potential for using an armored PP instead of o/c in my previous post.
Still not drinking the Armored PP koolaid, I'm afraid.
I do see the benefit of it but I don't think the increase to integrity is worth the effort (requiring, say, G5 mat's instead of G3) and, in combat, when my shields go, so do I.
I guess it's more useful in PvP, with module-sniping, and for fighting 'goids though.

This is what I like about ship-design in ED though.
It's fun when different things have a knock-on effect on other things.

Who says the game lacks depth?

 

[pzykozomatik]

Was just browsing through the builds I have stored on Coriolis to see if there's any that could be improved by swapping to R-rated boosters and, I dunno.

Ooh, tell me more about those.

Edit: Ninja!

And about the armoured PP, for me it's more about the combination of lower heat generation and increased power output which is usually sufficent for most of my builds, the integrity is just a nice bonus since I usually don't do PvP.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Hmmm...

I guess it depends on the ship but, on my Cutter swapping from A-rated boosters to E-rated boosters gives me 600MJ less shields and the payoff is a reduction in weight of 48t, which yields an extra 3m/sec speed and an extra 0.4Ly jump-range.
On a Cutter, I'll take the extra 600MJ of shields.

On a smaller ship (or a ship that was marginal for power) I guess it might be a useful thing to do but, I dunno.
Personally, I just always use A-rated SBs and I only ever engineer them for G5 HD or G5 RA, both with the super-cap XFX.
That way, I have pile of "standard" SBs in storage for use with any ship.
To me, that's more useful than trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from a specific build.

Using those numbers, I'd agree, take the shields. As I prefer armoured mod on my PPs, some of my builds are close to the line regarding power use, so it was the drop in power requirements that really got my attention.

To clarify as well, the part I thought ridiculous was that an e rated booster can be engineered to that level. Just my opinion, but it seems a bit much.

 

[pzykozomatik]

...but it seems a bit much.

Which accurately describes the state of the engineering mechanics as a whole in this game.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

FD proposed soft caps two years ago or so. It would mean diminishing returns beyond two HD boosters. It means the Uber Invincible Godshields would be nerfed (although still absurdly strong) so of course the forums burned down.

Any idea that adds any challenge, effort or consequence to anything will result in 200+ pages topics here. Since the Shield Incident FD has been silent on the topic. Lets hope they show a bit more of a spine with the current riots about the FSS...

Yep, they tested two variants, diminishing returns with and without an increase in base capacity. I have never understood why that was canned and never talked about again. The community response to the betas was overwhelmingly positive.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I suppose it's people think about what it would do to their shields without thinking that every other ship would be equally affected. I do like my shield tanks, but I really don't see any problem with an across the board reduction in values. So many combat issues seem to come back to this.

 

[Marklar_]

Just to add another wrinkle, keep in mind that if you use reinforced shields you can easily switch between prioritizing MJ or resists by swapping boosters.

But if you go with thermal resistant shields you can't max MJ without engineering another shield, although you can go farther with the thermal resist or swap a thermal booster for heavy duty.

I've done it both ways and I don't think either approach is best, it depends on whether you want more MJ or resists. But for myself I find it better to max the MJ on the shields and apply resists with boosters, for flexibility.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Hahaha, worried about the agility of a Cutter...

Best thing I've heard all week!

And thinking of undermining one of the Cutter's strongest attributes in an act of futility?

No no no...

Just crank up the MJs.