Are Shield Boosters worth it?

[Cmdr Travers]

I'm trying to build my combat rank at the moment. I have a fully equipped and engineered Federal Corvette. When I wanted to duck out of a combat zone to recharge my shields it was taking forever. I have Prismatic Shields on my Corvette.

I spotted a comment online saying you should deactivate your Shield Boosters. I did this and the shields recharged really quickly. When I activated the boosters again, the shield strength immediately dropped.

I've also noticed, I think, that in combat the shields tend to stay up longer *without* the boosters.

I know Shield Boosters got nerfed in a recent update. I read you should have no more than four, so four I have. I'm wondering though if they're actually worth having at all. What do you all think?

 

[rdizz]

Yes especially engineered. At least imo

 

[Ndarain]

Leave, then drop out of super cruise a bit away, then pop in and out of silent running, then reboot repair while stationary

 

[goemon]

I'm trying to build my combat rank at the moment. I have a fully equipped and engineered Federal Corvette. When I wanted to duck out of a combat zone to recharge my shields it was taking forever. I have Prismatic Shields on my Corvette.

I spotted a comment online saying you should deactivate your Shield Boosters. I did this and the shields recharged really quickly. When I activated the boosters again, the shield strength immediately dropped.

I've also noticed, I think, that in combat the shields tend to stay up longer *without* the boosters.

I know Shield Boosters got nerfed in a recent update. I read you should have no more than four, so four I have. I'm wondering though if they're actually worth having at all. What do you all think?

several things:

a) shield will come back at 50% strenght. if you have boosters disabled, it will come back online earlier - but with less strenght. might be worth it, especially if you have a lot of shield cell banks, or if you feel comfy with that lower MJ to get back into combat.

b) reboot - repair out of combat brings your shields back at 50% since 2.2.x, that's the faster way than to wait out shield recharge.

c) generally for extended combat pve, i really recommend bi-weave shields. the recharge rate, both if down or up, is mental - you can check the numbers in coriolis or ingame, or do the math yourself, but basically you win more total MJ over a session. a single booster can make up the difference to an a-class shield. prismatics and a-class shields have their place for single engagements or pve.

d) if you engineer, go thermal resist on the shield and fit 3 res augmented shieldboosters, the rest heavy duty. resistances apply their bonus to the top-up by scb as well as the biweave recharge, while shields which go for raw strenght and not for resitances first don't get those additional "total MJ".

 

[Loskene]

The nerfs got rolled back so megajoule stacking is still the meta. Boosters all day my dude.
The recharge thing when you turn them on and off is because your shield display represents your maximum shield capacity and turning boosters on and off changes that max number. Your shields have to recharge to 50% when down before they'll go back up, so if you turn off your boosters while they're cycling you decrease the maximum and therefore the time it takes to reach 50% of that maximum. So for example if your shield capacity is 500mj stock and 1000mj with boosters, then if they collapse with the boosters active they'll have to charge up to 500mJ (half the total capacity with boosters) before they'll come back online. But if you turn the boosters off when they drop, you'll only have to charge 250mj before they come back online. When you turn the boosters back on then, they'll still only be charged 250 out of the (now) total 1000mj, which is why they'll appear to be lower than before you turned them on, but your shields will be up in half the time it would have taken you otherwise.

 

[Dialectic]

I'm also interested in this, and from unengineered perspective. On an A rated Vper 3 I have two boosters in the utility but then in optional I'm equipping hull defense for hull tank. Is this a bad mix you think? Are two shield boosters worth it? I think they only add around 30ish total. My awesome shields mj with bi weave is like 130 lol. Some of you posting 3k shields and my eyes pop out of my head

My viper currently:

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/viper?code=A2p5t5F5l9dasbf2272724240404B42929276a.AwRj4zyA.Aw19kA%3D%3D..EweloBhAWEoUwIYHMA28QgBwE4DMQA%3D%3D&bn=Cannon%20tank

 

[CMDR Greg Wayne]

For a ship like the Viper MKIII you are better off with dual chaff for PvP or PDs for PvE, since as you noticed yourself, the boosters are percentual and on a shield that weak it really doesn't add up to any larger numbers. To add the bi-weave on a Viper regens really fast so with the speed in mind you could simply boost off to outside effective fire range of your opponent and let it recharge and then re-engage.

 

[Dialectic]

For a ship like the Viper MKIII you are better off with dual chaff for PvP or PDs for PvE, since as you noticed yourself, the boosters are percentual and on a shield that weak it really doesn't add up to any larger numbers. To add the bi-weave on a Viper regens really fast so with the speed in mind you could simply boost off to outside effective fire range of your opponent and let it recharge and then re-engage.

That makes sense. I recently have swapped out one of the boosters for heat sink to help disengage . I think I'll take your advice and swap the other for chaff

 

[newman1702]

Shield boosters are definitely worth it and are the only way to shield tank. They do what it says on the tin - boost your shield strength by a certain % - and with engineers that % can be improved, as well as resistances can be added. Stronger shields take longer to recharge / come back up when broken, this is why you turn boosters off when shields go down; they will come back weaker, but faster, and some shield is better than none.

You also wrote your shields weakened when you turned boosters back on - they didn't. For example, say you have a maximum of 1000MJ shields without the boosters, and 3000 with them. Your boosters are off and you are at full shields - all 3 rings. Now you turn the boosters back on, and suddenly you're at 1 ring. It may look like your shield strength dropped, but you are still at the same strength - 1000MJ - only difference is that you used to be at 1000/1000, so, 100%, indicated by 3 full rings, and now with boosters on your maximum trippled, so you are now at 1000/3000, or 1 third, indicated by 1 ring out of 3. Whenever you felt your shields lasted less in combat with boosters, you were mistaken (or taking a lot more sustained dps, making it an uneven comparison).

Boosters not being worth it is something any Cutter or Vette pilot with thousands of MJ would just laugh at. I recommend unlocking Lei Cheung and Didi Vatermann asap.

 

[Siranui]

OMG YES! grade 5 resist boosters, with a smattering of G5 heavy.

Don't use prismatics on sustained combat craft: Go for Bi-weaves with G5 thermal resist modification.

 

[CMDR Harada]

They are working as expected.

HD boosters effectively increase shield size, so yes, it takes longer to fill up the bigger 'bucket' using the same 'hose'. This is also why, with shields down, you can get them up faster by turning the boosters off. There was also supposed to be a booster stacking penalty, where the boosters became less effective the more you piled on.

The new meta seems to be not running as many HD boosters as running RESIST boosters. Getting your resistances over 50% seems to offer advantages : Faster recharging and effectively 'larger' SCBs due to smaller shield size. Also, you take half damage, doubling your apparent shield size. From your opponents perspective there is no difference between an 8k MJ shield and a 4k with 50% resists.

So, in practice a 4k MJ shield on your Corvette/Cutter, with 50% resists acts like an 8k MJ shield from an overall damage view. But it charges twice as fast. And gets twice as much recharge from a 2k SCB ( 50% !) versus a true 8k MJ shield ( 25% ).

I've not tested this versus ramming, but suspect that you'll be worse off in that respect since ramming compares actual shield sizes. I'll let someone who knows that comment on it.

I run prismatics on my 'Vette as well, and there is a noticeable difference once you tweak the resists. Versus thermals ( Lasers ) it was awful, IIRC. Getting that one up vastly improved my time at a RES/CZ/CNB.

My new basic rule is to get the resists to 50% or better, and then outfit up to 4 HD boosters if I have room. Note that smaller ships that only have room for one or two boosters will have to be very picky about optimizing and RNGineers rolls.

 

[newman1702]

OMG YES! grade 5 resist boosters, with a smattering of G5 heavy.

Don't use prismatics on sustained combat craft: Go for Bi-weaves with G5 thermal resist modification.

Prismatics are amazing for large ships with strong shields - with shld strength MJ in the thousands, it will take a long time for them to recharge, bi-weaves or not. I mean, when you're taking fire, 5 or 7 minutes to get your shields to come back up makes little difference, by that time you either ran or died (or killed the target). Since recharge times are too long to matter on these big shield tanks, I prefer to then have much stronger shields, which is where prismatics come into play. That being said, any combat craft with shields below FDL level is probably better off with biweaves, as the recharge times are low enough for biweaves to make a meaningful difference. But for the big 3? Prismatics all the way for combat roles.

 

[GTwannabe]

Ditch the prismatic shield. I run a G5 reinforced 7C bi-weave on my Vette with a mix of heavy duty and resistance augmented boosters. ~2200MJ of shields and the recharge rate is so fast I don't need shield cell banks.

 

[ratchet5000]

Ditch the prismatic shield. I run a G5 reinforced 7C bi-weave on my Vette with a mix of heavy duty and resistance augmented boosters. ~2200MJ of shields and the recharge rate is so fast I don't need shield cell banks.

Depends on what you need. I get nearly double the shields at 5000 MJ with G5 reinforced, and G5 resistance and heavy boosters on an A7 prismatic. I even reserve a utility slot for a heat sink, so I only have 7 boosters.

With that many MJ, the shields drop so rarely (and never in PVE, at least before my G4 multicannons run out of ammo), the station recharge and the occasional SCB does just fine.

 

[Saool]

Don't fall into the mistake of thinking those three rings round your ship are absolutes. One ring with a bunch of boosters might be a lot more MJ than two rings with no boosters. The reason your shield recharges faster when you turn off the boosters is the over all MJ drops. And it therefore follows that once your shields are back up and you switch them on again, that, visually, it will look like your shield went down, however it's just the max MJ went up so overall less of your new max MJ is active.

On every ship I own my utilities are the same unless I need a specific module for a specific task: 1 x chaff and the rest are engineered boosters over a grade 5 thermal resist shield.

 

[biohazard15]

First of all: you do not recharge prismatics. Either use rebbot to bring them back to 50%, or go to station.

Shield boosters are totally worth it. I fly a Vette with 7A reinforced prismatics and eight A-class boosters (2 thermal, 2 resistant, 4 heavy), which gives me 5300 MJ. I replace one heavy booster with KWS if I'm going to RES - that leaves me at 4500 MJ but same resist stats. Basically the closest thing to godmode one can have in this game.
Note that I a) PVE-only player and b) do not like any "challenges" associated with weak shields.

 

[Loskene]

First of all: you do not recharge prismatics. Either use rebbot to bring them back to 50%, or go to station.

Shield boosters are totally worth it. I fly a Vette with 7A reinforced prismatics and eight A-class boosters (2 thermal, 2 resistant, 4 heavy), which gives me 5300 MJ. I replace one heavy booster with KWS if I'm going to RES - that leaves me at 4500 MJ but same resist stats. Basically the closest thing to godmode one can have in this game.
Note that I a) PVE-only player and b) do not like any "challenges" associated with weak shields.

God that sounds so boring.

 

[KG_Jedi]

Shortly - yes.

 

[biohazard15]

God that sounds so boring.

To each his own.

 

[Dialectic]

Shields need a nerfin 5300 plus resistances? Geeeez