Capacity is the total load your Capacitor has before it runs empty and needs to be recharged.
Personally I don't see the reason to do any PD mod other than WEP focused but YMMV.
Personally I don't see the reason to do any PD mod other than WEP focused but YMMV.
Well that is because you don't know how it work. Wep focused is not that good how it sound actually. After nerf of ENG and SYS regen especialy.
There's no right answer. It depends on builds and play style. For instance if you aren't constantly managing PIPS (most don't) and notice you're weapons capacitor is drained all the time get a weapon recharge. If you notice you always have power for weapons but would like to boost more get a engine recharge. If you don't have a problem during a fire fight but want to do more burst damage at the beginning get a weapons capacity upgrade. if you want to be able to do 2 quick boosts (boost toward, flip, boost back) but don't quite have enough energy get an engine capacity.
Basically get a feel for what you wish you had more of, decide if you can do less with everything else and if so get that upgrade.
Personally my play style at the moment lends itself more toward weapons recharge, despite the recent ENG/SYS nerf.
Basically get a feel for what you wish you had more of, decide if you can do less with everything else and if so get that upgrade.
Personally my play style at the moment lends itself more toward weapons recharge, despite the recent ENG/SYS nerf.
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The SYS upgrade is the most useless by far though.
Why upgrade SYS cap and regen when the only reason SYS drains is shield damage, which doesn't regenerate in combat and the upgrade doesn't effect the shield hardness value from pips?
Why upgrade SYS cap and regen when the only reason SYS drains is shield damage, which doesn't regenerate in combat and the upgrade doesn't effect the shield hardness value from pips?
Then weapon focused is a good middle ground between that.
If you want the absolute maximum sustained boost rate your ship can manage (4 pips, boosting every time it has enough charge to do so), you'll want to get grade 5 Charge Enhanced, as it can give up to 29% more recharge rate at the cost of at worst 15% less total capacity. The capacity has almost no relevance if you're doing an activity that needs a constant amount of power, as then you need high recharge rate.
Yeah as it stands I think charge enhanced is a bit too good. If anything the capacity needs at least a 15% extra to make it worth having. But still the loss of recharge for them still makes them a poor choice.
Yes, I'd currently only go with Charge Enhanced as well. Imo, with proper pip management to make up for the slightly lower capacity, you just can't beat having as much recharge rate as possible. And except in some very select few situations, the specialized upgrades are worse overall because their recharge rate is lower than Charge Enhanced, so the only benefit is the additional capacity but at the cost of capacity and recharge rate on the other 2.
Personally, I think that the Focused upgrades should be able to boost their single focus to a higher recharge rate then Charge Enhanced can overall
Doesn't regenerate in combat? Why doesn't it regenerate in combat for you ...?
Every sys module (as noted on the modules tab) uses sys energy. Shield recharge is by far the most notable one, but an ECM charge will also take a chunk off it not unlike boosting from eng.
Having a larger and faster recharging sys is pretty useful, because that means you need to put pips into sys for a shorter amount of time to top it up and can run without any in there while not taking fire. You get to be faster and deliver more damage.
You don't have a choice there. When you decide to improve just one capacitor (at expense of the other two), you improve both capacity and recharge rate.
The choice only exists for either improving all capacities or all recharge rates.
As already mentioned high capacity is only useful for alpha/burst energy. Any time you want to output a lot of energy at once just from the capacity store, regardless of pip levels (which is shield recharge/ECM, boost and weapon cooling).
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obviously this depends on your powerdistributor class + quality. if you have a powerdistributor which has a problem double-boosting, charge-enhanced might get your capacity down, so you can't boost two times in fast succession (would be the case with an adder for exampel, which run a small PD one class lower than its trhusters - and in case of a DBS - and it is the case with a class 4D on my DBE).
but if you anyway run a combat-ship (which have good PD classes in most cases), and you run an a-class powerdistributor, charge enhanced will be the way to go.
also, afiak, engine focussed PD only comes in level 3 (if I'm not mistaken).
That or tone down charge focused a bit. Having it on par with the focused charge rates would be fine for all of them, however having a deeper pool would give the focused ones the edge they deserve. Any way you go about it though charge enhanced needs a look as it is a bit too good in its current state.
It doesn't regenerate when you get shot, and for a short period after. So in-combat regen is unlikely to completely drain the capacitor unless the fight is taking forever, or maybe you are flying a small ship with a tiny PD and rely on natural shield regen more. Everything else basically just requires one bar of SYS energy to function, if at all.
A larger capacity means you have more time to flip the pips. I've seen some vids where a highly skilled player used energy management constantly, allowing one to drain low before flipping the pips to recharge. When not being shot you don't need four pips to shields is an example so you can flip to weapons to fill up the capacitor. In this situation a bigger capacity will benefit the most. So I'm going to disagree. A more skilled distributor manager will constantly move the pips as and when. A less skilled will rely on a faster charge. I think that's where you should draw the line. Highly skilled - more capacity. Less skilled - more recharge.
edit: basically you'll never better a more skilled pip-flipper. He or she will always be situationally aware. If they need to recharge weapons and are being attacked they'll boost to give time to recharge removing themselves from your fire. They'll know when to boost and preempt. They'll always have charge where they need it and when. You won't. They'll always be one step ahead.
edit: basically you'll never better a more skilled pip-flipper. He or she will always be situationally aware. If they need to recharge weapons and are being attacked they'll boost to give time to recharge removing themselves from your fire. They'll know when to boost and preempt. They'll always have charge where they need it and when. You won't. They'll always be one step ahead.
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I use engine focused on ships I don't put weapons on as i know I'm always going to run in that ship. Some of the ships I've done that way can boost almost continuously. I like that setup for trader or exploration builds.
Otherwise all my ships just get the recharge rate mod.
Certainly my racing ship/blockade runner with no weapons does not benefit from WEP focused (I went engine-focused, there. More boost wins races).
I actually went for increased recharge on my main combatant (FdL) - with efficient weapon on my lasers and recharge on my distributor, I can put 3 pips in WEP, fire all day long, and still have enough power remaining to have one pip in ENG for maneuvering and boost and 2 in SYS to feed the shields/chaff/PD... or two in ENG and one in SYS for a lighter, agile opponent. I don't have to do quite as much pip switching as I did before, so I can focus more on my opponent.