Does shield recharge time need a buff?

Buff the Shield's - No, it's all about balance.

You should not be able to sit in the middle of a fire fight and shake off hits.

Fight, evade and recover, fight some more.
 
Buff the Shield's - No, it's all about balance.

You should not be able to sit in the middle of a fire fight and shake off hits.

Fight, evade and recover, fight some more.

Agreed, that is why I suggested to add Shield Chargers in addition to Shield Boosters. Makes a nice mix and with limited utility slots you have to decide. Speaking inn MMRORPG terms... you have to decide on higher max hitpoints for those double critical strikes with large heals (2x SCB) or faster regeneration for lower sustained damage. Of cause the Anaconda can have a mix with its 8 utility mounts, as it should.
 
The only thing I am aware of that we do not fully understand is how hull mass affect shield strength. Mike has given a fair few hints, and we seem to have pretty decent empirical results for that. What else are you looking for?

Actual figures and not stuff that has been gathered by "us" the user. I don't understand why its such a secret, it makes no sense to me why its so guarded and why they wont release a fully comprehensive data set of what does what. I cant think of anything in life that you would buy blind and have to do your own tests on to establish its specification.
 
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Actual figures and not stuff that has been gathered by "us" the user. I don't understand why its such a secret, it makes no sense to me why its so guarded and why they wont release a fully comprehensive data set of what does what. I cant think of anything in life that you would buy blind and have to do your own tests on to establish its specification.

True, and the devs have said that they want to provide more detailed information in the outfitting screen, it's just probably not quite high enough on their priority list.

At least with the information from the power distributors and the shield boosters we can pretty much work out the numbers for a given combination. Did you know that you can build an Anaconda with a gigajoule shield setup? :)
 
4 minutes to get online,
8 minutes to be 100% charged.
Fer-De-Lance, 5A Shield Generator, 2xA0 Shield Boosters.

Is there any hull able to last that long in a PvP fight?
 
no, 4 minutes is a LIFE TIME in a pvp fight. And if more than one person is shooting you with a decently kitted ship, you will melt.

If your shields go down, jump, run, cry, pray....2-3 vultures or FDL or python or heck cobras or vipers will melt any ship without shields, and they MELT shields too. The only fights which can last long are 1-1.
 
It's not needed. It's entirely related to shield strength, when they fail, if you have heavy ones, it provides a proportional window given how hard it was to drop them.

Alternatively you can equip lighter shields which will charge much faster, the choice is yours.
 
If you are running a shield booster and your shields go offline and you can get away to safety without jumping out, TURN it off , the regen will bring the shield back on faster , in fact , if you WANT to wait (you're in a decent RES instance and don't want to lose it)...leave it off until the shields are full...then toggle it back on again...with the shields being lower in strength with the booster off , they will recharge it faster.
 
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Buff the Shield's - No, it's all about balance.

You should not be able to sit in the middle of a fire fight and shake off hits.

Fight, evade and recover, fight some more.

Shield rings do not replenish while under fire. It takes a few seconds after you have been hit for them to resume regeneration, so that is a non-issue really.

And reinitialization times of failed shields are currently so long that it is simply not an option to keep fighting while they are down in one of the bigger ships. Sure, reduced repair costs mean you won't lose a fortune from just a few hits, but you'd still want to finish off your current opponent and then get the hell away and wait for the shields to reboot (or do a quick jump to supercruise, which imho must be a bug that it even does reset your shields). And that waiting then also takes simply too long.

I think it would be really good if SYS pips didn't just affect the rate at which he SYS capacitator refills, but also how fast shields replenish and reboot. I am, however, not sure, it may be the case SYS pips do indeed improve the shield reboot time, but if that is the case the effect is too small to be offset the problem.

4 minutes to get online,
8 minutes to be 100% charged.
Fer-De-Lance, 5A Shield Generator, 2xA0 Shield Boosters.

Even without shield boosters you might see "only" see times of 3 minutes and 6 minutes respectively, which imho is far, far too long. I say something about 30 seconds to get online again should be the norm for all ships and shield sizes, and 60 seconds to go from "just failed" to completely full (including reboot time) when not under fire.

Feels like we're approaching full circle after the shield cell and Python nerfs.

Shield cells, due to their very nature as consumables ("shield potions"), cannot and must not be a replacement for decent innate shield regeneration.
 
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4 minutes to get online,
8 minutes to be 100% charged.
Fer-De-Lance, 5A Shield Generator, 2xA0 Shield Boosters.

Then you're running with an inadequate power distributor or not feeding your SYS capacitor.

A 5A shield generator has a capacity of 475MJ and a 6A power distributor has a recharge rate of 3.2MJ/s. That gives you a time to 50% of about 75 seconds, plus the 15 seconds between losing shields and start of recharge. If you add two A0 shield boosters then your time for shields to come back goes up to 104 seconds plus the 15 seconds.

There needs to be some downside to running around with larger shields and recharge time is it.
 
Then you're running with an inadequate power distributor or not feeding your SYS capacitor.

A 5A shield generator has a capacity of 475MJ and a 6A power distributor has a recharge rate of 3.2MJ/s. That gives you a time to 50% of about 75 seconds, plus the 15 seconds between losing shields and start of recharge. If you add two A0 shield boosters then your time for shields to come back goes up to 104 seconds plus the 15 seconds.

There needs to be some downside to running around with larger shields and recharge time is it.

I hear several reports that recharge rate is static across the board.
Do you have a source where it states distributor rating does anything to shield recharge rate?
 
Then you're running with an inadequate power distributor or not feeding your SYS capacitor.

A 5A shield generator has a capacity of 475MJ and a 6A power distributor has a recharge rate of 3.2MJ/s. That gives you a time to 50% of about 75 seconds, plus the 15 seconds between losing shields and start of recharge. If you add two A0 shield boosters then your time for shields to come back goes up to 104 seconds plus the 15 seconds.

There needs to be some downside to running around with larger shields and recharge time is it.

The power distributor recharge rate says how fast it can feed power into the SYS bar, not how fast the shield can take power out of the SYS bar to replenish itself.

For example, the shields on my Python regenerate exactly the same with all but 0 pips into SYS. 1 pip is enough to refill the capacitator faster than the shield drains it. Compare that to an Eagle, where with 1 SYS pip the capacitator will drain if your shields need to recharge a lot.

It is this very rate at which the shield takes energy out of the capacitator to regenerate itself which should be greatly increased for all shields above size 3 (size 3 shields do seem to have it about right).
 
The power distributor recharge rate says how fast it can feed power into the SYS bar, not how fast the shield can take power out of the SYS bar to replenish itself.

No. It's pretty easy to test this: fit an E-grade distributor and see how long it takes your shields to come up from 0. Then do the same thing with an A-grade distributor. Leave full pips in SYS so that the capacitor is pretty much full the entire time.

Or alternatively do the same test but with 0 pips in SYS and see how long it takes for the capacitor to drain. Given that you have the capacity listed on the outfitting screen it's trivial to work out the discharge rate.

For example, the shields on my Python regenerate exactly the same with all but 0 pips into SYS. 1 pip is enough to refill the capacitator faster than the shield drains it. Compare that to an Eagle, where with 1 SYS pip the capacitator will drain if your shields need to recharge a lot.

This is confusing the recharge rate of the capacitor with the discharge rate of the capacitor. They're different things, and we're talking about discharge rates here.

It is this very rate at which the shield takes energy out of the capacitator to regenerate itself which should be greatly increased for all shields above size 3 (size 3 shields do seem to have it about right).

I don't agree with that, but hey.

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I hear several reports that recharge rate is static across the board.
Do you have a source where it states distributor rating does anything to shield recharge rate?

edshipyard has the numbers but I've verified them when doing some shield booster testing. You can test them yourself pretty easily but swapping out distributors and testing time for you shields to come up to 50%.
 
(No you'd FSD out and back in as that resets the shield, which is another issue altogether; as soon as that is fixed you'd have your 5 minutes fiddling-thumbs-time.



personally i do not think the shields should be changed... or if they are then only slightly as it is one of the strategies which has not already been nerfed (collision damage and docking assists have already taken much of the skill out of parking your vessel imo) ....

however shield reset jumping into supercruise IMO this is a (long standing) bug and imo shield recharge should take the same time regardless of whether you are in normal space or in super cruise. also imo even on logging out, if your shields are down i do not see why the game cant make a note of that before logging in again.

Even without shield boosters you might see "only" see times of 3 minutes and 6 minutes respectively, which imho is far, far too long. I say something about 30 seconds to get online again should be the norm for all ships and shield sizes, and 60 seconds to go from "just failed" to completely full (including reboot time) when not under fire.

God I truly hope they do not go that far............ I guess it all depends on why you/we/I bought the game but balancing the game for primarily PvP would be a real bummer for me - and that is what this would be imo. I bought a game where PvP was rare and co-operative multiplayer would be the norm, so to totally rewrite the balance of the game for it I would feel would be a bit of a broken promise TBH. In PvE the shield balancing makes really interesting tactical play.
 
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No. It's pretty easy to test this: fit an E-grade distributor and see how long it takes your shields to come up from 0. Then do the same thing with an A-grade distributor. Leave full pips in SYS so that the capacitor is pretty much full the entire time.

Or alternatively do the same test but with 0 pips in SYS and see how long it takes for the capacitor to drain. Given that you have the capacity listed on the outfitting screen it's trivial to work out the discharge rate.

If that is true, that is news to me. But it also strengthens my last point, the one you disagreed with. Because I have A6 shields on my Python, but an A7 power distributor. Yet in no way do I feel the fact that my power distributor is an entire class above my shields.
 
If that is true, that is news to me. But it also strengthens my last point, the one you disagreed with. Because I have A6 shields on my Python, but an A7 power distributor. Yet in no way do I feel the fact that my power distributor is an entire class above my shields.

It's not what I've been reading in other threads, including EDshipyard.
Shield Recharge Rate doesn't consider distributor rating or even size. All that matters if it's got power or not.
Full distributor with 0 SYS pips, recharge shield same rate as 4 SYS pips.

Would be nice with a comment from a dev on this, it's getting more and more debated around this forum.
 
If that is true, that is news to me. But it also strengthens my last point, the one you disagreed with. Because I have A6 shields on my Python, but an A7 power distributor. Yet in no way do I feel the fact that my power distributor is an entire class above my shields.

I'm not sure how it should feel. With an A6 shield generator and an A7 power distributor you can get shields back on in just over a minute including the 15 second pause, which doesn't seem bad.

Your A7 power distributor is 25% better (in terms of recharge rate) than your A6 distributor. Should it be more than that? ED has generally gone for linear progression rather than geometric progression, so it seems like a big jump to me.

I haven't looked at all of the numbers in any great detail so can't pick a particular area and say if it's out of whack or not, but in general running with both A-grade power distributors and A-grade shields the fighting ships all have somewhere around 75 seconds without shields (plus the 15 second pause). That doesn't seem to me to be excessive.

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Shield Recharge Rate doesn't consider distributor rating or even size.

This is incorrect.

Full distributor with 0 SYS pips, recharge shield same rate as 4 SYS pips.

This is correct. Pips in SYS affect the rate of energy going *in* to the SYS capacitor (it also affects shield strength, but that's a gameplay anomaly and not relevant to the recharge discussion).

Go try it, it will take you about 5 minutes to confirm yourself.
 
Handle it the same way that mana is handled in WoW. If a person is in combat (ie. theyve taken damage in the last 15 seconds) then only allow the shields to very slowly trickle charge as they do now; so slow that even a small ship wont have trouble taking them down. However this thread is all about not having to sit there for 5 minutes *after* combat is finished, waiting for shields to come back up again. So, once combat is done. ie. no damage for 15 seconds, no enemies within 3km, boost the shield charging significantly so that the person can rejoin the battle quickly.

This would give no combat bonus because it only applies whilst a play isn't in combat.
 
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