I'll self-quote from the other thread, because I don't think the other thread has enough visibility so far. I have been thinking about SCBs some more, and I have an idea for how they could be redesigned to address excessive SCB spamming and slow passive shield regeneration simultaneously, while still preserving the idea that a bigger ship can stack SCBs for greater effect than an smaller ship:
Excellent idea, have some rep.
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This would work and fix numerous issues other CMDRs have. My main "anti-anti-SCB" thought is that with shields so critical to survival, if you got rid of them it would be "biggest shield/ship wins" assuming equal pilot skill. You're just shifting the issue from SCBs to shield size. Next people will complain about shield boosters.
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The two most serious issues this would fix are :
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One, when the shields are gone you're doomed because of the recharge rate. As it stands now that's the main reason for SCB use. Using them to recharge DOWN shields would be huge help in combat, and make them more useful. That's mitigated by ....
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Two, limiting how many you can "fire". Stacking would help in this new scenario, but only for a bit since you'd have to recharge the SCB. Load your ship to the rafters with SCBs, it won't matter as much as it does now. You'll have to recharge those things and the power has to come from somewhere. A Python would only have 4 or 5 SCB "charges" to fire before having to recharge them ( at maybe 4 or 5 minutes a pop ). This power would have to come from either weapons or engines, and is a finite resource in combat. Sure you could divert all power to the SCBs, but you'd limit your DPS, in effect "turtling". As it stands now, you can swap SCBs, and fire another 4 or 5 in under a minute. This dramatically changes the mechanic from a standard survival tactic to one where you might not use it until the shields were down, changing SCBs from a standard 'SPAM' technique to one that allows you to recover from a minor screw up.
I like it.