Look guys, the point of this thread was not to discuss the merit of my particular idea. The thread for that would be the one I made in the suggestions forum. The point of this thread is to try and come up with interesting alternative implementations for SCBs to make them more interesting to use and fight against, and resolve the knife's-edge balance connundrum they are currently in. I don't really want them nerfed, either- I don't think the amount of health they add to the fight is necessarily excessive. In fact, when faced with their counter, they're honestly TOO WEAK.
This is what I want people to think about:
How can we change SCBs such that
1) There an effective module that's a compelling choice when you're equipping your ship
2) Not obvious to "un-fun" to deal with from the other side
3) Have counter-play options (and ways to defend against said counterplay) that involve gameplay and player input, not just special effects and rock-paper-scissors build selection.
4) Are not overly game-changing when no counter is present
5) Are not useless when a counter is present
To be honest, a good start would be to massively reduce their effectiveness while removing or completely reworking feedback cascade. If feedback cascade were to make the railgun deal double damage or something like that to a player with an active SCB, while the SCBs themselves were to be reduced to around 1/2 - 1/3rd of the capacity, then they wouldn't be overpoweringly strong but also wouldn't be hard countered by a single railgun.
Alternatively, if you want to be really clever about them, don't make them recover shield in a constant way over the course of their duration, but instead give them something like a capacitor discharge curve where the discharge rate is proportional to their remaining capacity (or a similar curve, such as exponential decay) while the heat generated remains related to the discharge rate. So a class 7B SCB bank might regenerate 500 MJ per cell over the course of 10 seconds, but you would see half of that capacity in the first few seconds while the rest would be trickled out. A player initially activating a SCB would load a single cell and begin transferring power, while a second activation would eject the spent (or partially spent) cell husk, readying the SCB for another cell. This would keep SCBs as being a bulk store of shield to keep shields topped up during low-intensity fights, while a high intensity fight might only see a player actually using 30% of each cell as they try to maximise their regeneration rate.
For example, a stock 7B SCB has 6 cells each of 539 MJ for a total of 3234 MJ currently, which as we all know is a mind numbing amount to try to bore through. However, if each of those cells were to only provide 200 MJ within the first 5 seconds, 100 MJ in the next 5 seconds, then 50 MJ between seconds 10 and 15 and so on until the cell maxes out at 400 MJ after 30 seconds or so (to ensure that it actually does deplete, there could be an enforced minimum regen rate boost equal to the shield generators actual rate, so even during that final trickle charge they will still help as well as providing a little boost to biweaves for prolonged engagements), although obviously the numbers would require some tweaking as these are just an example. So someone who just wants to recharge after a battle could quite easily pop a cell and enjoy pretty much the same bonus as currently, just that it takes longer. Meanwhile, trying to burst someone's shields down would force them to burn through their cells as they want to take advantage of the spike in power that comes from using a fresh cell, perhaps even only using the first 2-3 seconds of a cell (which would only be 100-150 MJ or so). This would turn shield cell usage into a baiting game, as players don't want to run the risk of being bursted down while also trying to make the most of each cell.
