Ship Builds & Load Outs Question About Shield Cell Banks

[oflow]

I've read a few threads about the efficiency of the classes of the shield banks but I haven't seen a thread about the relationship of the class size of the shield cell banks in relation to the size of the shield they are being used with?

For example, if I have a 8A shield, is it better to use a higher class SCB like a 6A compared to a 4A for this shield?

 

[goemon]

shieldcellbanks have two different most important numbers: the amount of MJ they restore, and how often they can do it.

let's assume you have an FDL.

class 5 shield gives 470 MJ.

class 2A scb restores 64 MJ and has 4 cells ... using the whole SCB would only restore 50% of your shield.

class 4A scb retores 138 MJ (~33% of your shield) and has 4 cells, 552 MJ in total...

now turn it around and fit a class 4A shield and a 5A scb ... 391 MJ shield, each shieldcellbank cell restores 240 MJ (~60% of your shield), you have 960 MJ from the scb and 391 MJ from the shielding, so you have more total MJ available.

in those edgecases it might be even worth it to fit a larger scb than your shield generator class.

 

[oflow]

ok ty. but in a case like that wouldnt it be better to have a class 5 shield instead of a 4? I guess this is dependent on the hull size too.

 

[Ceekay]

I don't use SCBs myself but they do have spin up times of several seconds (5s for a 5A) so for goemons 4A example you need to fire the SCB when you've around 1 ring of shields left so the cell has enough time to spin up as it doesn't work on collapsed shields.

As goemon says I'd suggest you want to restore at least 60 - 70% of your shield with each cell so size the shield/SCB combination around this value but you also need to consider the heat generation as firing SCB's will cause significant thermal spikes so you'll probably need some heatsinks to cool the ship as well.

Kinda explains why I don't use them myself, keep it simple and know when to run!

 

[oflow]

I've used them and understand the heat and spinup time to launch them I was just trying to maximize their efficiency. Flying a T-9 even when running you're going to take a bunch of shots while the FSD warms up since you cant really just boost out of range of an attackers' weapons while waiting for the FSD to spin up. I also do a lot of salvage missions and often jump into places with multiple ships and get underfire while scooping the mats. I can usually shield tank them long enough but it depends on the weapons they are using too.

 

[Ceekay]

I would guess that optimising efficiency in cell usage, power draw and heat management will be different for each ship and each shield type, probably the weapons will impact the optimisation as well if they generate too much heat so if you have a proposed build in mind posting that would help with the assessment.

With the 3 shield types the regeneration rates are significantly different 8A standard 2.4/s, 8A Prismatic 1.4/s and 8C bi-weave 5.8/s with the addition of modded boosters it becomes more complex so the 60 - 70% recharge/cell(s) is probably a good starting point.