Currently as it stands in-game, shield cell modules are a I-win button of shield regen even under heavy fire. Whilst this makes hunting down NPCs trivially easy (and just a matter of managing how many cells you have left), it makes PvP utterly pointless.
Any self-respecting pilot would have shield cell modules. Those who want to ensure a win will fill their internals with
nothing but shield cell modules to ensure they have more than the enemy. It soon degrades a situation of who has more shield cells, instead of who's a better pilot. That's never fun, and never fair.
What I propose as a fix is to scrap the entire concept of shield cell recharge entirely, and rebalance the module so that it enhances whatever current shield generator is fitted onto the ship passively instead, and with more combat damage sustained, the module sustains more damage until it breaks or malfunctions, returning the shield generator back to baseline performance.
Lets call it a shield recharge module.
- Limited to one per shield generator, which means one per ship.
- Tremendously increase downed shield recycling from what can be 30 seconds-2minute now, to 3-7 seconds depending upon shield generator grade/class and ship.
- Any and all damage to shields will wear down the module. Downed shields will wear it down even more.
- The more damaged the module, the worse the sped-up shield down recycle time is.
- Module breaks on next downed shield state, which then recycles as baseline.
This makes it still a vital combat module, whilst not turning it into an I-win button with an ammo limit. It encourages people to naturally have attacks and retreats during combat and not be forced into waiting on shields to come back, giving the attacker free reign for however many minutes it takes.
It also encourages smart play from opposing pilots, who now have real reason to take the natural flow of combat (be it attack or defense) dependant upon one's shield state and/or other factors, instead of just staying full-on 4-pips to weapons and just hammering their trigger, gulping down a shield cell when needs arise.
Epic 1-on-1 duels are now possible and exciting, which rewards smart and skilled play instead of an exercise in who brought more shield cells to a fight.
EDIT 1: Seems a mod moved this out of the correct section and into here, and merged many more threads to my original post. All well and done, though I feel exposing this to the greater forum community just unnecessarily increases the noise-to-signal ratio. Also, there are some folk stating that sticking to 1 module is fine and balanced, but then I will iterate the Assassination Mission Anacondas, being taken down by Cobras, Vipers, and even Eagles with just one shield cell mod. If you're going to take down the end-game ship in the middle-of-the-road ship, you should either fail outright, or you shouldnt be facing endgame ships as targets, which brings forth more systemic problems with risk vs reward in combat in Elite: Dangerous currently.
