Right now I'm using a Python and I love it. I have a 5A Shield Generator on it and a 6A Power Plant. What I noticed is that if the shields are depleted in combat, it takes forever for them to recharge, even if I put all pips on SYS. I'm using almost all power from the Power Plant (around 95-98% when hardpoints are deployed). My question is: What exactly determines the shield recharge rate? I'm planning to upgrade both the Power Plant and the Shield Generator (to 7A and 6A respectively) and then I'll have more "leftover" power because I won't be using that much percentage. Will it result in faster recharge? Or what should I do to make it faster? Thanks.
Shield Recharge Rate
- Thread starter dreampage
- Start date
When your shields are down, four pips to SYS will bring them online quicker.
Shields recharge at the same rate though (1mw/s?) which doesn't drain the capacitor. Having more than one pip to SYS during charging has no effect, although shields are better able to withstand attack with full pips.
Shields recharge at the same rate though (1mw/s?) which doesn't drain the capacitor. Having more than one pip to SYS during charging has no effect, although shields are better able to withstand attack with full pips.
Also shield boosters cause them to recharge slower when depleted i think, so deactivate them when they are recharging as they are useless anyhow
They do take a while... even more so with the 6A shield gen. Like has been mentioned, turn your boosters off when you're recharging and it helps. But a partial recharge then switching the boosters back on will result in dropping the overall shields back to one ring, wait till fully recharged until you turn the boosters back on.
You can use SCB's to help recharge whilst in combat, but nowt will make the shields recharge quicker I'm afraid...one of the penalties in having decent sized ones.
You can use SCB's to help recharge whilst in combat, but nowt will make the shields recharge quicker I'm afraid...one of the penalties in having decent sized ones.
@ OP... I feel your pain sir! My FDL when charging from busted to full charge is around 10min. And if you look on any of the 3 party apps for creating and modding ships they will give you a total MW of your shield, then look at your compactor and it will give you the MW per/sec that it can dump into it and that's how long it will take to recharge to full. Hope this helps and if you want more math on shields and weapons head over to You Tube and check out Kornelius Breidis he goes into much more detail on these kind of questions... he also has tonnes of great stuff up about the 2.1 patch/ engineers.
This. I advise Bi-Weave's on anything ship that would have under 700 MJ shields.
Source for this?
It's my understanding that shields always recharge at a rate of 1mW/s, regardless of how many pips are in SYS. When they come down, they pop back up when they reach 50%. The only impact that pips to shield is the damage reduction when taking hits. IE: 4 pips to shields will reduce incoming damage by 40%.
Bi-weaves increase recharge rates by 50% at the expense of the max shield total.
The reason people recommend turning off shield boosters is because the multiplier impacts immediately. So, if you have Class # shields that give you 100mj of shields, it would take 100 seconds to recharge (assuming standard shield generators). If you have a shield booster that gives 20% boost, it would take 120 seconds to recharge your shields. But if you turn your boosters off for the recharge, wait 100 seconds to recharge to full, then turn your boosters on, the boosters will immediately jump to 120mj.
I know folk already said all this, but I'm a numbers guy, so I need hard numbers for things to make sense to me.
Shields always recharge from the Sys at a drain of 1Mj/s (1.5Mj/s for Bi-Weaves) the number of Pips in the Sys is irrelevant so long as you have sufficient energy in the capacitor. The only time this changes is when the capacitor is depleted and the Capacitor's recharge rate is <1Mj/s. This will slow shield recharge.
Pips into Sys do two things, Increase the rate your SYS capacitor recharges (Important to note this is separate from shield recharge) and give a 12.5% bonus to shield strength per pip in SYS.
On the subject of shield boosters, shield boosters do not directly affect shield recharge rate. Shield recharge is always 1Mj/s (1.5Mj/s for Bi-Weaves) Shield boosters only increase the maximum shield strength. When your shields are offline they have to recharge a set % of your maximum shield strength to come online again (I think it's around 30%) naturally the higher your maximum shield is the more shield you will have to recharge to hit that % threshold and get shields back. Turning off shield boosters lowers the threshold.
My ship's dashboard. Put 4 pips to sys when your shields are down, and the "charging" blip (the one that races around the circumference of the shield display) moves noticably faster.
Also, deathbykarma is correct: disabling boosters will get the first ring of shields to activate MUCH faster. That first ring activates at X% of your total shield strength, deactivating boosters lowers that total.
You're looking at it
Just to clear things up for people reading this, this info quoted is wrong. Turning on your boosters after your shields have come back online does not drop your shields, you have the exact same amount of shields. The rings change to show how much your shields are charged relative to their maximum, as such, it will look lower when they are turned on because your maximum strength jumps.
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Well, poop. I wonder how many seconds of my life I've wasted thanks to recharge that could have been faster.
That'll teach me to ignore tutorials, videos etc.
That'll teach me to ignore tutorials, videos etc.
Unfortunately, it's not properly documented anywhere. These are just things that you pick up from perusing the forums. Which means there can be conflicting stories sometimes (ie: just look at this thread and people's perspective on how pips in SYS impact shields coming back online).
I've always appreciated the sense of achievement in figuring ED out, but some things are so opaque. Hell, I remember the satisfaction when I nailed down the 7.5km limit for docking permission, lol.
As for shields, well, another day, another ED lesson.