The Shield discussion thread

[Morbad]

Numbers look pretty solid to me when I compare them to my subjective experiences in combat (which includes a good amount of PvP).

I'd like to compare them to a controlled study vs. live weapons fire though. We could see how much shield percentage is removed if we empty the SYS capacitor of the target vessel, and use zero pips on the WEP capacitor of the attacker.

 

[ElleShaped]

Can you point me to this thread because my result are quite different.
I get about 395 shield with a A5 and 608 with a A6 in my Python. My hull weight is lower than optimal for both.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=89770

 

[Brokenstorm]

Shouldn't you be using the same quality/class generators to give an absolute and not a relative measure?

Not all ship can fit all classes of shield, and those are absolute values with the default sidewinders shields (40shield) taken as a base value.

For those who care at 60Hz, 1 frame is about 0.041 shield.

 

[Frenotx]

I have seen some posts that try to determine shield strength by either getting shot a certain number of time or by running into things, but for me both those methods were too inaccurate and error prone.

So I found another more precise way to measure them by using how long it takes for them to come back up after they have been depleted/powered off.
As long as your power module is able to supply enough power you can get the exact strength of your shield.
A stopwatch will work fine, but if you want the exact value you should record the shield recharging and count the number of frames it takes.

Here are the value I calculated for the ships I own.

If your power distributor is producing enough power to recharge your shield without draining the capacitor, then there's no way to know exactly how much sys power the shield is eating, and thus no way to know how durable the shield. All these measurements give you is the minimum shield recharge time.

If your power couple can't keep up with the draw of the shield regenerating, then you can get a more accurate measurement. Assuming your capacitor was full when you started (and completely drained sometime before the shield was finished recharging), the formula is:

TimeToRecharge * SysRechargeRate + SysCapacity

Where SysRechargeRate is the listed systems recharge rate, and SysCapacity is the systems capacity for your power couple. For further information, feel free to check out my recently-posted shield research thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=89770

 

[Tempered]

The shield strength on the cobra looks relatively low compared to the viper. Any particular reason for that? Is there maybe a hull mass issue, or does the viper just have better shielding (which would be counter to my experience).

 

[excalibus]

The shield strength on the cobra looks relatively low compared to the viper. Any particular reason for that? Is there maybe a hull mass issue, or does the viper just have better shielding (which would be counter to my experience).

all those numbers seem to me are the recharge times
so in this case the recharge time on the cobra is lower than the viper? which means to me you could lose your shields on a cobra and have them back up to full strength before a viper would be at full strength

 

[Morbad]

The Viper has stronger shields than the Cobra, by a fair bit. They take much longer to reactivate and recharge however.

 

[PeeB4uGoToBed]

How to compare shield generators?

I'm looking at upgrading my shields but I can't figure out how to see which ones have more capacity, all they show is power draw and weight and all that stuff but no capacity, how do I know if I'm replacing my shield with one with less or more hit points?

 

[Helfar]

many people have pondered the same thing

 

[StephenB]

I assume they work the same as other modules, the higher the number and the closer the letter to 'A' means the better it is. I have A3 shields and as far as I'm aware they seem to be better than my C3 shields.

Alternatively you can buy shield cell Batteries since they are overpowered and will recharge your shields insanely fast; There won't be a reason to change shields then.

 

[PeeB4uGoToBed]

I assume they work the same as other modules, the higher the number and the closer the letter to 'A' means the better it is. I have A3 shields and as far as I'm aware they seem to be better than my C3 shields.

Alternatively you can buy shield cell Batteries since they are overpowered and will recharge your shields insanely fast; There won't be a reason to change shields then.

Yeah, I was looking at those too but I just paid a bounty that took half my credits so I'll wait a little bit

 

[Blackbird]

Nope - all standard. Even tried unbinding. It worked for a short while recently then stopped again.

Ho hum ... odd.

Unpleasant : Nope, you can sit in munitions screen in a station and, each time you refresh it, the station has removed one of the charges until it gets back to 0 again. If you turn the module off, you can put all charges in. The moment you turn it back on, they start being removed again.

 

[Minglewood]

Stuck key?

 

[Baggy MacDouche]

It does sound like something is stuck. Do you have them assigned to a firegroup? What do you have assigned to primary and secondary fire? Maybe try unassigning it in the firegroups and binding it to a key?

What setup are you using? Joystick/keyboard + mouse, etc.?

 

[Dissentient]

I actually found a somehow viable solution to this:
Disable additional cell banks in modules menu, and activate next one when your current one runs out of cells.
Still, I'd like not having to do this.

 

[Entropy1024]

Canons and Shield cells not firing/triggering

After making some money in trading I decided to mix it up and try my hand at bounty hunting.

So tooled up with some lasers, canons and a shield cell. At the very start of my encounter I fired canons and lasers, all worked fine, although I missed. However the canons did fire. Later in the battle I tried to use the canons again but they did not fire. Also in the battle I tried using the shield cells, I think this worked once but later when I tried to use it again it did not work. Both these units were on the second fire position, however I know the button is good as it works fine on the combat simulator demo game, and did work at least once in this encounter.

Wondering why I only seem to be able to use these once. Was it some power issue? I assumed the canons were projectile weapons and do not need much in the way of power, can understand the shield generators needing more power.

I will insert a video of the battle below, sorry I can't remember exactly when I tried using the canons and shield generators.
Many thanks for any help.

[video=youtube_share;UHyo2R7ZOQI]http://youtu.be/UHyo2R7ZOQI[/video]

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Erm, did you run out of ammo? Did you check to see if your weapons got damaged?

Not sure about the shield cell, but they do have limited uses as well.

 

[NullAndVoid]

Or did your power plant get damaged and could no longer supply all system power needs?

 

[excalibus]

ok after looking quickly at the video

first problem, you are always running at minimum weapon reserves so chances are when you tried to fire the cannons there was not enough energy to fire them, let the reserves build up a little

Shield cells only work when your shields are still online not when they are offline

 

[Painkiller]

I was watching your video (and it still runs). I see no problems with your cannons. You are firring cnnons since the amount of munition is dropping off. BTW, after you spent 5 minutes with cobra, I see that after 1 minute and up to 7 in your video, you were fighting with all pips in you shields, nothing on your weapons ....I think this explains it ...