Newcomer / Intro What makes sheilds spin up time faster?

katheb

K
Hello,

I have a question, When my shields go down and then eventually start charging up. What can I do to make them charge up faster?

With full PIPs in systems I still get the slooooowww recharge? spin spin spin Charge one chevron... spin spin spin charge another! spin spin spin your hull is falling apart yay!
 

Evyl Minkey

E
You could buy and equip a shield cell then not let them drop completely. Use it when you are down to one bar and it returns them to full health more quickly.
 

Kuroshio

Kuroshio
Power distributor and power plant are the main factors here - pips to sys is not directly tied to the shield recharge rate, but to shield strength. Pips only matter in recharging if your capacitor (the bars above the distribution) runs dry.
 

soma

soma
As others have mentioned the most important part of shields is to never let them drop in the first place. There are some things to consider:


  • Choose your fights wisely. Avoid situations where you are outnumbered, and do not pick fights with strong ships until you are sure you can take them.
  • When you think you might be in over your head, break from the fight and run. If you have >3km distance from your enemies they cant hit you anymore. Boosting away from slower enemies to wait until your shields recover is a valid tactic.
  • Whenever you are taking damage, make sure you have 4 pips in SYS... shields last a LOT longer with maximum power to SYS
  • If you can afford it and have the necessary power, equip a shield cell. When your shields take a beating use it to recharge your shields. They have a 5 second delay though, so you need to activate them early. When your shields drop before they kick in, they wont help you.
  • Abandoning a fight and running to supercruise is also a valid tactic. ED is a game about surviving in a harsh universe, not about dying honorably in a hopeless encounter.

When your shields drop it is usually a very good strategy to run away. Shields generally recharge slowly. The stronger/large shields recharge even MORE slowly than the weak shields of a Sidey/Eagle. Generally once shields have dropped there is not much you can do to make them recharge more quickly except making sure you have some pips in SYS (capacitor must not be empty)

The only other thing I can think of:

  • If your shields are down and you have shield boosters (boosters not cells!) equipped, disable them until your shields come back online. They significantly increase shield recovery time.
 
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Gemat

G
To minimize recharge time..

1st. You must disable your boosters (if you have).
2nd. Assign all pips to SYS until the energy of the SYS capacitor is full.
3d. Make sure there is at least 1 pip to SYS until the shield is back on line.


I do not think that the plant has anything to do with the charging rate.... as long as it can cover the ship's needs.
The better the shield, the longer it will take to recharge.
 
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dat789bb

D
Not going to answer your question directly but the following will help to protect you more:
1. If you have the capacity, add shield booster. One for smaller ships, 2 or more for bigger ships or ships geared for combats.
2. Shield cell bank is definite a blessing in disguise. You'll have to assign it to your fire groups. Make sure your shield do not drop to less than 1 ring. Once your outer rings are out, fire up the shield cell. You'll be back to 100% shields. Time to run away OR turn around and give 'em hell.
 

soma

soma
dat789bb said:
Not going to answer your question directly but the following will help to protect you more:
1. If you have the capacity, add shield booster. One for smaller ships, 2 or more for bigger ships or ships geared for combats.
2. Shield cell bank is definite a blessing in disguise. You'll have to assign it to your fire groups. Make sure your shield do not drop to less than 1 ring. Once your outer rings are out, fire up the shield cell. You'll be back to 100% shields. Time to run away OR turn around and give 'em hell.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but dont waste a fire group with the shield cell bank. There is a hotkey which can be set under options-controls.
 

p.opus

p.opus
And if all the above fails...play possum. It worked for me.

I stupidly accepted a contract of 150K CR to kill a pirate and like a dumbass figured my little cobra Mk III would be sufficient with only the slightest of weapons upgrades.

After the Elite Pirates Anaconda brought my shields completely down and did roughly 20 percent of damage to my hull in the first pass, I used after burner to thrust away from him, tunred on silent running, dropped shields, thrusters, and everything else but life support and power plant. This brought my heat signature to nearly flatline. As I approached 100% internal heat I shut off silent running, which I'm sure briefly showed up on his scanners, but then my heat signature went back to flatline and he didn't have anything to lock his guns onto. I simply drifted away for 5 minutes....

Once I thought the coast was clear, I sneaked a peek by turning on scanners. Since I couldn't see him any more, I powered up my engines and frame shift drive and bugged out. Tore up the contract on his life, considered myself lucky I didn't have to pay 25K to replace my ship and turned on all the other systems so they would recharge on the way back to the nearest repair station.

Now I possum all the time. Frame Rate Relay takes longer to charge the closer the enemy is to you and the more mass he has. If he's an Anaconda, it takes forever.

One of these days, I might run into a smart NPC who Boba Fetts me and drops everything as well and follows me silently and nails me once I fire up my thrusters, but I haven't run into one that smart yet.
 

Cmdr Irenicus

Cmdr Irenicus
dat789bb said:
Not going to answer your question directly but the following will help to protect you more:
1. If you have the capacity, add shield booster. One for smaller ships, 2 or more for bigger ships or ships geared for combats.
2. Shield cell bank is definite a blessing in disguise. You'll have to assign it to your fire groups. Make sure your shield do not drop to less than 1 ring. Once your outer rings are out, fire up the shield cell. You'll be back to 100% shields. Time to run away OR turn around and give 'em hell.
Click to expand...
Actually you do not NEED to assign shield cells to a fire group. Simply map it to a key :)

Also you will not be back to 100% shields necessarily. It depends on the shield cell and your shield generator.
 
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bamber

B
if you lose your shields the best thing to do is disengage run away for aboy 10km and then sit around and wait - then head back in.
.
Worst you can do is stay in a fight
 

Zephyriel

Zephyriel
If you have any shield boosters, deactivate them and your shields will recharge faster. Once the shields are up, you should immediately turn them back on, because they no longer slow down the rest of the recovery, they only add the your shield total strength, so no point in keeping them off.
 

cmdr lowest

C
You'll notice the shields on the starting sidewinder charge up a lot faster than larger ships.

That's because they are small shields. smaller the faster, but you obviously can't roll around with a small shield on a large ship. Compromises.

This is just FYI in case you think you can get the same recharge speed on an Anaconda. Not possible currently.
 

Universal Evil

Universal Evil
I'm not sure how or why it seems to work, but if your shields are down in normal space you can simply jump into SC and the back to normal space and you shield seems to be recharged when dropping out of SC and back to normal space and you can continue your dogfighting....
 

Telakin

Telakin
Universal Evil said:
I'm not sure how or why it seems to work, but if your shields are down in normal space you can simply jump into SC and the back to normal space and you shield seems to be recharged when dropping out of SC and back to normal space and you can continue your dogfighting....
Click to expand...
Has been tagged as an exploit and will be changed in the future.

Also a tip on running - don't chew your nails while hoping that the fsd spins up in time for super cruise and you're being mass-locked and chased by a big ship. Just target a different system and jump straight out. Mass-Lock does not apply to inter-system jumps.
 

Blaubart

B
i also kept wondering why it takes so long for the shield to recharge. MY distributor can have the capacitator fully charged on sys but the damn shields won't come up any faster :-( Looks like a bug to me. Hence the other capacitator bars have direct influence on the availablility of the interlinked features.... however i do have two shieldboosters on my vulture and i will use the disable trick in the future - thanks for that one.
 
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