Approx 9 million power generation in approx 70,200 cubes

[Tunk]

Got stuck back late at work tonight, so didn't have the chance to do any testing.
SS unfortunately does have custom block configs (water, door weights, force field weights, armour ratings, few others I can't remember).

Guess its a weekend project, either way the following should be true for combat recharge according to the configs and short testing ages ago so its about time I re-test it anyway:

=(1-(([current shield]/[max shield])*0.5))*([recharge]*0.1)

0.5 is the shield recharge mult.
0.1 is the 'direct recharge' aka combat recharge mult.
This formula caps combat recharge at 5-10%, with higher charge at lower shield levels.

Anyway, for what I want to test,
I'll be testing various docking configurations, to test if supply beams do draw from parent entities and if so do they trigger combat recharge on those entities.
If they don't trigger combat recharge on parent entities while drawing shields from them then pretty much we can treat shields like power in terms of moving it about, and this actually makes shields incredibly overpowered with certain docking configurations (EG: a 1m reactor out putting the equiv of 250k regen/s after ion).

[edit]
I'd just like to add, I don't see supply beams triggering combat recharge as a bug.
Because if it doesn't then we have full recharge available for transfer, which when combined with ion breaks it past 1:10 damage/energy absorption (currently weapons are balanced at 1 damage per 10 power).
Aka anything but a ion weapon or extreme shield-popping alpha against a equivalently powered shield will not break the shields.
The kicker?
Layered parallel shielding is nigh immune to alpha popping (especially by pure ion weapons).

So you can see my interest in this matter, pretty much if we can configure supply beams in such a manner that we can avoid triggering combat recharge we basically have stupidly strong defence.

 

[Panpiper]

Guess its a weekend project, either way the following should be true for combat recharge according to the configs and short testing ages ago so its about time I re-test it anyway:

=(1-(([current shield]/[max shield])*0.5))*([recharge]*0.1)

0.5 is the shield recharge mult.
0.1 is the 'direct recharge' aka combat recharge mult.
This formula caps combat recharge at 5-10%, with higher charge at lower shield levels.

This CANNOT be correct. If it is, how can my medium battleminer with only a 300K shield recharge stand in a fight with a half a dozen pirates each of which is capable of dishing out 20-40K DPS, and keep it's shields at or near max? Furthermore, from a game design standpoint, rendering shield rechargers able to feed a mere half a shield point per second to a shield that would otherwise start with 110 full shield points (were the shield regenerator a capacitor instead), makes ABSOLUTELY no sense from either a design or balance point of view.

 

[Tunk]

Go get the numbers verified in a controlled environment like Dvaren then.

A half dozen random number generators that have trouble hitting the broadside of a closed barn while inside is nothing more than anectdote.

 

[Mork2]

We did check the shield rechargers on a docked module does suffer the combat penalty while firing a shield supply beam at the main ship which is under fire.

If it didn't work that way you would see a lot of people making docked shield modules to get insane continuous recharge on shields.
For example I could convert my current titan WIP and get a 1.2mil/sec which was 120k /sec when almost depleted and using a shield transfer array without combat penalty a 960k /sec recharge continuous, (I am assuming that there is a 20% transfer penalty from someone elses research) which would require 9.96million e/sec of gun fire just to break even or 4.98mil e/sec of ion damage (gun damage x 10 energy). That's also before the 60% ion defence effect that bumps it to almost 25mil e/sec and 12.5mil e/sec for ion.

 

[Panpiper]

My current miner can with one shot hit for 20 million shield damage with an ion beam that recharges in 16 seconds. It's turrets fire for one million DPS and it's planet buster cannon hits for another million DPS. A shield regeneration of one million per second on a ship is hardly excessive in the face of that kind of firepower.

 

[Tunk]

so 16 million regen at least pumped into weapons.
26 if you can fire all at once.
A ship with 7-10 million power regen can be invulnerable to you if combat regen is somehow worked around.
Bonus: it doesn't require power transfer beams to achieve it, so its even more power efficient.

 

[Panpiper]

so 16 million regen at least pumped into weapons.
26 if you can fire all at once.
A ship with 7-10 million power regen can be invulnerable to you if combat regen is somehow worked around.
Bonus: it doesn't require power transfer beams to achieve it, so its even more power efficient.

It's not the power requirements that are the killer for these calculations, it is the ability to pack sufficient modules, shield regeneration modules in this case. My two million block example ship generates 23 million power (not including the 10 million generated by the turrets) and I could easily bump that well past 30 if I was willing to do a rebuild (I know more now).

If that ship is packing 600,000 shield regenerators, they might well be able to stand up to that fire. But given that this is a 2 million block ship I am referring to, having 30% of it's volume devoted to shield regenerators would make the ship little good for anything other than being a damage sponge (and even then however, after that ion beam hits, they'd likely not be getting their full regen). If someone wants to build such a ship, more power to them. They still won't be invulnerable to a three million block ship.

 

[Tunk]

You seem to be forgetting ion.
600k modules would handle a ship three times your size.

 

[Mork2]

I didn't include the total shield numbers cause I was trying to point out how insane the shield regen could get. The titan WIP build I'm still working on is still under 400k mass, as said the current regen is 1.2mil /sec before combat nerf, with 60% ion effect. But as noted the shield module does get hit with the regen nerf. So the shield regen I have at the moment is just to regen the shields in a reasonable amount of time and not trying to tank damage. The shields are 100mil with with 60% ion effect you need to inflict 250mill damage to drop them....Since trying for combat regen to tank doesn't really work.

The reason why it would be OP if shield modules with the transfer beams had no combat regen penalty, is I could drop the shields to 66mil saving 400k blocks to put into shield rechargers which would triple the regen rate. Which would total up to 66Million shields with 2.88mil shield/sec regen because I'm not getting the combat regen penalty which after 60% ion effect balloons out to a ridiculous 166million shields and a 7.8mil per sec shield recharge rate. So in a way its definitely a good thing that shield transfer beams incur the combat regen penalty.

 

[GRHayes]

This is starting to sound like a bug;
1. pull shields from main ship
2. suffer 20% loss putting them back in main ship
3. ???
4. shield profit!

Either that or non-vanilla config settings somewhere.

The only change I have really outside of normal settings is my sector size has been made a bit larger.
Starting to think it is some sort of bug as well. However, there is also a bug report on the shields currently.

 

[Benevolent27]

This is an old thread, but there were some interesting aspects to it and many people are still using the information here. As of the current version right now, 0.19488, I did some testing last night and here is what I found. I did not calculate everything exactly and come up with formulas. I just looked at the effects of doing shield recharging in different ways. I am posting here because people keep telling me wrong information, and it's kind of annoying. "Just put shield rechargers on your ship, it's better!" This is not entirely true.. There actually are PROS to having a docked entity provide shields, which I will go into further below.

So, first off, let me address the question, "Is just putting more shield regenerators on your ship better?" Well yes and no, there are pros and cons to it. It is better in that it's direct shield regeneration. It pulls power from the same entity that it provides shields for. There is also no loss to the shields generated. It's simple and easy. But, the drawback is that 0% is generated when your ship is first hit for a few seconds. Also when you lose all shields, they will not recharge AT ALL 10 seconds. Yes, that is right, 0%. Then after that, it's a low amount for 60 whole seconds after the last time you are hit. After 60 seconds, it uses the normal recharge rate, which is based in part on how many shields your ship currently has. The higher percentage of shields, the faster it goes. But if your ship gets hit at any time during the 60 second wait, it will never get to the normal recharge rate.

So, what are the benefits of using a shield supply beam? Why might it be better? How might it be worse? Well, the first thing we have to ask is, are we going to use shield supply beams or shield drain beams? This is easy. Shield drain is worthless. If you're going to dock entities for shield supply, it will take at least 8 times as many shield drain beams on the main ship to get the same shield draw. They will also lose 50% of the shielding, which is much greater loss compared to shield supply. In short, go with the shield supply beams and don't look back.

There are two viable methods I discovered when using shield supply beams:

The Simple Method:
Have the shield supply beam constantly firing and transferring shields to the main ship; you can use a logic loop to do this. It will always provide shields, but at the rate of being under fire. Now, the good part of this is that the docked shield supply entity will always provide shields, even if you are under fire, and even if the main ship has 0% shields. There is no pause upon being shot the first time and there is no 10 second waiting period if you get down to 0% shields. If you are under fire, then it's useful to constantly be getting shields right? 10% constant recharge is better than none, especially if your shields were brought down to 0%, right? This also helps keep your ship from getting to 0 in the first place and suffering that aweful 10 second delay.

The more complicated method:
The second method is to use long waiting periods between the beams, allowing the shield giving entity to fully charge BEFORE discharging it's shields into the main ship. In testing, when firing a shield supply to the main ship, it recharged it's shields at "under fire" for 60 seconds and then boosted to normal recharge. the supply ship was able to regenerate over 3 times as much shields (back up to 100%) in the 14 seconds of normal recharge as it was able to regenerate in the 60 seconds of "under fire" recharge. So, under these test conditions, if a "simple method" is able to supply 1,000 shields in 60 seconds, this more complicated system can provide about 4,000 in 74 seconds, if it uses the same ratio of rechargers to shields that I had in my test setup. (this was just a test setup, it was NOT optimal in any way). So, based on these imagined figures, that is 16.7 shields a second compared to 54.1 shields a second, which is a significant boost. It's even better when compared to simply putting shield regenerators on a ship, because there is no 10 second waiting period for shields to regenerate if the shields drop to 0. The shields are always regenerating, so long as the docked entity itself does not come under fire. The downside of this method is that you get these spurts of shields every 74 seconds.. which is a loong waiting time. This method may be useful for long, drawn out battles, which may take five minutes, ten minutes, maybe an hour? Over the course of the battle, you will get more shields than your enemy.

For both methods, however, there is ANOTHER side benefit. This is that when using ION effect on your ship, the requirement for how many ION modules you need does NOT take into account the blocks of docked entities. This means you can use less ION modules to produce the same effect because you don't need to have as many rechargers on the base ship. Less shield-rechargers means more shield capacitors! More shielding means your ION effect will be even more useful!

So, all in all, there are drawbacks to both methods, so I suggest a balanced system. Some rechargers on the main ship, some in a constant fire, and some in a delayed method IF your ship is intended for extended combat.

 

[Dire Venom]

These are some really interesting tests!!.
Good on you guys for trying it out, I always wonderd about docked shield recharges.
On that note, what sort of raito of recharges/capacitors do you guys have on your ships:? What ratios are best for prolonged and short combat?

 

[AtraUnam]

so long as the docked entity itself does not come under fire.

Last I checked, (about 2 versions ago) the under fire debuff effects all entities both up and down the chain so if the main ship is under fire then your docked entity will be counted as under fire as well.

 

[Tunk]

Oh hey forgot about this thread.

Firing entity is under fire.
Much easier to tune a docked shield supplier to reach the 10% recharge cap when under fire.
Unfortunately this type of tuning has a downside, shield failure results in shots getting through, a single shot can kill regen until you restart the device manually if it gets hit.

Shields CANNOT be drawn from the parent entity, only the entity firing the beam.
Transfer beam is lossless.

 

[Benevolent27]

Last I checked, (about 2 versions ago) the under fire debuff effects all entities both up and down the chain so if the main ship is under fire then your docked entity will be counted as under fire as well.

Well, I tested for this on a base, using a logic clock to fire a weak beam continually at the base, and it didn't keep the docked shield supply entity under fire. It still charged up using the normal charge rate after 60 seconds, even while the base was under attack. Keep in mind, I tested on a base that had a lot of docked entities to it. I did not test on a ship with just a few docked entities. Since this is alpha, it could well be a bug that I'm seeing. Or maybe damage can still "splash" through walls and hit the docked entity, keeping it in "under fire" mode even though it does not appear to have taken damage.

 

[Tunk]

Been awhile since I tested but yeah, each entity had its own independent under fire status at least a few versions ago.
The Shield Supply beam sets the entity its firing from as under fire.

The long charge method is interesting, but I only really see it useful when you are running several dozen (literally) in parallel.

 

[Benevolent27]

Been awhile since I tested but yeah, each entity had its own independent under fire status at least a few versions ago.
The Shield Supply beam sets the entity its firing from as under fire.

The long charge method is interesting, but I only really see it useful when you are running several dozen (literally) in parallel.

Well, it's a specific use for sure; there are pros and cons to it. It isn't always better. I really do like your idea to run several of the long-delay rechargers in series! However, on the server I play on, they limit you to only 2 entities that supply shields and they also limit the size of docked entities. But I have found a good use for it, I think. My server's limit for a base is 5m blocks. But they don't include the attached entities in the base size limit, so I use the attached entities to help bolster the shield recharge rate. I was able to calibrate mine to give about 15 million shields every 83 seconds or so. My base has 251m shields with 60% ion. Though it doesn't turn my base into superman, it does help, so why not use it? I can have a 5m block base with or without it, and with it, it is stronger. If I used 2 in series, I could get about 21 million shields a minute recharge on average. (15 million shields extra every 42 seconds or so). Compare this to plain old shield-rechargers. They would only give about 5 million a minute. That is about 16 million shields LESS a minute! Plus the entity that fires the shields supplies itself with it's own power. It only takes a few hundred power reactors and capacitors on the attached entities to fully power it, but it would take thousands of power reactors on the main base, since it's power regen is way over the softcap of 1m e/sec. Since I'm working with a limit of 5m blocks, it allows me to have less rechargers, a lot less power-reactors, and less power capacitors to run optimally. This means I can instead have more shield caps! :D And more shield caps with ION effect on makes the ION effect more useful! The synergistic effect of using this sort of system is hard to quantify entirely, but it does have a definite effect. I do not forsee any ship on the server being capable of halfing my shields in less than a minute anyhow, so I'll take the higher recharge rate and more shield caps any day.

For people who build their ships and bases simply, I'm sure they can still make them decently tough, but if they want to use every bit they have at their disposal to win the fight, this is one more defensive system they can use.