Shield Regen Doesn't Work Like You Think

what's up ship Builders today we're diving into Shields specifically an underinvestigated detail about shields how does shield regeneration actually work you see during my time with the game I've read countless articles and guides that reference Shield regeneration rates when determining which Shield you should choose for your ship in actual gameplay though I never seemed to notice that much of an impact so I set out to discover for myself what Shield has the best regeneration and does it actually make any difference in gameplay now I do understand I might be pursuing answers to questions no one is asking but at least for myself I'd wanted to know definitively and I couldn't find anyone else who had done the work to be able to confidently answer these questions and I thought I may as well share my findings with you so to test Shield regeneration I figured I needed to isolate a few things first I wanted to test at least two separate Shields with differing regeneration rates obviously but with the same total Shield health now hopefully testing how quickly each of these shields recovered side by side would show how much of an impact their regen rate actually has so I listed out all Shields and their various health and regeneration values and identified two that actually fit that criteria nicely the assurance sg1 1000 with a 5% regen rate and the bastile s84 with a 10% regen rate and actually there was a third that fit the criteria too the tower in 410 sat right in between the two with a 7% regen rate and just to be safe I did check the actual displayed stats when I was boarded my ship with my crew just to ensure that the shielded Health amount displayed was the same in in all cases after perks and character bonuses Etc so we were dealing with the same Shield health across all three Shields every time and don't worry I'm also planning to test what I consider to be the best shields in the game or at least those with the highest Shield health to see if they perform any differently as well now the other component I needed to have very narrow control over was how the shield was depleted as well as having a safe environment for it to regenerate because as you probably know it if your ship receives damage any at all your Shield regeneration timer seems to reset so basically you have to wait an unknown amount of seconds before your regeneration will begin again so for that reason I didn't want any interruptions in that timer so to accomplish this instead of finding enemy ships to decrease my shield somewhat randomly I chose to ram my ship against initially asteroids first uh but I found my ship would actually push them as I went along of course making it increasingly more difficult and absurd so I turned to Star Stations because they don't have this problem they are anchored in place by the game plus generally there aren't enemies flying around a friendly star station and my friendlies don't seem to mind if I continually Ram their base so I wouldn't be disrupted by anyone else during my testing either and my results were actually not at all what I expected I expected the shield with double the regen rate the bastile at 10% to heal twice as fast so if the total Shield health is 730 then 10% of that is 73 that should be twice what 5% of that is 36 and2 but this isn't what happened it's not even close first well it's important to note that when your Shield is taken offline completely flashing red it takes about 15 seconds for it to come back online and begin recharging assuming you take no damage during those 15 seconds otherwise the timer resets and this is true for all Shields no matter the regen rate so if your Shield is depleted but stays online it takes actually less time only 8 seconds for it to begin recharging and again this is true for all Shields regardless of their regenerate now once the shield begins to regenerate the 10% Shield did regenerate back to complete or 100% Health quicker but it wasn't twice as fast in fact it was closer to 50% faster not 100% faster so when the 10% Shield the bastile was fully healed the Assurance at 5% was actually back to 75% health so again I'll say that again when the bastile shield which should regen twice as fast when it was fully regenerated the Assurance was up to 75% not 50 and that same ratio applied throughout the Regeneration process so when the 10% regen Shield was back to 50% Health the 5% regen Shield was at 37.5% Health not 25% so while the 10% regeneration rate is certainly faster than the 5% that quicker rate appears to be in addition to some other Baseline regeneration rate so to figure this out I charted out the various regeneration percentages over time and it appears that the 10% Shield regenerated 5% Health per second faster than the 5% Shield above some baseline regeneration and that this was linear over time so let me give you an example at 1% into their regeneration process the 5% Shield was at 15% health and the 10% Shield was at 20% health so after 1 second there was a 5% Health difference between the two at 3 seconds in the 5% Shield was at 45% health and the 10% Shield was 15 points higher at 60% which is 3 * 5 15% difference and again at 5 Seconds when the 10% Shield was fully recharged at 100% the 5% Shield was at 75% which was 25 points less or 5 points per second my initial reaction was it can't be this simple it would appear that there's a baseline regeneration rate of 10% Health per second meaning every Shield if it had a 0% regen stat would regenerate fully within 10 seconds after the initial cooldown period of either 15 seconds to come back online or 8 seconds to begin the recharging cycle if it hadn't if it stayed online so the regen rate displayed in the game then adds on top of this Baseline 10% Health regeneration per second so in the case of the shields we tested the 10% Baseline plus the 10% Shield rate is 20% per second which is why it took 5 Seconds to recharge the 5% Shield plus the 10% hidden Baseline is 15% which is why it took just under 7 Seconds to recharge 6 and 2/3 so to test my new Theory I thankfully had another shield with the exact same Health the tower n410 but it had a 7% regen rate so using this new math I predicted it would you know regenerate uh in just under 6 seconds and went back to the game to test it and sure enough it regenerated at about 177% per second and not only that but this held true regardless of total Shield health so I said I would test the top four shields in the game in terms of Shield health the uh Assurance SG 18800 the 28 Defender the Vanguard bullwark the 1040d guardian and all of them regenerated according to this same linear scale given their regen rates the formula held true across all of them now I did have to ask the question does allocated reactor power play into all this and I tested that too so the power you allocate to your Shields how does it impact the total Shield health that you actually get and you regen rate now if you only allocate half power power to your Shields you'll only get half of the Shield health protecting you but your power allocation appears to have zero impact on your regeneration rate your Shields will recharge just as fast or as quickly under half power as full power except they'll obviously only recharge up to you know 50% Health instead of 100% for example if they're half powered which leads me to this video's Public Service Announcement please always fully power your Shields there's absolutely no reason not to do so I've seen countless references to Shield health per power as that being some important stat to consider and frankly that is an absurd metric Shield health is crucial in this game if you don't want to become space dust so please stay shielded my friends so what can we conclude from all of this well the fastest recharging shield in the game at a 10% rate recharges from 0 to 100% Health in 5 seconds the slowest recharging Shield 5% regenerate takes just under 7 Seconds that's a difference of less than 2 seconds and remember there is no difference in the time it takes for Shields to begin their recharging process it's either 15 seconds without taking additional damage if your Shield goes offline or 8 seconds if your Shield stays online and that's true regardless of the regen rate so altogether gameplay-wise you're looking at an insignificant difference between the fastest regen rate and the slowest so our conclusion regen rate doesn't matter and you should ignore it when choosing a shield pick the shield with the highest Shield health that fits the overall mass of your ship now I'm glad I could answer this question which nobody was probably asking and frankly it's kind of disappointing that this statistic doesn't play a bigger role in Shield selection in the game it would make this choice and this debate much more interesting but now we know and until next time keep building

Channel: ShipTechnician

Views: 1,821

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Id: GaQbarICpHw

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024