Circular Wave Amplifier capacity

[Hal900x]

Is the "Capacity" stat of Energy Shields measured in damage? If so, then shields I craft with Circular Wave Amplifier have their Capacity well below the damage they block for a single attack. If true, this seems to make it essentially useless. Would it help to use a lower quality Wave Amplifier?

[Tygrende]

If so, then shields I craft with Circular Wave Amplifier have their Capacity well below the damage they block for a single attack. If true, this seems to make it essentially useless.

Both are correct, sadly.

Circular Wave Amplifiers really do suck for energy shields. The slight increase in shield threshold absolutely does not make up for the ridiculous hit to the capacity, especially considering High Efficiency Energy Converter and Shield Capacitor don't have any penalties whatsoever.

Would it help to use a lower quality Wave Amplifier?

Yeah.

The only possible use for Circular Wave Amplifier I found is to make a high frequency shield capable of completly stopping a single Aimed Shot from a sniper rifle. You just need to get a Circular Wave Amplifier that makes the shield's capacity and high speed threshold even.

[Hal900x]

If so, then shields I craft with Circular Wave Amplifier have their Capacity well below the damage they block for a single attack. If true, this seems to make it essentially useless.

Both are correct, sadly.

Circular Wave Amplifiers really do suck for energy shields. The slight increase in shield threshold absolutely does not make up for the ridiculous hit to the capacity, especially considering High Efficiency Energy Converter and Shield Capacitor don't have any penalties whatsoever.

Would it help to use a lower quality Wave Amplifier?

Yeah.

Seems like an oversight on the dev's part. I can understand a big nerf, but that is crazy. I use an Amplifier against a single enemy in the whole game, then sell it.

[Tygrende]

Conservative shields still have some use at least. A normal shield will lose 2% of its capacity every turn/5 seconds, so it will completly run out in 50 turns/4 minutes and 10 seconds. For this reason keeping it on all times is not a very good idea, it would be a hassle to recharge it that often and necessitate carrying a whole lot of batteries.

Capacitor reduces the dissipation rate by 10% + 0,1%*quality, capped at 80% reduction with a 70 quality capacitor. This reduces the drain to only 0.4% per turn/5 seconds, 250 turns/20 minutes and 50 seconds to run out completly. That's a lot better, good enough to leave it on at all times to me. Shield like this would end up having less than half capacity of an efficient shield, but could be used as a permanent protection rather than something you need to activate beforehand. I can recall a few times when I was killed by coil spiders because I walked into one of their webs and couldn't even activate the shield before it was too late. Same for mines.

I think amplifiers would be just fine if they didn't reduce the capacity.

By the way, why is default dissipation rate 10,0%? Shouldn't it be 100%?

[Tygrende]

I see. I'm surprised it wasn't corrected by now.

[hilf]

Amplified shields have one not so obvious disadvantage - they're good at blocking all damage per hit. It is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
If you're not Tranquility psiker you don't want your shield to block all incoming damage. Why? Damage that goes through shield will be reduced by your armor's DT. The more attacks that threaten your HP the better use of your DT. DR is irrelevant here because it does not care about number of attacks but sum of damage.
There's one more thing - the sooner you'll lose HP the sooner you'll use health hypo and the sooner hypo's cooldown will start ticking. It some scenarios it can save your life.

There's no need for shield to go down before any HPs are lost (except with Tranquility). It only needs to go down before all HPs are out.

[Styg]

Shield enhancements do indeed need re-balancing. It's on my TODO list.

[Fenix]

There's no need for shield to go down before any HPs are lost (except with Tranquility).

Actually it is quite useful against shock bolts. No damage - no discharge, no stun.

[hilf]

A little necro but it's not worth starting a new thread.

I find it strange High modulators give better shielding at medium frequency than Medium. Shouldn't Medium modulator be best at medium freq? Currently Low is best at 2 freqs, High at 3 and Medium at 0

73 quality High modulator gives 66 at medium frequency, Medium modulator of same quality gives only 48. Not a small difference.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Shouldn't Medium modulator be best at medium freq? Currently Low is best at 2 freqs, High at 3 and Medium at 0

OTOH the Medium is much better at the low end, so with medium modulators you have a sort of well-balanced shield that will help against melee and thrown weapons.  High modulators are almost completely ineffectual against the bottom-end of the velocity range.  So you're trading general use for specialization.

I couldn't get a quality match for anything but 129 quality but the difference I just saw was almost 50% at Low and 25% at Very Low for the Medium modulator.  That's quite a difference.  The differences in favor of the High modulator were in the same range.  I do think the High frequency is still better but if you aren't able to carry several around (and with the new EMP effects it might be downright unwise to carry too many spare, charged electronic devices at one time) to swap out from encounter to encounter, a Medium modulator does seem to have its place.  At the very least, it seems to be better to drop a Medium and a High into a shield emitter base than High/High.