Shield recharging rate is changing

[Spikend]

Hey folks!

Well, I've recently noticed that when I look on my shields, in any ship, that they when damaged almost never recharges at the rate which is "advertised".

For example, I just did a protect a station mission and camped at the gate where the centaurs comes from. But I noticed that when I watched my shields recharging (I'm flying an M7 Aegir), they recharge only about 3-4MW instead of 12,500MW which is listed as the ship's shield power generator. Other times it can recharge about 10-12MW, but it's pretty rare..

What is causing this?

[euclid]

It'll take 556 secs to recharge max shields (5 GJ). The amount per sec is a tad random.

Cheers Euclid

[Spikend]

What do you mean? That it will take almost 10 minutes to recharge the shields fully, but the rate can vary? Doesn't that mean that the recharge should jump to like 15-20MW later on?

[euclid]

Yes, it means that on average about 10 MJ are recharged every second. Can be 5 MJ in a second and 15 MJ in the next.


Cheers Euclid

[pjknibbs]

Also note that shields themselves have a maximum recharge rate which can't be exceeded, and the shields get depleted one at a time rather than all at the same time--therefore, the recharge rate when you've got less than one shield's worth of damage will be considerably less than when your shields are almost gone and all of them are recharging simultaneously. (Well, unless you happen to be flying a ship with only one shield, at any rate!).

[Spikend]

Ah ok! So when say I've got my first 1gb depleted, I'll only have 1/5 recharge?

Thanks man!