Shield Regeneration dosent work

[Suicide Junkie]

...on troops & fighters & anything that is using small shields.

Has this been fixed in a recent patch, or does nobody even know about it?

[Instar]

They're not supposed to, unless you modded the game to make small regens.

[Suicide Junkie]

Exactly. The ability dosen't work for small stuff. My fighters don't regen shields, even when they have a regenerator.

I should note that even unmodded, satelites cannot regenerate shields! Even if they have regenerators.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 25 March 2001).]

[Q]

Why do you want to have shield regeneration in troops, fighters and satellites? One decent shot and the unit is dead with or without shield regeneration. Their strength lies in the large number. Even in larger ships I hardly ever use the shield regeneration components because I find it more efficient to include another shield instead.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

Why do you want to have shield regeneration in troops, fighters and satellites?

---

I've set a small regeneration ability to all shield generators. (If they can generate, then they can regenerate)

For my MiG fighters, they have 120 shields, so they take quite a while to kill, especially considering that they attack missile-laden, solo ships most of the time.
Regeneration would let each one survive 1 or 2 turns longer in battle, even better when the PD misses.

For large ships, regenerators are great, especially against low-efficiency weapons like missiles.
The best regenerator (SR IV) gives 20 regen in 20Kt.
The best shield gives 375 points in 40Kt.
So if you plan on having your ship live longer than 9 turns in battle, regenerators will give you more hitpoints than the equivalent mass in shields.
Therefore, give your ship enough shields (& PDC) to survive 3 waves of missiles & the rest should be regenerators.
It is even better in Tactical combat with a fleet, since you can retreat when your shields are weak, while the fleet fights on, and return a few rounds later when your shields are restored.

[Q]

Quote:
"So if you plan on having your ship live longer than 9 turns in battle, regenerators will give you more hitpoints than the equivalent mass in shields."
As far as I know shield regeneration starts only to be effective when you suffered hits and already lost shield points and not before the ship is actually engaged in combat. Now for tactical combat you are right, I can withdraw my ship and wait until the shield regenerate. In strategic battle however, this does not happen and in my experience the ship will be destroyed within 3-4 turns because the enemy focuses its attact on 1-2 ships at a time. I ran quite a few combat simulation on auto/strategic and the ships with shield regeration did worse than if I used the same space for additional shields. In my estimation the shield regenerators would be interesting if they provided equal shield points/kT in 3-4 turns.
And for fighters even with shields a single unit will be destroyed by 2-3 point-defence canon hits. Here again the fire will concentrate on one unit of a group at a time.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

As far as I know shield regeneration starts only to be effective when you suffered hits and already lost shield points and not before the ship is actually engaged in combat.

---

Of course.

quote:

---

Now for tactical combat you are right, I can withdraw my ship and wait until the shield regenerate. In strategic battle however, this does not happen and in my experience the ship will be destroyed within 3-4 turns because the enemy focuses its attact on 1-2 ships at a time. I ran quite a few combat simulation on auto/strategic and the ships with shield regeration did worse than if I used the same space for additional shields.

---

What kind of designs do you use? If you throw lots of ships at the enemy, then light shielding and LOTS of weapons is best, but if you build fewer, high tech, large ships, then heavy shields & fewer weapons is better.

In my games I go for the second path, and my BCs have 4 shield generators and 4 Large mount guns, ECM & Elite racial dodging skills. All my ships are designed to survive, rather than destroy.
In this case, I will definitely survive more than 10 rounds in a small-scale fight, so regeneration is very useful.

If I was going to be fighting a large battle, or any kind where I did not expect my ship to survive, then I would put ablative armor and Lots of guns on my ships so they can do more damage while they are still alive.

The average life expectancy of ships in my fleet is longer than the life expectancy of my planets.

In fact after 10 years half of my casualties have been from natural phenomena rather than combat. (supernovas suck)

quote:

---

In my estimation the shield regenerators would be interesting if they provided equal shield points/kT in 3-4 turns.

---

That would be insane: my ships would all be invulnerable, unless you had a truly massive fleet.
Say I went up against a missile ship. It can only fire every three turns, and with my shields recharging fully by the time he reloads, I could defeat it with a single gun!

quote:

---

And for fighters even with shields a single unit will be destroyed by 2-3 point-defence canon hits. Here again the fire will concentrate on one unit of a group at a time.

---

Regen may not work for the kinds of things you use fighters for, but they are useful in certain situations. If you send big packs of fighters against Groups of ships, you're going to lose a lot no matter what. But, for attacking single ships, regeneration becomes useful.
In the battles I used fighters in during my current game, working regeneration would have prevented 50% of my casualties.
(and since my Pirates' total resource production is 3 digits long, thats expensive)

---------------

My point is that regen ability dosent work, but it should.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 25 March 2001).]