Is 'overcharge shield' working as intended?

[Jamus_Divinus]

I have to admit I can't see what this ability actually does.

 

"Increases shield capacity by 18% for 15 seconds and instantly restores 20% of the base shield power".

 

When using it i've never noticed my shields increase. Not even when my shields are gone and I'm taking hull damage so I'm not sure where the 'instantly restores 20% of the base shield power' comes into play.

 

I've a sneaking suspicion there's something incredibly obvious I'm missing. Is it bugged or am I just misunderstanding the mechanics involved?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Loc_n_lol]

It's possible you don't notice because the moment you activate it, your max shield capacity goes from 140%(+upgrades+crew+reactor) of base to 158%(+upgrades+crew+reactor) of base shields, so a 20% of base increase may not cause the UI to change. Edited July 7, 2014 by Loc_n_lol

[Fractalsponge]

To see a situation in which it absolutely will cause a UI change, wait till a shield face is very low or down, then activate it. You'll see the restored shield pop up then.

[Altheran]

Or using it in weapon/engine mode also make the shield gain apparent as the arcs turn blue

[Verain]

I think the problem is that the "temporary max" goes up along with the "current value", so there's basically no visual indicator much of the time.

 

Assume you have Overcharged Shield, Large Reactor, crewman passive. Your shield in F4 becomes 2700. Your shield in F1 or F3 becomes 2550. Further, lets assume you have about 1350 remaining on your shield arc. This means that this shield arc will normally display as one green arc and nothing more: 1350/2700 = 0.5, so you get the "halfwayish" graphic.

 

Now you press the active. With the left talent, this increases your current by 300, and your max by 270. Now you have 1550 out of 2970. Your ratio was 0.5, now is 0.52. Your shield went up by 2%- you won't expect to see anything at all!

 

But in practice, you gained 300 shield, and the max increasing didn't matter on your wounded shield arc. If the max hadn't increased, you'd have gained 7% of your max back, and that would have drawn.

Meanwhile, if you had had directionals instead of overcharged on this same bomber, your max would have been 2100, and if you had found a way to restore 300 shields to it, it would have been a 14% increase, and been very visible. Or if you had quick charge shields (nobody has both quick charge and overcharged, and you can't have QC and use OC, but pretend), your overcharged would have restored 20%, 2/3rds what the QC would have restored.

 

 

But you don't see the arc move, because the 300 is not drawn as 20%, or even the 7% it deserves to be, but an invisible 2%.

 

 

 

Also note that the outer arc can be a bit of a liar if it isn't red. If you are in F4 mode, then everything works normally. But if you are in F1 or F3 mode, you'll see the outer max at yellow, to show that you are at a lower max. But it is ALWAYS yellow. Being in F1 mode for overcharged means your max shields went down from 2700 to 2550, and this 5.6ish percent reduction is worth a whole shield color. But if you had distortion shields on a scout, you went from 1430 to 1300- about 10% lower. Meanwhile, anything that increases your max, be it by a little or a lot, will show blue arc.

 

Your directional set to double front is vastly stronger than chilling in F2 mode with your +200ish shields, but both display as blue arc, no more.

 

 

So remember that the outer edge is serving a few purposes, and remember that the rest of the display is in relation to MAX shields. You get your 300 shields when you press 2, but the increase to max reduces the color gain by half. But you don't care about that, you care about the number.

[Jamus_Divinus]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm only a few games until I master the razorwire and can move onto the next ship so it was mainly due to curiosity that i asked.

 

/tiphat