Ships & Modules

I wonder if anyone had an opinion on the capacitor flux coil vs capacitor power relay for a shield boosting BS. Obviously, the CPR decreases shield boost, and the CFC decreases cap capacity. In EFT, the difference in cap recharge is only marginally better with the CPR (0.8), though I lose 65 shield boosting HP a cycle.

The real question in my mind is how a smaller cap capacity from the CFC will affect sustained PVE play. Anyone have experience with both the CFC and CPR on a shield boosting BS since the Oceanus rebalance?

Ignore capacitor, acquire damage mods.

This certainly makes sense, though this character has primarily been my industry alt and does not have the skills yet to pack a hefty punch. I have fit as many damage mods as possible, with only one low slot open for something to hold me over. It will be a year before I have the drone and missile skills up to where I want on this character.

I have fit an afterburner to mitigate damage, but I do need some defense. It takes me a little less than 30 seconds to kill a 1mil bounty BS at this point.

The best D-fense is a good O-fense. That is, until you run into someone who thinks the same way x2. THEN of course...

If I wrap my ship totally in duct tape do you think....

Depending on the slots available the penalty may be negligable...

Although CFCs were recently tweaked (first pass of module tiericide) there is an interesting property with CPRs in that (as I recall) the shield boost penalty is stacking penalised... or bonused. In other words, if you fit a lot of CPRs and a couple of boost amps you pretty quickly cancel the penalty while gaining a significant cap recharge. I will say that I am going from older, half remembered stuff here - I may be misremembering or they may have changed since...

I would counter the "moar damage" crew here though: When you have good skills and you're confident in your ship then damage mods, reducing the incoming damage by killing it, is a very solid position to take. When you're an inexperienced pilot with poor skills however the damage mods are going to have a correspondingly low effect, and when fitting four damage mods means that you kill a rat in eleven volleys rather than twelve you may well find that there are better ways to use your slots.
Loading up on damage mods which bring your kill down to three volleys rather than four is a very valuable investment but it is dependent on a couple of things other than the number of lowslots and BCUs you fit (where are the 7 Heat Sink, shield buffer PvE Abaddons?) Cap Stability may not be the ultimate strategy but if you're missioning for hours and a mistake is going to cost more than you've earned then there is value in a slightly more circumspect route.

You're probably trying to use a "perma-boosted" setup, i.e. have the shield booster always running while being cap stable. In general, this is unnecessary in the context of PvE mission running. Instead you could invest in a Capacitor Booster, e.g. Heavy Capacitor Booster II. The benefits of a cap booster are that instead of fitting multiple cap enhancing modules (CFCs, Cap Rechargers, etc.) you can use a single slot for a Cap Booster and use the now free slots for offensive or defensive modules. The downside is that Cap Boosters use ammo (which takes up a lot of cargo space) and have non-trivial fitting requirements.

The general problem with a perma-boosted setup is that you spend so many fitting slots on cap recharging that your tank suffers due to a lack of shield hardeners which means you need to use a bigger shield booster which requires more cap mods..., and that your gank (offense) suffers which means the NPCs spend more time shooting at you which means you need more tank and/or a bigger shield booster. So perma-boosted setups can be a bit self-defeating.

OTOH, if you need to walk away from the keyboard at a moment's notice, perma-boosted setups can work for certain battleships.

You said CFC.

YOU SAID CFC!!!!

BURN HIM!

Yes, I see your point. I'm really trying to scoot around and avoid as much damage as I can with a nice 100MN AB, but as others have noted I'm still at the point where it takes quite a few volleys to kill a good NPC BS, so I can take some damage. I think I'll play around with things a bit this weekend if I have the time. Thanks!

Seconding this. Years ago when I was running a Raven with meta 4 launchers it was a vital part of PVE. I rarely use my cap booster now days but its a handy back up thats saved me from having to warp out (or explode when scrammed) on real high DPS areas or after I've gone AFK for a minute. I think of it as my emergency back up.