Ships & Modules

Am I right in thinking that, if the Capacitor section of the in-client fitting screen reports that the capacitor is stable, then under no circumstances should module use alone cause the capacitor to fully deplete? Stable, right?

It seems not.

I've been tweaking my Tengu setup and have a fit which reports in the in-client fitting tool as capacitor stable at 7.8% (providing I don't use the MWD). However, in practice, this is not the case and the capacitor does deplete if all other modules are activated.

So what's going on? Is this a bug or just complex maths I don't understand?

I've read this EVElopedia-linked mathematical explanation thread, but am none the wiser.

Can anyone explain this with less algebra?

Edit: I got an answer on Twitter...


So the EVE client lies!

i guess anciliary shield booster...

Pink elephants with small Goblins astride them of course. Pfff. How else?!?!

iam too lazy to move this manually into eft but "10mn MWD II" is wheres you making a mistake...

I appreciate the explanation, it seems clearer even with a side-order of unwarranted scorn.

My confusion was arising from the capacitor being reported as stable when it clearly isn't. The present declaration of stability is misleading if activating modules destabilises it.


Are you suggesting it is beyond the realms of maths to determine if combined simultaneous module activation costs are greater than the reported stability % of the capacitor?

As Kivena stated, peak cap recharge is between 25% and 33% capacity (well, Kivena stated 25% but the graph I recall peaks between the two). Therefore, if the fitting screen shows you stable at anything less than 25% then it doesn't really mean indefinitely stable. And if you're running any module which will spike your cap use (Shield boosters and Armour reps are the most obvious culprits but even Invulns...etc may represent too great a spike in some fits) then you're probably not stable even then - you'll drain your cap down to peak recharge, fire off a cycle on the spiking module and suddenly you're below peak recharge...

The fitting screen's calculation is not ideal, but then the older 3rd party fitting tools used to "lie" in the same way. Although the results were never accurate, provided you were aware of the limitations you could still guage performance reasonably well.

Hi,
I am pretty sure that this is infact your problem.


but first

How do you get the in game eve fitting window to have a module that is active (useable) but not activated to be calculated into the cap recharge %?
I can only see:
1 Module fit but offline (does not draw cpu/power) has no applied ship bonuses)
2 module fit and online (active module affects capacitor, speed, etc draws cpu and powergrid)

the mwd II has a capacitor "bonus" of -17% meaning that the ship looses 17% of the maximum storable cap that it has. However when the module is fit but offline (in the ingame fitting window) it does not have any of its fitting "bonuses" applied such as CPU or Powergrid use or the -17% cap bonus.

The next time you are ingame check what your total cap is with the module in the two states that the eve client recognizes
OOG fitting tools such as pyfa or eft can apply the module bonuses with the module being not active but online

Thanks for the input folks, but I don't think I made my concerns clear. It wasn't with regard to my fit or how to fix it, I'm well aware of the vagaries of capacitor management.

What I was trying to determine was whether the fact that the EVE fitting tool displaying the word 'Stable' was an indicator of the capacitor being, ahem, stable. As I tweak loadouts in drydock I was experiencing some circumstances where that seemed not to be the case. I wanted to determine if my experience was a bug or an accepted feature.

From feedback I have received from various places including this thread, it seems that the EVE UI's declaration of capacitor stability is an accepted idiosyncrasy of EVE and should be read as 'probably stable under some conditions'.

TL;DR Stable does not mean stable.

Buddy..
In this specific case (MWD fitting) The EVE client does report the stability correctly.

What you think you are doing and what you are actually doing are not explained well by the game. but that does not mean that you are getting false information.

also they (CCP) know about this.

That's a really great expectation to have, but you're engaging in hypotheticals instead of reality. If you already know the in-game fitting window is garbage and that other tools exist, then why do you even need to ask the question? Unless you know those tools exist and also refuse to use them.



You misunderstand me, I don't really take issue with people asking variations on previously answered questions (although my italics must have made it seem that way). I just take issue with people using the in-game tool in the first place when they should know not to rely on it. I'm trying to emphasize in-general why the in-game fitting window is unreliable, not that you are somehow deficient for posting this thread. My apologies. Also, lol@ thread from 2004.

But, could I persuade you to upload a screenshot of the in-game fitting window where you're seeing this behavior? It stands to reason that with peak recharge near 30%, any fit that dips below peak recharge for a full cycle of modules will continue to drop capacitor until it hits zero. So its very strange to me that the in-game window would ever display "stable at 7.8%" because that would be complete nonsense*. Steve's quote that the in-game tool uses a linear model for recharge is especially troubling if true.

*It is theoretically possible to be stable below peak recharge (two points at equillibrium, one above peak and one below peak where the recharge is the same and is equal to the rate of cap use). However, in this case the one below peak recharge acts as repelling fixed-point and the one above acts as an attracting fixed point of a dynamical system. As cap is used in discreet chunks, you cannot land perfectly on this lower point of equillibrium, even if you start near it you will always drain towards zero cap or inch upward towards the higher equillibrium point. Furthermore, starting from 100% cap, passing the first cap stable point would pretty much mean you're going to end up at 0 sooner or later. /math