Have Energy Shields been buffed?

[obuw]

One thing I noticed in my latest v14 game (upgrading from v12), is that once I got myself some modular armor and energy shields, I became completely impervious to damage from small-medium biters, spitters and worms. I can now literally stand in the middle of a nest full of small biters/spitters/worms, and my energy shield does not even go down more than a pixel before it regenerates back to full.

I was using a 7x7 armor (skipped the 5x5 since once you have the infrastructure for blue circuits you may as well go for the 7x7). 9 energy shields, 3 batteries, 7 solars. From what I gather, the energy shields must now be recharging much faster, and consuming a lot less power to do so, since even at night the batteries were not draining at all while I was taking a constant stream of damage.

From what I recall, in the past even the small biters would be able to slowly drain your shields, and batteries would drain really fast trying to recharge them. Solars were basically next to useless, they'd take days just to fill up a few batteries. You had to go for a fusion reactor to have a meaningful combat setup.

I'm not sure how I feel about the changes. On the one hand, solars are now viable, on the other hand, there's basically no need to go for a fusion reactor or a bigger armor for combat purposes, you are already basically godlike with a simple setup consisting of solars and mk1 equipment. Does anyone know what exactly has been changed numbers-wise?

[Bilka]

The batteries were buffed. Their charge was increased by a factor of 20 in version 0.13:

Increased battery equipment power storage, input, and output by a factor of 20.

[obuw]

Oh, I thought it was just a visual change, just to multiply all the equipment mW values by 10. I guess I must have missed that batteries were actually buffed beyond that.

I wonder why they felt they needed to give batteries such a massive buff?

[Rseding91]

Oh, I thought it was just a visual change, just to multiply all the equipment mW values by 10. I guess I must have missed that batteries were actually buffed beyond that.

I wonder why they felt they needed to give batteries such a massive buff?

Because they were complete garbage for the space they took up. They would discharge in a few seconds.

[obuw]

Hey, thanks for the reply! Could you confirm if they were buffed 2x or 20x? (Since a lot of other stuff have had their numbers changed 10x in the same patch I think). If they really were buffed by 20x while everything else remained the same that's a pretty insane buff!

I do agree they were pretty weak but they seem to be really strong now, once they are fully charged there's no way they're draining down unless you use the more expensive stuff like roboports or lots of personal lasers.

Edit: Okay, I checked the values. They really were buffed 20x (they were increased 200x while everything else was increased 10x). I think I'll have to play around with them a bit more before I give my final verdict, but the buff feels really over the top right now imho.

[bobingabout]

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how they were changed, because they have been a couple of times recently, but I think everything had it's energy multiplied by 10 at one point, and then they were rebalanced again afterwards. Though, I'm fairly sure the battery saw two massive increases in charge.

[obuw]

Well, I did a diff of the v12 and the v14 files, and it looks like pretty much everything was multiplied by 10x, but the batteries were multiplied by 200x. The changes could have been over several patches but the end result is a 20x buff to batteries from v12 to v14.

I feel their values could be cut to 1/4 of what they are now, and they'd still be useful. Or perhaps energy shield recharge rates could be reduced, or a combination of both.

[Rseding91]

Well, I did a diff of the v12 and the v14 files, and it looks like pretty much everything was multiplied by 10x, but the batteries were multiplied by 200x. The changes could have been over several patches but the end result is a 20x buff to batteries from v12 to v14.

I feel their values could be cut to 1/4 of what they are now, and they'd still be useful. Or perhaps energy shield recharge rates could be reduced, or a combination of both.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27101

◦Increased battery equipment power storage, input, and output by a factor of 20.

[Frightning]

Another reason your shields are so effective (also due to 0.13) is that the armor rating of your Power Armor is now applied to the shield (whereas before it wasn't).