Elite Dangerous: Shield recharge speed

Online Shields

Online shield charging speed is not depending on class and it's exactly same for all shield classes and rating as long as you have enough energy in your SYS capacitor, only difference is between different type shields:

1. Regular shields will charge at a rate of 1 MJ/sec;
2. Prismatic shields will charge at a rate of 1 MJ/sec;
3. Bi-Weave shields will charge at a rate of 1.8 MJ/sec;

Because Bi-Weave shields charge faster they require more energy thus you will have to keep more pips to SYS compared to regular or prismatic shields, I would say that you need 1,8x more energy per second.

When you are being shot at online shields will temporarily cease to charge so if you are under constant fire (one shot in around 4-5 sec) then shields wont charge at all and then Bi-Weave shields will have no advantage.

Offline Shields

When shields go offline it takes 17 seconds for all type or size shields to start charging and shields come back online at 50% of their total strength, so if your shields are at 800MJ then after coming online they will be at 400MJ mark.

Because offline charging speed is much higher than online disabling shield boosters will result in much longer shield charging up to 100% - obviously by disabling shield boosters shield will come back online faster but the value will be below 50% of total shields after you turn shield boosters back online and the difference that you gain from shield boosters will have to be charged at online shield charging speed which can be 3-4 times slower.

Shield Class	Offline Standard MJ/sec	Offline Bi-Weave MJ/sec	Offline Prismatic MJ/sec
1	1.6	2.4	1.2
2	1.6	2.4	1.2
3	1.6	2.4	1.2
4	1.9	2.85	1.426
5	2.5	3.75	1.875
6	3.2	4.8	2.4
7	4	6	3
8	4.8	7.2	3.6

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