COMBAT: Basics - Shield Cell Banks vs. Shield Boosters - #00053

One of the biggest mistakes newbies, and even advanced cmdrs, make is installing shield boosters instead of shield cell banks.

At this point I want to make clear in advance, that shield boosters are valuable tools. Their main purpose is to enhance primary shield capacity so the time span until a needed shield refill by shield cell banks is prolonged.

Cmdrs unfortunately use lots of shield boosters, considering them a valid way for extending combat endurance, which is true to some degree, but horribly unefficient compared to shield cell banks.

In short:

Shield Booster
- Utility module
- Enhances capacity of the shield system. Once.
- No additional recharge, no multiple use. Empty means empty.
- Can't be irritated or forced into a malfunction without having killed the module, which in turn needs shields to be dropped. Catch 22 for the enemy.

Shield Cell Banks
- Optional module
- Enhances capacity of the shield system. Big time.
- Multiple use.
- Produce an insane amount of heat. Be careful.
- Can be blocked and irritated by high ranked NPC or PvP players. Rail guns with reverberated feedback modification fired at a shield cell bank in action nulls its recharge on the charge in use.

A bit of math
You got a shiney Cobra Mk III with all bells and whistles. You feel lucky and the dire need to do some pewpew.

You equip it for combat, using 2x 0A rated shield boosters.

Your 4A shield generator provides 124 MJ of shield protection.
Your 2 x 0A shield boosters add 50 MJ to this - consuming 2 x 1.20 = 2.40 MJ of 'juice' from your power generator.
Your Cobra has 174 MJ of raw shield protection for combat. Once depleted, you're on hull. No recharge capability apart from your shield generator's healing rate of 2.5 MJ per second. As shield (systems) are filled to 50% before coming back to life, your shields will need (174/2)/2.5 = ca. 35 seconds for providing ca. 87 additional MJ. If your hull and your modules can't survive 35 seconds of enemy fire, it's a good idea to leave the crime scene the moment your shields drop.

By using 2 x 2A shield cell banks instead...

... your 4A shield generator still provides 124 MJ of shield protection (ofc!)
... your 2 x 2A shield cell banks add a total of 512 (!) MJ of protection - consuming 2.36 MJ of power generator energy.
... your cobra has 124 MJ or raw shield protection for combat. Each and every time you see your shield health go to below 50% (a 2A shield cell bank has 64 MJ of recharge, which is roughly 50% of your raw shield capacity), you use one of your (2x4 = 8) shield cell banks to refill your shields to about 100%.

In other words we imagine being attacked by a ship that does 5 MJ of raw damage onto your beloved Cobra Mk 3 per second. (Hypothetically, simplified, just as an example).

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