So, the T3 Remote Shield Generator module (note, not the MASS shield generator) has proven problematically overpowered. It has a couple of problems:
* It heals a lot of people for a lot of shield. Shield regen from the mass shield generator and shield boosters is already quite nice, this is really overkill on top.
* The main disadvantage of not healing the user is easily negated by having more than one engineering frigate. Having several engineering frigates rotating remote shield generators creates an incredibly hard to break “herd tank”.
This is an idea for a module to replace the T3 remote shield generator. It allows the engineering frigate to still have a button to emergency heal heavily damaged friendlies and be a hero, but without creating the shield as extra healing, and properly disadvantaging the engineering frigate for using it.
Active Module: Shield Transfer
Category: Engineering
Tier: 3+
Cooldown: 50s (same as shield boosters for convenience reasons)
Duration: 8s
Range: 4500m (at mk3)
Transfers N (thinking ~1500, so quite strong) shield per second from the user’s ship to the most damaged friendly ship in range. Cannot restore friendly shields over 50% and will not reduce the user’s shield below 50%.
The target would be recalculated every cycle, so if you had two equally damaged ships it would essentially heal them both up alternately.
At first glance this might seem underpowered and downright suicidal for the engineer, but it has a few advantages for using it:
* Two ships at 50% has twice the dps of one dead ship and one alive ship.
* Two ships at 50% gets twice the benefit of repair auras than one damaged ship and one at 100%.
* Two ships at 50% can both use shield boosters to repair themselves, should they choose to slot them (I would expect a shield booster to be almost essential for the engy frigate to slot alongside this module).
Note that the 8s duration means if the engineer wants to transfer less shield or they start getting shot at they can deactivate the module again to stop the drain.
One of the use cases I’m thinking of is to allow an engineering frigate in a secure location to sacrifice his shield for his allies, so it should work without line of sight.
This might still have the problem of allowing an engineering frigate “herd tank” by letting a bunch of engineering frigates essentially “share” large shield boosters to make themselves tough to crack, but large shield boosters still don’t heal for a mad amount, so hopefully this wouldn’t prove too powerful. Certainly it’d be weaker than the herd tank you can currently get with remote shield generators.
This also might still prove pretty OP for keeping captains alive, but again, still less OP than what we have now at T3. Note you don’t have to *destroy* the engineering frigate to stop it from healing a captain with this module, only reduce it to 50% shield, which is comparatively easy.