Capacitor: Difference between revisions

The '''capacitor''' is an additional energy reserve that your ship uses to power modules and equipments that require a quick burst of power.

Every ship in Eve has an internal generator, which provides the "powergrid" you see in the [[fitting]] window. Modules fitted onto the ship connect to the powergrid and reserve a portion of the generator output for themselves, reducing the remaining powergrid when fitted.

Some modules require only connection to the powergrid to work: armor plates, damage controls, and weapon enhancers (gyrostabilizers, heat sinks, magnetic field stabilizers and ballistic control systems) for example. Most of these do not even require player activation and are always working and players commonly call them "passive" modules. A few types of active module, such as projectile turrets and missile launchers, must be activated by players but require only powergrid, not capacitor energy.

Your ship's warp engines use capacitor to initiate warp, and the amount of capacitor energy required depends on the warp distance. If you lack sufficient capacitor energy, your warp engines will take whatever is available, and warp you an equivalent proportion of the distance, dropping you out of warp somewhere between your departure point and destination.

Ships' capacitor sizes tend to be within the same order of magnitude across similarly-sized and classed hulls, but they do vary. Amarr ships tend to have the largest capacitors, because the most common Amarr weapon is energy-hungry laser turrets; Minmatar ships tend to have the smallest capacitors, because none of their bonused weapons use capacitor at all.

[[File:FitCapacitor.jpg|200px|thumb|right|From the top left: Capacitor Capacity, Recharge time, Delta in Gj/s, Delta in percentage]]

If a capacitor is '"stable", then even with every capacitor-consuming module running non-stop, your capacitor energy level will eventually drop down and fluctuate between the percentage level displayed, indefinitely, with the total drain on the capacitor balanced out by its recharge rate. Players often call a fit which runs with a stable capacitor "cap-stable".

Next to the orange circle display, four pieces of additional information are displayed. The top row is simply max capacitor capacity and the recharge time. The bottom row is a bit more complicated. The "Delta" (Δ) of your capacitor indicates how resilient the capacitor will be under ''additional'' pressure beyond your current fit. It is (peak capacitor recharge rate) - (Max power consumption rate). Having a positive delta means that your capacitor is stable. Having greater positive delta means that you can afford to be hit with additional capacitor loads and still remain stable. Having a negative delta means that your capacitor is not stable. Having greater negative delta means your capacitor depletes faster.

Although it is a good thing to be cap-stable, it is not a requirement in every situation. In some PvE and PvP combat situations you will rarely need everything running at the same time, while in others stability is important; you must consider a fit's likely use and context.

* When facing against enemies with energy neutralizers, try to keep your distance to reduce their effectiveness.

The formula can be also used to write capacitor level as function of time

|'''{{co|wheat|Capacitor Booster}}''' allows injecting more capacitor at demand. The module consumes cap booster charges. Each charge gives set amount of energy. For example Cap Booster 200 will give 200 GJ of energy.

 

 

The following skills benefit very common, widely-used modules, making them valuable training choices:

Controlled Bursts is not important if your favored weapons systems are missiles, projectile turrets, or drones, which do not use capacitor. This skill is therefore irrelevant to flying Minmatar ships, and less useful for some Gallente drone ships and Caldari missile ships. Propulsion Jamming is more important for PvP pilots, and less important for PvE pilots.