Hi. I was trying to fit a Coercer with a certain module for an agent mission but it keeps on saying that the capacitor will deplete in a certain amount of minutes? I am wondering what it is, how to prevent it, and what happens if the core depletes?
Thank you!
It will vary from your current skills and the modules you are fitting. You can simulate the ship with the current modules and they at start will show all active modules on. You can simulate deactivation for example of the prop module and you will notice either cap stable or more cap time avaiable. When you right click on a module and click “Show Info” you can sellect the attributes tab and see the activation cost on each cycle. From there you can plan better your fitting.
Your capacitor is the energy your ship has to run modules. It continually regenerates but some modules are very power hungry and will use more than your ship makes. The fitting window gives you an idea of this by telling you how long your capacitor will last when all your modules are on.
For some things, being “cap stable” is important so you can operate indefinitely, but other times combat is brief or you won’t use all your modules all the time so it doesn’t matter. People often obsess about it too much in my opinion, and the best is to just test out your fit and see if a drained capacitor really is a problem. It usually isn’t, at least for what I do.
There is more info here:
You can fit active and passive modules to your ship.
Active modules will use capacitor as a resource when they are turned ON and stop using capacitor when they are turned OFF.
Default they are not used so not using capacitor when you undock a station, you have to click on their icon and they start cycle with ligh-green effect.
When you fly your ship, you see a big circle in the mid-bottom of your screen.
The outer white ring shows the shield, armor, structure hitpoints.
The inner yellow ring divided into very small brick-sectors are your capacitor.
An example:
When you use some of your active moduls, they drain your capacitor and when you turn them off, they stop draining capacitor and it starts growing back.
Some active moduls use more capacitor, some active moduls use less.
If you deplete all your capacitor, your active moduls stop working. It is not good. Their is an audio warning effect when you reach very low capacitor level.
What does it mean the capacitor will deplete in a certain amount of time?
It means that if you use ALL active moduls at once, they will drain your capacitor empty in that time shown red in your ship fitting window’s top-right corner.
In my example above my ship is not “cap stable” which means 5 salvager + 1 microwarpdrive could deplete my capacitor fast. How can I avoid it?
I don’t use all of them at once.
I usually use 3-4 salvager, rarely 5 together without microwarpdrive, or i use the microwarpdrive alone to move fast and while i move fast i don’t salvage.
As you can see on the pic I use all 5 salvager at once, it drains the capacitor slowly. But i don’t use the fast speed microwarpdrive because i don’t have a reason for that.
So this example shows that the red number in your ship fitting window is a theoretical time, what is the maximum time you can use all active moduls together the same time. But you don’t have to use them all together.
This way you can play around your capacitor, turning on moduls when you need them and lowering-increasing your capacitor level during the process, keeping your ship and its moduls working with just enough capacitor.
How can you increase your ship’s capacitor level?
You have skills that increase your ship’s resources or lower the resource usage of moduls. Capacitor, power grid etc. Check engineering skills. The basic skills are good to level up because all ships use capacitor and the others so they are always useful skills.
There are moduls that can increase the capacitor level or increase the recharge rate (increasing faster back to its maximum).
There are moduls that can drain capacitor from enemy ships and some enemy ships can drain your capacitor too (especially in PVP, not in low level npc fights). So if your ship is not cap stable, in PVP it can be a weak point enemy players can capitalize. They drain your capacitor and your ship can not fight back because there is no capacitor for laser guns or shield boosters etc.
There are also some rigs and implants and booster drugs that can improve your capacitor levels and recharge rates. I recommend checking rigs first. Implants and booster drugs are very expensive and you can play around with cheap moduls, rigs or simply level up your skills to reach a cap stable ship before you’ll need that extra 3-5 % capacitor level to maximize something with implants or booster drugs.
If your ship has more capacitor than all active moduls can use the same time, it is called “cap stable” and it is shown in the ship fitting window’s top-right corner with a green “Stable” text.
About your mission:
Don’t be affraid to do a mission with a not cap stable ship. If you need to use a microwarpdrive for 30 seconds to do a mission fast and your ship’s cap depletes in 3 minutes, than you have much more cap than needed for that mission. (For example to fly through an explosive gas cloud. Turn the microwarpdrive on when you reach the cloud and turn it off when you exit it. etc.)
Good luck for the mission.
An empty Cap is not the end of all days. It recharges quite fast, so if you can warp out, you don’t need much time to get your cap full again.
Another Cap eating device is the armor repairer. If you go ratting and your armor repairer fitted ship is cap stable, you can run it all the fight.
In PvP I never had Cap issues yet because I’m always kind of alphaed (=blasted with the first salvo) from screen in no time 
If your ship were a wizard, the capacitor would be mana.
As the others have said, there are modules you can install to recharge the capacitor faster (search for cap recharge or cap booster), or make it bigger (capacitor battery).
And, as it’s been said above, sometimes the capacitor doesn’t matter that much. Missiles, drones, and the Minmatar projectile guns (artillery and autocannons) don’t use capacitor at all. PVP fights are so fast that you’re either dead or a winner before the capacitor has a chance to go empty on you. PVE missions involve wave after wave of pirates that just keep coming, so that’s where you need to last for a long time.
We fit the ships in this game for a purpose. It’s a tactics / strategy game. You need to have a plan for your ship, and control the fight (don’t let the enemy do what they want, force them into your killzone / plan), and the capacitor is part of your plan. You should read this ship fitting guide for how to kill efficiently and manage your capacitor during the fight.
Your Coercer is a destroyer that uses 8 lasers, and lasers need capacitor energy to fire. Lasers are the opposite of artillery, they don’t consume ammo, but they use a lot of energy from the capacitor. The Coercer only has 2 medium and 3 low slots, so very little room for capacitor recharger modules or armor defenses. Because of these constraints, possible “plans” for your Coercer will be along the lines of “kill them fast with my 8 lasers so they don’t have a chance to scratch my paint.” It’s not a sit-there-and-take-it type of ship.
So with a kill-them-fast plan, capacitor longevity may not be necessary, and instead you’re looking to make sure you have the speed to get in and get out (install an afterburner) and maximum firepower for your lasers (install Heat Sink modules to enhance damage for lasers). Your defense will be staying outside the pirates’ damage radius, and hitting them hard with long range beam lasers.
And for missions that require you to sit there and take damage, use a different ship. For example, the Punisher frigate only has 4 lasers, but with 5 low slots you can have a tank with double armor repairer with damage resistance plating. It’ll take longer to kill the pirates, but you can get close (use short range pulse lasers) and laugh at their pathetic attempts to scratch your armor defenses. But you’ll need capacitor recharge rigs and modules to keep those armor repairers going indefinitely, otherwise you won’t be laughing for long.
Thank you!
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