In a PVP fight, say you notice you bought the wrong capacitor booster like you bought cap boost 150s instead of 800s or whatever. or maybe the ship is a handout and some guy put the wrong ones in. Say you are a BC tackle (t3d grabs the prey, you hold on since you have more EHP than the little guy… or some other scenario). You can’t keep your hardners, neutralizers, and tackle modules on at the same time without the capacitor booster it’s why you have the capacitor booster in the first place. At the same time, the charges are small enough that they won’t refill your capacitor. So when should you use them? On one hand, it makes sense to just chug the cap boosters ASAP since if you get blown up, whatever you tackled gets away. On the other hand, if you are above 25% capacitor, using the capaictor booster actually slows the regen.
My advice for the future, always check your cargo hold before you undock. Check your ammo / cap charges / nanite paste / combat boosters.
You can still use the smaller charges, since you can load a lot more smaller ones into a medium or large cap booster. Use heat as long as you can.
When you are low on cap? I mean, if you are around 25% cap, use the booster with a charge that either fills you up to full (that’s a 800 in a MCB or a 400 in a SCB) or start running your cap booster with size appropriate charges early on to keep the cap up until the target is dead.
That’s wholly irrelevant. You do not rely on cap recharge if you use a cap booster. Worrying about recharge when you use a Booster is a waste of time and brain capacity. Your booster basically is your 5000% regeneration cheat.
I always assume handout ships are either correct or just “too high SP, you need to downgrade to the meta version” rather than “this ship isn’t even the right one even if you had perfect skills”