Factorio Forums

See the screenshot below. I just installed this shield and it appears to be charging... but what does electricity mean? The bar is empty.

Same as for any other module with an energy capacity. Lasers use up electricity to attack. BASIC EXOSUIT EQUIPMENT uses electricity when you move. Shield generators use energy to restore shield capacity. Essentially, its a tiny buffer between your main power reservers and the shield buffer itself. Its there, I suspect, for program limitation reasons, and presumably also to allow for varying amounts of power per shield point.

The bar is empty because your electricity generation is too low. It can't refill the shield at max speed.

DaveMcW wrote:The bar is empty because your electricity generation is too low. It can't refill the shield at max speed.

Yep. If it were at like 2% of the bar, it would be currently charging, and would fill up in around a half second at max. if it is empty, then you aren't able to provide enough power to it, either due to lack of generation rate, or lack of batteries to siphon power from.

In this case, solar panels are entirely insufficient for that task. You should have at least ten, although honestly, in vanilla games, I generally go straight for fusion reactor, since solar panels are hilariously weak.

Portable solar panels can be used for the night vision and portable roboports (it's only needed for transmission and to recharge the bots - but note you can "hoover" up the bots if they get stuck recharging due to lack of electricity so you can get by with way less electricity than you probably should have). But they don't really provide enough electricity for shields or exoskeletons. At that stage of the game if you want to be faster or tougher it's much cheaper to just use the car or tank.