Ships & Modules

Now for some discussion of shield and armor mechanics and how fleet bonuses are applied. This is the topic that SMT008 just mentioned -- the fact that shield fleet bonuses are not applied upon jumping in properly. Here is why:

Shield hit points in EVE are measured with two variables: Your maximum shield hitpoints, and your current "shield charge", or your current hit point total. Both of these are positive variables and are used in the equation for your shield recharge rate, just like capacitor.

By contrast, armor hit points are measured differently: Your maximum armor hit points are still there, but instead of tracking "how much armor" you have, the game tracks "how much armor is damaged" as a value. This means that your armor damage is essentially a negative variable -- to calculate your current armor, the game takes your maximum armor and subtracts your current armor damage number.

This essentially means that when fleet bonuses are applied to your shields, that you don't gain any shield HP at all until you recharge them, which (in the case of supercapitals) is an extremely long and painful process, even with remote shield transporters available. This is because when a fleet jumps to a cynosural field or jump beacon, your shield charge temporarily drops to your maximum shield without any fleet bonuses. (If your squad/wing/fleet booster leaves the system first, your hit points drop when he jumps out. If you jump out before your booster, you arrive before them and your hit points drop at that time before they cyno in.)

Let's watch a demonstration:

Our Wyvern from the previous example (tricked out with our theoretical Pithum A-Type Invulns) has a total of 2,726,950 shield hit points. He jumps along with his squad commander, which is a Leviathan with maximum fleet command skills, a siege warfare mindlink, and a shield harmonizing warfare link. Once they arrive, he has 2,726,950 shield hit points, but his maximum with fleet bonuses applied is now 3,749,557 shield hit points. He is only at 72.7% shields now! His theoretical EHP has increased from 49.9M to 68.9M, but his actual EHP is only 51.3M -- he got a small bonus from the Levi's gang link and from armor and structure increases, but the entire shield hit point bonus is useless to him since it isn't applied properly.

Now our Aeon from the previous example also jumps in. He has a base of 3,942,361 armor hit points, of which 0 are missing. (Remember, armor is measured by "how much damage have you taken" and he is at full HP.) Now he jumps to his squad commander, a perfect Erebus with the passive defense gang link and an armored warfare mindlink. Suddenly, his maximum armor hit points go up to 5,420,746, and since he has 0 damage, his current armor hit points go up by the same amount. (He also gains 10% shields, leaving him at 91% shield capacity when he arrives.) This means that his EHP has just increased from 55.4M to 79.3M EHP.

This means that, in practice, not only does an Aeon already have a small EHP advantage over a Wyvern (because of the Slave set) the Aeon's ability to have fleet bonuses applied instantly means that he has an 55% EHP advantage over the Wyvern in an actual fleet fight where they need to jump to engage.

Frankly, that is pretty absurd.

Solution #1: Fix shield hit points to be measured as a negative number, just like armor and structure hit points are measured. This will require re-working of all the code that touches shield hit points (like the shield regen formula) but is the overall best way.

Solution #2: Change fleet bonuses so that they are only removed or un-applied if they are not present for 5 minutes or more. This would allow shield-tanked supercapitals the ability to get their shields repaired to full and then jump without losing their fleet bonuses if they all jump within a reasonably short time. This solution is not ideal, but it is workable and fixes most of this problem.

Either way, this is an absolutely fundamental issue that needs to be addressed or shield-tanking supercapitals will NEVER be competitive with armor tankers -- it isn't even close.

Edit: Wyvern numbers fixed for better fitting and Slave set complaint removed.

This is already true for the Nomad jump freighter actually, it takes the least fuel (and the least fuel-per-cubic-meter) to jump, and regens cap so fast that it can jump again before your session timer expires if you have good skills.

I mentioned this earlier, but what about this...
Nidhoggur: 7.5% bonus to local and remote armor and shield repair modules per level.
Hel: 7.5% bonus to remote armor shield shield repair modules per level, 7.5% bonus to shield hit points per level.

When I made my post about the Nid I didn't remember that it had already been "swapped" from a really bad shield tanker to a moderately effective armor tanker. There probably isn't a reason to change it back under the circumstances, but it could use a little more armor hit points to bring it more in line with the Archon and Thanatos instead of having exactly equal shield and armor HP.

Nidhoggur needs to be shield-tanked to maintain balance in carrier tanking styles - two armour, two shield. Moving the medslot to a lowslot was a really stupid idea at the time and has, along with the other obvious problems, helped engrain the dominance of armour at the capital level, reducing the value of the Chimera in particular. With six medslots and no resist bonus it still won't be very good at tanking, so moving two lowslots to medslots would probably be necessary, really. And several million more CPU, ofc.

I'm a bit wary of getting rid of the missiles on the Naglfar. It restricts missiles to the Phoenix, making it even less attractive. It's a case of helping one ship to the unintentional, and unneeded, detriment of another.

It very much matters when you're neuted to 0 cap by 200 hurricanes.

I believe that the Hel and Wyvern have no access to a shield based slave set is because of the CN PDU.

Maybe CCP can introduce some deadspace PDUs that give a bigger increase to shield amount, rather than a shield based slave set? Fit a few of them, a couple of good CPRs, and a better remote repping bonus, and the Hel may be fixed

The Slave set is essentially what fixes this. But with most shield-tankers limited to Meta 9 invulns right now, instead of Meta 13, there is a vast imbalance between the two. Look at the math I'm doing and you'll see that with the fixes I'm proposing, the combination of "better invulns" plus the Slave set puts the Aeon/Wyvern and Hel/Nyx on extremely even footing. This is how EANMs and Invulns should be balanced against each other, and would be with these proposed fixes.

The point about overheating is a good one, and shield-tankers do have an advantage in that case, but even with max skills you can only overheat a single invuln for about 10 minutes, and overheating your whole rack burns you out in 1.5 minutes. The single invuln overheating does add around 13% EHP (Wyvern example here) for the duration of your overheat, but your tank (i.e. your invulns) can be neuted off well before that period expires, especially against a fleet designed to kill supercaps.

This whole Officer Invul vs A-Type EANM argument is a bit insane.

We want Titans and Moms to be more expensive, not less.

Reduce the availability of the A-Type EANM's instead of making a A-Type invuln.

One big advantage the phoenix does have though (and the Nag as well) is that Citadel Torps get 50km range, easily enough to hit a POS, at it's full DPS.

Fit up any other dread to deal it's top damage at 40km or so (an average distance to bash a POS) and you will be having serious issues. Swap out to medium range ammo and you will be hitting for similar DPS as a Phoenix does.

The only places that is valid though is a POS bash, killing Outposts, TCUs, SBUs, I-Hubs etc and you can close in pretty well and hit hard.