Ships & Modules

The way I read this change is similar to the change done to the Corporate Hangar on the Orca:

"We've broken something and we don't understand the code. So we'll come up with an excuse/explanation/story because it is 5pm and it is the time to go home".

Thank you for explaining further.

Players do not use EANMs because they like being cap-resistant; they use EANMs because they have no other choice. Players will choose active hardeners over passive hardeners every time, even with this nerf, because of the higher resistances and opportunity to overheat. There is no tradeoff between active and passive hardeners, and never will be, unless passive hardeners receive a major boost or active hardeners are further nerfed. The only time players willingly fit passive hardeners over active hardeners, is for high-lag situations or when they expect to be neuted dry.

This is a major boost to cap warfare, and a major nerf to tanking in general, and to shield-tanked ships in particular.

That being said, we're still going to see shield fleets, and this is hardly the end of the world.

There's no contradiction. Imagine someone offers you a choice between a shiny new computer, and a DOS-box from 1991. Sure, you'd get better stability from DOS, but it's not much of an advantage compared to all the things you'd be missing out on.

The same goes for passive versus active hardeners. Active hardeners provide substantially higher resistances while active, and can be overheated for additional resistance bonus. Passive hardeners provide lower resistances, and cannot be overheated. The only time passive hardeners are superior to active hardeners, is when a ship is capped out and cannot get cap from remote or local sources. So the only time a player will willingly fit passive hardeners, is when he expects to be neuted out. For obvious reasons, players usually do not fit their ships specifically to survive being capped out, if the cost is being exploded due to lower resists.

(Similarly, most players do not fit ECCM against the chance of being jammed, sensor boosters against the chance of being dampened, or tracking computers against the chance of being tracking disrupted. Because just as it makes more sense to omni-tank, it also makes more sense to omni-fit a ship for general combat rather than proof it against one of many eventualities and leave holes for all other possibilities.)

All that the proposed change does, is make active hardeners less useful under cap pressure, since now instead of providing a crappy bonus, they'll provide no bonus at all. This is a big nerf to active hardeners, especially shield hardeners, but it doesn't change a player's calculus about whether to fit passive or active hardeners. It's a big nerf because in the event a ship with active hardeners is capped out, it will now get no benefit at all, rather than some benefit, as now.

Come on ! We are talking about something affecting only completely neuted ships ! Besides an armor ship cannot even fire its guns in this case, a completely neuted ship is often screwed anyway, and the cases where the passive resist would have saved you is so rare you'd better play lottery games to fund a new ship.

If you want neutralizer resistant fit, there's a module called shield resistance amplifier and ancillary shield booster. And yes, there is no adaptive one for shield, exactly like there is no adaptive hardener for armor nor there is capless ancillary armor reper.

But I guess the whines come from cap pilots, and I don't think capital survivability is a critical thing to save.

As for resistance amplifier vs hardener, I think the first one will now have a reason to exist.

I have a dedicated, specialised caldari cap ship character. Could you explain how I haven't wasted my time training these skills on that account?

WTH is with the "armor have no capless guns"

Have the ENTIRE minmatar ship line turned to shields when I wasn't looking?


Even with this change, PvP pilots wont magically fit the passives - there is no space. They've just been made (even) weaker vs cap warfare.

I think the most troubling thing is there is no obvious imbalance brought be these, nor one be addressed by the change. I mean...has anyone ever seen a thread about this skill/offline mods being overpowered?

Yes and no. Two carriers can use fitting services on each other to refit. A solo carrier and dreads cannot. Also a triaged carrier can't until out of triage.

That said, you're making a very very good point. Simply refitting to resist amps when capped out is already far superior to passive resists on active hardeners. With the changes it is only even more so. It does of course present some obstacles, but doing like you suggested, IMO, alleviates the "omgwtfbbq 27% !!!!"-problem.

However I still do think that a skill set of 45D worth of training have been halved in practical value and still think something should be done to make this effort worthwhile given the stealthy circumstances of "lazy programmer" mess. But I do agree the problem is smaller than it looked at first (for shield cap pilots of which I'm not one anyway).

No, this is when you fit the Large Capacitor Battery II's.

Off topic but you may be surprised what that does to a Bhaal even when it is being fed cap by a carrier. Certainly it is situation dependent. Hit me up on Sisi sometime...

Sorry for the digression.

Smartbomb Battleships at gates to burst approaching Blokade Runners anyone?