Ships & Modules

This just in, 2 modules both using cap uses more cap than two modules where one doesn't use cap.

Who knew?

everyone forgetting nanopaste takes up 0.1m3 of cargo space?

No, I've made the point repeatedly but everyone appears to like the idea of jump freightering in their cap booster supply every couple of weeks.

-Liang

Hands up everyone who has EVER used an SBA in PvP? And fair warning I'm going to call you a liar and demand a loss mail.

No one ever fits SBAs in PvP.

EDIT:
Let me also add, that if you are comparing 2 LAR IIs vs LSB II+SBA II then you're going to get MORE reps out of the dual armour setup. Even when you compare 2 LARs vs XLSB+SBA you get very nearly the same amount of reps.

The SBA is 36%, where the invul is only 30%. The SBA uses more CPU though, so this is to be expected. Although, the invul does use cap...

As for the never ending armour vs shield comparisons...

1 slot comparison gives the armour tank an efficiency advantage.
2 slot comparison gives the armour tank a rep advantage.

The 2 slot armour tank also has the ability to only run half the tank, the shield tank is either on or off, there is no middle ground.

That's cool, because your cargo is full of cap booster charges to keep the armor reppers running.



There is no such thing as one-slot armor tank. Minimum configuration is one armor repper and cap booster.

XLASB = one midslot, 500pg, 200cpu, 284 reps
LAAR+LARII+Heavy Capacitor Booster II = one midslot, 2 lows, 5792pg, 145cpu, 283 reps

Yes, the AAR is worse than ASB.

It is good, because we do not need to train armour skill tree.

You adressed nothing.
Fact are that you can actually have the same active tank on armor than on shield but you can have a way bigger buffer tank on armor than on shield ship.

Fact are that active armor tank can be made a lot more cap efficient than active shield tank, but active shield tank can be a lot more bursty than active armor.

And finaly, despite the capless nature of ASB being, IMO, a bad mecanic, AAR provide to armor ship a *very* good option for being both tanky AND speedy, to the point you would be a fool to ASB tank an armor ship now.

So we're ignoring naming conventions when they are inconvenient to our argument? Got it.
We're also ignoring the advantages of Armour tanking (buffer) to claim imbalance. Right.
Also we're ignoring reload times on Ancillary modules? OK.

Yeah, turns out, when you selectively ignore advantages of armour, and ignore penalties of shields, then compare the wrong sizes, ignore reload times, arbitrarily declare that you must fit a cap booster, ignore that shield ships might fit one as well, use a PvE module (SBA) to boost the shields... turns out shields look pretty good when you do that.

This is true, and this is balanced, because in exchange for having less tank, shield buffer tanked ships get more damage. Look at the hurricane, as it is a perfect example of this. The shield version is less tanky and has less tackle, but its added mobility and damage make it every bit as good as its armor counterpart. Now imagine if the armor tanked version got nerfed so that it had the same ehp as the shield version. Would it still be worth flying? Aside from a few select instances, not really.


This is 100% wrong, and I already showed why. Shields get a module that ups their repping power for no extra cap, which in turn makes them more cap efficient. The ratio for 2 LARs versus XLSB+SBA is 2 : 2.26 for units repped per cap spent. since last time I checked, 2.26 is a bigger number then 2, that means that shields get more HP per cap spent than armor do when using the same number of slots. If you're using a different definition of cap efficiency please share it, and post some numbers to back it up.
I'm not fond of the mechanics for either, as I think they should be reversed, but tbh I think it's a fairly minor problem given the underlying imbalances between the tanking types.


No, we ignore them ALWAYS. I cannot stress this enough. Think of it this way:
For years lasers had a different naming scheme than other guns. Small lasers were called medium pulse lasers and mediums called larges. Do you think, under such a naming convention, that the guns being fit onto frigates should have been balanced against other frigate sized guns, or should they have been balanced against other guns containing 'medium' in their name? There is literally never an instance where the name of a mod/ship should decide its balancing stats, you have to look at what roles they fill in game, not what columns they fill on a spreadsheet.

No, we're not. Armor buffer tanks have more tank than their shield counterparts, and this, in turn, is balanced by shield tanks having more DPS. In active tanking armor tanks lose this advantage, and gain nothing in return when compared to shield tanks. Honestly if you wanted to try to show that armor buffer tanks are overpowered that'd be fine with me, provided you have something to back it up. But I see armor tanks and shield tanks both being used all the time for buffer, but when it's active tanking it's nearly always shields, and looking at how much harder it is to make a viable active armor tank lends credence to the idea that armor tanking needs some love. Not that I don't love the changes they've implemented, but I'd like to see a bit more done to improve the balance between the 2.