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RAH testing
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Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#1 - 2013-03-19 17:27:34 UTC
TL;DR in second post
I've spent a couple days testing this module in a C3 against different sleeper damage profiles. Why? Curiosity, and a desire to significantly improve my C3 fit without spending boatloads of cash on more DED modules. Also because we already have a good idea of how this does against normal mission rats (it does well in case you were living under a rock). Sleepers present an interesting problem to the RAH due to omni-damage presented in a spiky and unbalanced manner, due to rate of fire differences between sleeper missiles and sleeper guns. Further, because different sleeper sites sometimes present unbalanced damage profiles as well, either heavy on EM/Therm guns or heavy on Kin/Exp missiles. So besides the normal omni 25% damage profile, I also used it against the waves with heavy kin/exp profile, and waves with heavy em/therm profile. Keep in mind that in all sites, sleepers shoot an EM/Therm laser at you every 5 seconds, and a Kin/Exp missile at you every 15 or 18 seconds. This might lead you to think a RAH would be terrible here, as the resistances would refuse to settle into a good balance. Furthermore, you may wonder why someone wouldn't just use that lowslot for a faction EANM or another hardener. Finally, there's the issue with cap usage, RAH is cap hungry and it only gets worse cap efficiency at higher levels of armor phasing.

I took the RAH and used it on a solo C3 legion fit.

[Legion, Current C3 Solo]

Corelum C-Type Medium Armor Repairer
Corelum C-Type Medium Armor Repairer
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Reactive Armor Hardener
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Large Capacitor Battery II
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Cap Recharger II

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Legion Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Legion Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Legion Offensive - Liquid Crystal Magnifiers
Legion Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst
Legion Defensive - Nanobot Injector

Yes, I'm working on the rigs. Meh.

To those unfamiliar with the Legion note the EM hole and note the naturally high exp resist.

After usage I believe the 6% resist shift per cycle is very strong even at level 1 of resist phasing in sleeper sites. This is a cycle time of 9 seconds. In fact I strongly believe that a longer cycle time is a good thing against sleepers, simply because this lets the module sample incoming damage over a longer period of time, giving a better average when it shifts resistances. A 5 second cycle time should just result in more spiky resist shifting, which SHOULD mean a less effective defense. This is discussed further later on. Anyway, enough speculation.

Mathematically, this module behaves as a more effective version of the damage control, where instead of distributing an even 15% resist that doesn't experience diminishing returns, the module takes those 15*4% resist, 60% total, and shifts them around to where they are most needed, giving you an even omni tank to counter incoming damage as well as it can. Again, without resist diminishing returns. Against a damage profile split almost completely between only 2 damage type, the RAH will then have 60% to play with and perfectly even out those damage types. For comparison, a second faction EANM at level 4 compensation skills gives you 93% total resistance with 23.5% (27.1 * .87 from diminishing returns) going to each damage type, and up to half of this resistance may be completely unecessary depending on the incoming damage profile. Not to mention your result won't be even as your base resist profile isn't even. So the RAH is a legitimate option to use against this PVE content.

Against a heavy EM/Therm wave, this module behaved pefectly, as would be expected. As sleepers in this kind of wave only fire kin/exp damage infrequently, for low damage, the RAH almost ignored those resistances entirely, only occasionally throwing about 4% resist into kinetic. The rest of the time, the RAH countered the high rate of fire and high damage sleeper guns doing EM/Therm, bringing up my EM/Therm resistance up evenly to about 82%. It did this by feeding a steady 44% into EM, and usually 16% into Therm to even them out. When it wasn't getting confused and occasionally putting a tiny bit into kin of course, as I mentioned earlier. I was extremely pleased here. Paper calculations tell me I was easily improving my tank by 40% using this module. I could however have used an EM hardener here, and gotten a SIMILAR result, with a slightly (~1%) higher EM resist, and about 2-3% lower therm resist. The RAH slightly edges out the EM hardener, but not by a huge amount, and at the expense of a little more cap usage. It definitely edges out the EANM here though.
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#2 - 2013-03-19 17:29:51 UTC
Against omni damage, the RAH paid more attention to the incoming kinetic damage, and tended to keep feeding roughly 10% kin resist into my legion, while shifting a small amount away from EM/Therm. A perfect result here would have left me seeing, in my FITTING WINDOW, perfectly even resists between EM/Therm/kin. Obviously the legion already has extremely high exp resist, so conceptually the RAH should ignore this. What I saw, was that occasionally the module would throw about 2% exp resist into the legion. As a result of Kin/Exp damage being spiky, low rate of fire missles. Additionally, the kin resist did approach my EM/Therm resist in the fitting window, but never quite caught up. I'm sure this is simply because of the low rate of fire of sleeper missiles. Training up armor phasing should not have helped this. So, RAH behaved in a less-than perfect manner, but still did well, I maintain that the RAH gave me a very favorable resist profile against this kind of wave. It looked to hover around 80% EM/Therm, with roughly 76% kin. I could use more testing here though. A quick check in pyfa tells me a second EANM would conceptually make the most use of this lowslot for this kind of damage profile. But the RAH is not far behind.

Against Kin/Exp, for example sleepless preservers, the RAH still tried to shore up my EM hole unfortunately. But it still tried to keep a high Kin/Exp defense, throwing between 8% and 12% into exp, and roughly 20% into Kinetic. However, I wasn't even expecting the module to do this well, as sleeper guns fire much more often than their missiles do. I blame the result of this test on the naturally high kin/exp resist of the legion hull. I definitely will be doing more testing against this kind of damage profile, when I can get one to spawn.

The RAH consistently plugged up my EM hole in all tests, and used more or less for EM depending on the wave it was faced with. It evened out my other resistances in response to what I was faced with as well. It is true that this module gives less raw resistance than a second imperial EANM (with perfect level 5 compensation skills), but by diverting resistances away from resistance hills, it is able to fill in resistance holes even more, and maintain an favorable and nearly even resistance profile to counter the damage profile that it sees. Additionally, I recommend thinking twice about training up the armor phasing skill if you intend on limiting your usage of this module to PVE activities. Especially sleepers. You should ask yourself if you are really that scared of a longer lag time for the initial RAH resistance phasing, and whether it is worth it to have a spikier response to damage, and whether you want to give up cap efficiency. Are you really so scared of what you are facing that you need the RAH to be done 20 seconds sooner? How strong is the capacitor of the ship and fit you plan to use this module with? You can always train resistance phasing up more in the future, but you cannot train a skill down. These are all things you need to reflect on before committing to another rank of armor phasing.

I look forward to others reporting on their experiences for comparison.

TL;DR
This module does well in all sites. Against an EM/Therm heavy profile, it was the best option for its lowslot, being better than both an EM hardener and an EANM. It slightly lagged behind a second lv 4 skilled faction EANM against an omni profile, and against a heavy Kin/Exp profile it performed much better than I thought it would, though it still left a little to be desired. However, I imagine a ship with an actual kin/exp hole would see better returns from this module than I did, for that profile. Further, I recommend thinking twice about training up resistance phasing. Do your research. This skill requires more tuning in my opinion.
Kodama Ikari
Thragon
#3 - 2013-03-19 18:17:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Kodama Ikari
Excellent post, and thank you for sharing. I haven't paid much attention to RAH's much at all, but I'm getting interested. One thing you can conclude then is that the RAH is based on raw HP lost after resistances are applied, and not on the damage received before resistances. This means it definitely will fill in holes even if the damage is 50/50 split. That's good.

Regarding the phasing skill, you seem to be making one critical assumption that may or may not be true. You're assuming that the window of time for which it calculates the next shift is the same as cycle time of the module. Its entirely possible (although verifiable) that the module uses a full 30 seconds to calculate the next shift. Its even possible that it uses a much longer period of time, with a weight function applied. In this case there would be no downside to training the skill short of cap use, and the effects of damage spikes would be dampened.

Anyway, this thing looks like it has some promise in k-space, at least for flying armor ships against angels. If I'm motivated I'll do a test this afternoon (against a player ship, not npcs). Turn on RAH, eat a single volley of missiles, then see if RAH stops phasing after the first cycle, continues going into that one resistance, or starts reverting to 15/15/15/15.

Some first-hand PI tips
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#4 - 2013-03-19 19:33:52 UTC
You raise a good point about my assumptions. It didn't occur to me to compare early RAH behavior to late RAH behavior, or to reset it during a full anomaly, or to let it run after completing the anomaly. I'll have to check more in-depth next time I do testing.
Rynnik
Evasion Gaming
The Ancients.
#5 - 2013-03-19 20:01:23 UTC
Nice analysis!

Inkarr Hashur wrote:
Additionally, I recommend thinking twice about training up the armor phasing skill if you intend on limiting your usage of this module to PVE activities. Especially sleepers. You should ask yourself if you are really that scared of a longer lag time for the initial RAH resistance phasing, and whether it is worth it to have a spikier response to damage, and whether you want to give up cap efficiency. Are you really so scared of what you are facing that you need the RAH to be done 20 seconds sooner? How strong is the capacitor of the ship and fit you plan to use this module with? You can always train resistance phasing up more in the future, but you cannot train a skill down. These are all things you need to reflect on before committing to another rank of armor phasing.


I will leave the majority of your post for others to dissect, but I have to say this recommendation (which I agree with, for what it is worth) makes me damn sad. Training skills to 5 should never give an intentional or unforeseen disadvantage - I thought and had hoped that CCP would have acknowledged this lesson after finally changing the AB duration skill. Cap use is a huge drawback to the current RAH, the skill affecting that module should NEVER exacerbate that issue, and I think a strong argument could be made that skill levels should improve the cap use as you put more SP into it.

Then again I am a fan of almost any change that could make the RAH more palatable as another ‘limit-of-one-per-ship’ quirky armour module failing to achieve any shift in the tanking meta.
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#6 - 2013-03-20 05:26:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Inkarr Hashur
Further testing!

I did a C3 site with a Sleepless Preserver, killed all his buddies and let him take out all his anger on my legion from before. Note this sleeper is extremely heavy on Kin/Exp while still having an EM/Therm gun attached. Which still provides an interesting problem for the RAH to deal with.

So sitting still, letting Mr. Preserver do full damage against me, the RAH reacted to damage by shifting between two diffferent profiles (this I blame on the 18 second missile volley confusing the RAH with alternating cycles of no missile damage). It was pretty lucky that I had my armor phasing skill trained to level 1, so that the resulting 9 second RAH cycles lined up with the volleys.

My legion switched between these two resistance sets every RAH cycle:
EM Therm Kin Exp
74 78 80 86
72 78 82 87

The RAH fed between 25 and 30% into Kinetic, 23 and 29% into EM, and it alternated the ~5% between thermal and exp (even though these resists needed no help on my legion whatsoever, being much higher than EM and Kin in my fit). When it had a cycle of no missile damage, some resists went into kin/exp, and when seeing a cycle of only gun damage, some went back to EM/Therm. So the RAH reacted to the damage it was seeing AFTER mitigation by the legion's resistances. Not unresisted damage. So its clear that the cycles of gun-only damage was a distraction to the RAH in this case. I need to explain why there was such a high amount of EM resist.

I had not reset the RAH from earlier when clearing the sleeper wave. Yes, unprofessional, I know. Poor judgement. So there was residual EM resist. So we see the RAH never diverted all that EM away into Kin/Exp, despite the fact that the guns were doing piddly damage to me.

Now I want to address something that occurs to me only now. It should not have been possible for me to see the RAH shift resistances this heavily, as it only moves 6% every cycle. Or is it the RAH can move 6% from EACH resist type per cycle? That's a fairly significant amount.

I then afterburned into orbit around the Preserver and webbed him down. This completely negated all EM/Therm damage as his guns never touched me. Only his missiles could hit me.

At this point the RAH finally diverted all resist away from EM/Therm, putting 43% into Kin and 17% into exp. Odd, as this kept my Exp resist at 86% while my Kin was down at 84%. I wonder if there is some kind of weighting going on behind the scenes? There should definitely have been more in kin and less in exp, this module conceptually, should keep the final Kin/Exp resistances even in this situation. I'm not certain how long I let this run but it should have been several minutes before I got bored, and killed the Preserver to collect my loot and salvage.

Also of interest: when the wave initially spawned right on top of me all the sleepers had trouble tracking me with the guns, so the RAH quickly shifted a huge amount of resistance to just Kin and Exp, favoring Kinetic. It didn't try plugging my EM hole up until they managed to gain some distance from me to start hitting me with their guns again. I found this pretty interesting. As I started burning down the first cruiser, the RAH shifted a significant amount of resistance back into EM. This is because the wave had a damage profile of EM/Thm 19%, Kin/Exp 31%. My legion then had this resistance profile: 75 - 78 - 81 - 86. The RAH actually ignored Thm completely due to my high Thm res, but it still shoved about 2 to 4% into exp for some odd reason. But it still favored Kin highly, over EM. So this was an extremely favorable resist profile to match the incoming damage profile of the full wave.

Tl;DR this module still seems good so far, even in high Kin/Exp waves.
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#7 - 2013-03-20 05:52:20 UTC
Very nice testing.

The conclusion that post-resists damage is what counts is interesting, I'll have to test that.

.
Hulasikaly Wada
DO.IT
I.N.D.E.P.E.N.D.E.N.T
#8 - 2013-03-20 07:38:21 UTC

Well done Inkarr Hashur
Now understanding it look like its is really worth to fit
May i suggest you to test it with a rocket Kestrel ? little fast volley, can load 4 pure damage kinds

Hula
Roime
Mea Culpa.
Shadow Cartel
#9 - 2013-03-20 09:08:10 UTC
I've tested it against missile monotype damage and it's pretty much an I win-button, especially in the case of Ishtar vs Tengu. Kinetic missiles are reduced to tickling, and explo resists are better than with a hardener. 800mm+RAH bought enough time to live easily through MAAR reload.

.
Kodama Ikari
Thragon
#10 - 2013-03-20 13:50:39 UTC
Inkarr Hashur wrote:


I then afterburned into orbit around the Preserver and webbed him down. This completely negated all EM/Therm damage as his guns never touched me. Only his missiles could hit me.

At this point the RAH finally diverted all resist away from EM/Therm, putting 43% into Kin and 17% into exp. Odd, as this kept my Exp resist at 86% while my Kin was down at 84%. I wonder if there is some kind of weighting going on behind the scenes? There should definitely have been more in kin and less in exp, this module conceptually, should keep the final Kin/Exp resistances even in this situation.


it would only make your final resistances even if the missiles do equal kin/expl damage.

Some first-hand PI tips
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#11 - 2013-03-20 14:35:21 UTC
Kodama Ikari wrote:
Inkarr Hashur wrote:


I then afterburned into orbit around the Preserver and webbed him down. This completely negated all EM/Therm damage as his guns never touched me. Only his missiles could hit me.

At this point the RAH finally diverted all resist away from EM/Therm, putting 43% into Kin and 17% into exp. Odd, as this kept my Exp resist at 86% while my Kin was down at 84%. I wonder if there is some kind of weighting going on behind the scenes? There should definitely have been more in kin and less in exp, this module conceptually, should keep the final Kin/Exp resistances even in this situation.


it would only make your final resistances even if the missiles do equal kin/expl damage.


The thing is I do believe that the kin/exp damage from sleeper missiles is supposed to be equal. Since my exp resist was already high, it should have resulted in more being fed to kin, as the RAH would have seen higher numbers for kin damage than exp. It is possible that the RAH is not so precise, and refused to shift resistances simply because it did not see a large enough difference between kin damage and exp damage, to pull anything out of exp during the cycle.

It seems I need to conclude that the RAH isn't sophisticated, that you can't count on it to perfectly match the incoming damage profile. There are limits to how well you can program this module, when it is INTENDED by design to react to the damage it sees, rather than being programmed to bring the resist profile on your ship to perfection. The damage it sees is affected by your resist profile, but the module can still react in a less than perfect manner. Also it needs to be emphasized that the module works best in response to unbalanced damage profiles, and that the best it can do against omni is to somewhat even out resists. The tradeoffs in defense between this module, a second EANM, or a hardener are somewhat difficult to evaluate when the RAH itself does not result in a perfect damage profile, both because it samples damage over a short 5 to 10 second period and because it shifts resistances in a clumsy manner.