EVE General Discussion

I would really like to see ships with a rep bonus get a really good bonus out of it.

The Cyclone for example could be really usefull if it was worth active tanking.

CCP Greyscale, while scalability is a good potential resolution to the problem, I disagree that scalability is the problem itself.

The OP makes many valid points, and when it really comes down to it, fitting an active tank really has little benefit over buffer tanking, because it uses up so much fitting slots and grid/cpu, it makes tanking the primary function of the ship. If tanking is going to be the primary function of the ship, then it should be able to, you know, TANK.

So yea, if you want to rebalance active tanking and make it scalable somehow, so the ships could actually tank, that's a good way to resolve the imbalance. It is not entirely the problem though.

Another solution would be to make the active tanking fittings more "affordable" for the budget of ship slots, power grid and cpu we are given to work with. Maybe adding a resist bonus to armor reppers isn't the best way to go about this, but I think the OP really has a point about making fitting the ships easier.

I also agree wholeheartedly about cap boosters taking up way too much space (or maybe active tanks being so cap intensive that it forces you to burn cap boosters too fast?). I will disagree about NEEDING two heavy cap boosters to properly active tank... It does make things easier, but you CAN survive with a heavy/medium setup too. It still uses the same amount of fitting slots, but gives you more grid/cpu to play with.

Perhaps some possible solution ideas:

- Make armor reppers rep more HP, have faster cycle times, and use less cap. Maybe effectively doubling the current capabilities of T2 reppers as far as tank goes (if a given ship could tank 1000 dps now, tweak those attributes so now it can tank 2000). While the mods should be cap intensive, they should not require massive amounts of cap charges to maintain (should still require a cap injector, IMO, just not a full cargo load of 800s in 2 minutes). Reasoning behind this: reducing the cycle time of the reppers is critical to prevent active tanked ships from being too easily killed by alpha damage. Increasing the amount of HP repped also helps reduce the deficit between the effectiveness of buffer tanked ships and active tanked ships. Reducing the cap requirements (significantly) is important too. Why should an active tanked ship be combat ineffective because it ran out of cap boosters after only one fight? It shouldn't. Neuts should still kill reppers, nor should reppers perma-run without cap boosters, but the current cap requirements are very exorbitant.

- Reduce fitting requirements so that the ships can fit better weaponry, and more of other mods to bring them more in line with buffer tanked ships. Essentially keep active tanking as an option, but don't make it completely take over the role of the ship fitting it.

Or a burst mode EANM / burst mode heavy Invulerability Field that consumes charges.

I really like the last suggestion you made. That would make active tanking very intersting and give it some flavor. Of course, the numbers would probably need some tweaking, but I can see it becoming the revival of active tanks.

Another advantage is that permatanks would no longer be as effective in the long run, which I can imagine some people would be very happy about.

A reduction in cap usage per cycle for repairers based on a % of incoming damage would scale the effectiveness of the repair modules depending on how heavy the fight is...? Obviously would only be effective when taking actual incoming damage.

Possibly even add a skill to increase this % for those that know their play style will take them into the higher damage range a lot..

The whole "Buff HP restored" (I mean, get more than 800HP/cycle with LAR II) thing might look great, but hey.

I checked the numbers, it's scary. My Maelstrom can reach up to 4000 tanked DPS (Which is as much as at least 6 BCs) with T2 or budget faction stuff (Like the Xlarge Dread Guristas SB, it requires 170 CPU instead of 230 with T2. Yeh, 60 free CPU for some gyrostabs...), with a command Tengu and some implants.

I'm focusing on removing the hassle that comes with active tanking, because it's already effective and usable. The thing that I don't like is how it's easely breakable, and how it's hard to use/fit.

Take a look at how ridiculously easy buffer tanking is.

Take any ships. A Raven for exemple.

Fit the guns. Fit the MWD. Fit the warp disruptor/scrambler. Check how many medslots left. Two slots ? Invul + LSE. Three slots ? Invul x2 + LSE (if on a battleship), invul + LSE x2 (on a smaller vessel). Four slots ? LSE + invul x2 + Photon scattering field.

And so on. Fit MWD and point, and fill the rest with invuls/LSE, simple as that.

Active tanking have cap problems, fitting problems, the not-enough-slots problem, the running-out-of-charges problem, and so on and so forth. That's why I would like to see some tweaking on this part ;)

I'm having the same problem. I'll bite on your response.



This sort of change would be enough to make me quit actually... or at least quite flying active tanks. Half the fun of an active tank is when you know you have more than enough tank than you need and you let your opponent damage your armor (shield) or structure (both) so that they think they are winning or don't realize that a close fight was only close because you let it be close. It's also a REALLY good way to keep people in a fight when you don't have enough points to hold everyone down.

Also, micro-managing cap, booster/rep, range, heat, etc. is part of what makes it challenging and fun. Making active tanks reactive would make it nearly the same as shield buffer already is and would become a boring fitting option.

I'm of the opinion that active tanks are mostly good as-is and the only valid complaints come from Gallente pilots who don't use myrmidon/hyperion.

That said, I think it would add an interesting twist and more variation/complexity if there were 2 distinct types of active tanking like I suggested in my previous post.

OK, here's my take on the subject:

Active tanks have three drawbacks compared to EHP tanks:

1. non scalable - this can actually make them superior to EHP tanks in 1:1 or very small scale PvP, but you don't get to see much of that anyway.

2. vulnerable to neuts

3. more prone to being alpha killed

First of all, for the idea of active modules giving resists - IMHO, no point as it still doesn't solve the scalability issue.
As for massive boost when overheated, Well, when you have to choose between damaging your booster/repper or losing your ship, the answer is quite obvious, so seems like an OK idea. However, since the proposed change also increases cap drain, this doesn't resolve the issue of neut vulnerability, it actually aggravates it.

Possible solution (there have been similar in this thread): make boosters/reppers use some sort of fuel besides cap (strontium comes to mind), with limited fuel space in module and long reload times, similar to cap booster. As long as there's fuel in module, it runs in super-boost mode and is able to rep massive damage. This assures huge active tank for a short amount of time, without making the ship too vulnerable to neuts (as if it already isn't). Without fuel, the module behaves "normally".

This, of course works only for non-capital modules, since they already have siege/triage.

How is nuet vulnerability an issue? There are no ships in this game that are not effected to some extent by nuets.
Even drakes rely on invulns which can be shut off, they drop quite fast without them.

Have you ever flown a well fit active tank in pvp? Be honest. Cap issues: nuets, cap charges are pretty much the only things that keep active tanking from being completely overpowered in any situation where the opponent's DPS is less than your EHP. If my active shield tanked ships had no cap problems and were invulnerable to nuets (or less vulnerable) then the only thing that would concern me is falcons. Do you really want a sub-capital ship that can tank 2-3k dps or more (solo) and not have cap problems?

This^^