EVE General Discussion

Which is kind of the point as we don't want active repair to remain viable as gang size goes up.

Thermodynamics is the only skill I consider mandatory for PvP and the first I recommend people get if they ask how to get started with bloodsports. The truly "gf" is practically always the one where two or three racks are deep in the red from heat .. where you and your ship have been pushed to the brink.
What you seem to want is a mechanic that allows serial solo-pvp with no downtime in between fights which will be quite impossible to balance as it is multiplied ad infinitum by scaling .. there has to be a very real and very hard limit to the duration or you risk breaking a lot more than you fix.

And the mechanic will differentiate between friend and foe how exactly? You'd just have gangs with all but 2 lock slots used on each other to make an enemy take forever locking anything of value, surprised you haven't read all the times that idea was shot down Mother

It was king of the hill for the longest time thanks to that bonus, problem as with all things is that it got old .. it hasn't been updated since forever (same as other tier1 BCs) while stuff has been added and improved around it.

I completely agree with the PG/CPU issues with fitting an active tank and lowering the fitting requirerments would help out alot in making active tanking more viable.

Cap requirement is also an issue, especially with ships that have cap dependable guns which ironically both armor tanking races gallente and amarr have. Making cap charges smaller is one solution, reducing cap drain on active tank mods is another.

The current cap requirements also makes active tanks extremely vulnerable to neuts. Sure, making cap charges smaller will increase the time you can stay in a fight but it wont help much against neuts. I think someone mentioned something about a cap hardener and I really like that idea. . A module that will make you more resistant to cap warfare by reducing the amount of cap drained from your ship. Yes i know, yet another module for your tank, but still... I don' have much experience with larger fleets using RR and Triage carriers but from reading some of Lord Maldorors battle reports I take it that cap warfare is an important factor in breaking an enemy's RR..?
Maybe someone with a bit more experience in that department care to comment on a possible cap hardener, would it screw up cap warfare on Logistics and Carriers in larger engagements?

There has also been some discussion in this thread about improving repping amount in an unsustainable burst to help deal with lots of initial dps and alpha. Currently overloading an armor repper gets you 10% to amount repped and 15% shorter cycle time. In my experience alot of active armor tanks struggle to be cap stable with cap boosters running and a lot of my personal fittings are not cap stable while overheating. A solution to the burst repping might be to Increase the overheating bonus to the cycle time. The increased cap usage and heat will prevent it from being sustainable for more than a short period of time.


And lastly, making active tanking viable in large fleet battles is not that important. As someone said earlier, active tanking has its niches where its used somewhat effectively, PvE and solo/small gang PvP. Trying to make everything fit into the mold of large scale warfare is not a good idea imo.


Disclaimer: I have lots of experience flying dual armor rep setups and not much with active shield tanks hence the focus on armor tanking in this post.

well i dont think cap is an problem for active armor tanking... The ammount of repaired damage at the time is just of no use, unless you use triple large armor rep hyperion. And eventhen X-large booster with boost amplifier will get the upper hand

yeah, I just thought that addresses the scaling somewhat & makes a "role" fit for a ship that is going to encounter heavy dps, and in other situations it would be gimped - i.e. fit two or three reppers (or a heavy rep on a med ship etc) and the special plating, it can only really activate the repper(s) when damage is incoming without totally destroying its cap. it could also speed up rep cycle or whatever.

I think the situation we have now is decent for amarr mid/long range armour doctrine, but gallente close range doctrine needs something to protect them when they are moving into close range before firing. bit of tricky one really.

Someone may have suggested this already, and I may have missed it but why not have the % resists increase on the active shield or armor reppers only apply when the module is active? you still then have a limited capacitor use, if you double up you can scale up the tank because your scaling up resists at the same time, and still very vulnerable to capacitor problems.

Doesn't sound too bad a proposition considering. Per cap usage, armour repairers would benefit more through longer repair duration(% resist bonus active for longer), but lesser repairing throughput in a small timeframe. Flip the coin for shield reps on the pro/con. However, wouldn't cap stable tank setups for PvE be a little too overtanked, should the resist bonus be too large or not affected through stacking penalties[and if it does stack, is it worth it]?That is if this debate is considering that prospect at all.

I really like the mentioned idea of an inbuilt resist bonus of active repair modules! This tiny change would help so much. Add charge based burst mode + slightly lowered fitting and running costs -> active tanking would be much more viable. Pure buffer tanking would still have a place in large fleets with dedicated logistics.

@CCP: is this just theory-crafting or are there existing plans to make active tanking more viable? If so: please don't boost the "active tanking races" (Gallente, Minmatar) only! Boost modules, not ships.

I do small gang PvP every day I'm online. It exists and it's a lot of fun.

Trying to make active tanking able to counter the blob would make it (ofc) overpowered in small gang PvP. But boosting it a bit (efficiency + fitting/running costs) would help alot. It shouldn't feel like a wasted slot when I fit an armor repper.

Simple fix:

Make active tanking modules use less cap in general.

Give all ships with an active tanking bonus an additional bonus to cap usage. This doesn't need to strictly violate the two-bonuses rule - you have enough ships that have a 5% bonus to X and a 7.5% bonus to Y AND Z.

I like this.