Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I am a heavy user of the "Reactor Armor Plating" in small-scale/solo PvP.
These fights usually last several minutes, because that's how long the cap-boosters last. Once you run out of cap-boosters however your dead!

I have the skill "Armor Resistance Plating" at 0 and after around 1min + couple seconds my "Reactive Armor Plating" my resistances will be perfect for the whole remainder of the fight.
This combo of ancilliary armor repairer + medium armor repairer II + reactive armor hardener works quite well for me.

However:
If' I would skill "Armor Resistance Plating" to 5 (instead of leaving it at 0) it would change the cap needs of my "reactive" in the following way:
100% *0.75 / 0.5 = 150%
It would make the module (that is intensely cap-hungry anyway) need 50% more cap for the whole fight!
And what would the benefit be?
It will provide me with better resistances 30sec earlier.

Conclusion:
- Reactive Armor hardener takes time to set up (and ur armor needs to be attked during that time). It is therefore unfeasible to use it in larger engagement as when ur armor starts taking damage ur dead.
=> Reactive Hardener is only usefull in smallscale Battles, where you do not take too much damage.

- In a smallscale Battle where you do not insta-pop you are likely going to fight until you run out of cap-boosters. Such a fight could easily last 5min and your resistances will only be slghtly better in the first 30-60sec. They will be the same in the remaining 4min.
=> In the fights where the Reactive Hardener makes sense, "Armor Resistance Plating 5" will not help you much.

When having "Armor Resistance Plating 5" in a 5min fight it will eat 150% of its regular cap-amount.
=> In the fights where the Reactive Hardener makes sense, "Armor Resistance Plating 5" will make u need more capboosters and therefore might shorten your fight.
=> You might not even be cap-stable with the cap-charge-size you use. If you need bigger charges to support this skill, it means u can spend less time around 33% max-cap and you will regenerate less cap. If that happens you will have to eat even more capboosters during ur fight time and shorten it even further.
=> Some ships are so tight with their cap-boostersm that they are already using "medium capacitor boosters" + "Navy Cap Boosters 800". Some of these ships will not even be able to permaruin their weapons or reppers if they skill this skill up.
=> Having to use bigger cap boosters makes you much more prone to beeing nosferatued. and can further drain ur cap-boosters.
=> when you are neuted even by just a small neutralizer, this skill can make the difference between keeping it going or getting neuted to death.

The "Reactive Armor hardener" is made for the longer type of battles. In these longer type of battles the skill "Armor Resistance Plating" can often break your back.
The skill is therefore for most uses really bad for smaller ships and needs fixing, to bring the cap-need in line with the cycle time.

Ah and one more thing:
I won't even need to comment on how usefull this skill is for missions/anoms, where you are fighting the same resistances for 30min or more.

You forgot to note the biggest advantage of Reactive Armor Hardener: it stacks only with DCU. If you know you will be againist eg. lasers only or hybrids only, no other module will pack 30/30 resists in one slot with more or less non-existant stacking penalties.

yeah, its a good module, we know. Skill is broken however. The cap use from the hardener is very significant, and training the skill makes the module less usable.

When they first released the skill, it was just a cycle time reduction, and absolutely no cap use reduction.

Then they added a cap use reduction.... but purposefully made it smaller. Thus its not broken, but "working as intended"

I can only assume the person in charge was under the influence of drugs, or otherwise mentally impaired.
I do find the arguments on this thread to be quite compelling, and I haven't trained this skill at all.





Well, technically, rapid firing increases cap use too.
However.... you can manually cycle these to reduce cap consumption, and their effect:cap use ratio does not change.
With reppers, you still get the same repped amount per cap. With smartbombs and guns, you still get the same damage per cap.

With resistances though.... you just plain pay more cap for the same resists.

I figured a way to "fix" it is to make the resist bonus *passive* like ANP.... *but* it is only capable of changing resistances while active.
In that way, you could manually cycle it to slow its cap use, without losing resists, or resetting them.

But that would be too complex, its best to just have the skill proportionately reduce cap use.

+1

CCP loves adding new skills recently. Now awaiting 'Disabilities Compensation' skill

You need that at 5 to 'bake' the tech2 industrials just like you need the other ship production skills to 5 to make the tech2 ships.

Anyhow,
yes I agree the damn thing should use less cap per skill level and and both the rah and the eanm can use a little bit of cpu reduction as well.

+1
needs fixing!

Problem well explained by OP!!!

The effect of this skill is that you use cap faster to shift resistances faster - which is perfectly fine, just like you use cap faster to rep faster or shoot faster.

However, as it is a hardener, the main point of the thing is to provide resistance for cap.
You should not have to pay more cap to maintain the same resists.

If there was some way that it used extra cap while shifting resists, then it would be fine if the skill reduced the cap needed to maintain resists, but not to shift resists.

The skill is less than worthless, it makes the module worse. Once trained, it cannot be untrained...
Don't permenantly handicap yourself.
Do
Not
Train
This
Skill
!!!
(at least until CCP fixes it)