Ships & Modules

Amarr.

You go for the amarr carrier because of armor supremacy and because of that, you gonna get amarr blops and marauders.
If you wanna rat in that carrier (>ishygddt) you gonna get the thanatos and gallente blops and marauders.

simple as that.

edit: if you can't fit these things without help, you really shouldn't get one.

Not...exactly. A 25% resist bonus actually corresponds to a 33% increase in anything related to your hit points. EHP, local tank, remote tank all benefit from this 1/3 improvement. By contrast, a 25% remote repair bonus gives exactly 25% more. This is essentially the reason the Nidhoggur's RR-bonus was increased to 7.5% per level. I mention this mostly because you cited the Nidhoggur's old ship bonus.

The recent buff mostly addressed this concern, and as you stated it comes down to whether you're prioritizing the survival of the capital or the subcaps. However, I would like to point out that most subcaps will have better resists than the Nidhoggur repping them, if only because they'll have more slots to fit resist modules. Amarrian ships may even have a resist bonus on top of it. Local reps are also less capacitor efficient than remote, and the triage carrier isn't exactly going to be getting any damage reduction from speed or signature radius...

The next difference is slot configuration. An Archon has an extra low slot at the cost of a midslot. For triage, this basically means trading a Capacitor Power Relay for a Cap Recharger. The former gives a 24% bonus, while the latter gives only a 20% bonus. This ultimately means that an Archon will have 5.3% more capacitor per second. Not a huge gain, but certainly worth noting when people shell out 130 million isk to get the same effect from an implant.

Next, there's the matter of fitting constraints. If you want to bring an armor tanked carrier to assist armor-fitted subcaps, the Archon can bring two local reps and three remote reps. While you're certainly not going to be running all of them full out, the additional rep lets you more quickly respond to target switches -- you can throw a rep on a target who needs it even while your other two are finishing their cycle. If a Nidhoggur tried to do this, it would need almost 6.5% more powergrid, even before fitting the last high slot.

Speaking of high slots, the Archon fits an energy transfer. That energy transfer lets triage pairs and triads exchange capacitor to prepare for a triage cycle. It lets them assist subcaps when they're being neuted or need to neut (Bhaalgorns). And they get a range bonus to it, allowing those subcaps a degree of mobility to do their job that the Nidhoggur simply can't, even if it did have the powergrid to fit it. Capacitor warfare is a huge part of capital warfare. The energy transfer gives the Archon and Chimera a measure of defense.

And on the subject of capacitor, the Archon is king. While all carriers possess identical base capacitor regen (leaving aside the CPR2 vs. CR2 issue), the Archon possesses a larger capacitor reservoir by almost 12500 GJ. Over a 5 minute period, that accounts for an additional 41 GJ/s the Archon gets to play with -- whether that be in repair, energy transfer, or sucked away by neutralizers.

And finally, we get to EHP. The Archon gets more armor, so it gets more benefit from its hardeners. With two faction EANMs fitted, the Archon gets 230k more EHP. Swapping one of those for a damage control, that increases to 244k. That may not seem like a lot in the scale of capital warfare, but it's another 800 DPS the enemy has to deal over that 5 minute period.

Amarr. Always Amarr. Unless you plan on using the carrier for WHs, the Archon is always the preferred capital. The Redeemer is also the best Black Ops because its bonuses are actually useful (should you actually decide to engage with it). Gallente would be my second choice, as people are usually pretty satisfied with having a Thanatos if there's not an Archon available. The obvious benefit of going Gallente is that you get the most use out of your drone skills with both the Thanatos and the Sin.

The Nidhoggur is an underestimated and versatile carrier, but I don't have enough good things to say about the Minmatar or Caldari carriers or black ops to make an argument about. Golem and Vargur have their merits if carebearing's your thing.

Right. It is bad practice to explain a fixed cap bonus with a cap/sec number though so I blame that on the misconception.

A. Armor tanking awesomeness unbound.
B. Paladin 4 100% bonused lasers, 2 Salvagers, 2 TBeams = fast missioning/salvaging.
C. Reedemers can bit fit to be death to ~anything~ smaller than a BS.
D. Archon is IMO the best triage carrier hands down.
E. Becuase I said so!

Your saying that the 30% ECM jammer strength per level of the Widow is'nt useful?

Times are a-changin', check Sisi/Chaos data.

DO NOT ******* TEASE ME! OUT WITH IT!

Do you usually find yourself CPU constrained on your Basilisk, Liang? (I know you aren't a fan of Scimitars.) I obviously can't speak for you, but I can't say I've ever had an issue with CPU. Perhaps it's because you locally active tank -- needless to say, an X-large shield booster would readily explain the discrepancy.

I'm not sure that that's a standard use case for the Basilisk, though -- I think it's a problem that would be more readily addressed by an active tanking bonus on the Gallente and Minmatar Logistics (I suggest capacitor reduction).