Ships & Modules

The reason armour buffer Hurricane is not so predominantly common today isn't that it has worse tank (which I agree is not true, esp. for us with slaves), it is because an armour cane more or less has to go balls-deep. Sure, it can win vs anything you'd realistically engage anyway, but the big problem is if it's a trap, you're dead, your one and only option is trying to burn something down before extra hostiles land (which sometimes works, provided you didn't engage an EHP monster or a hypothetical ASB supertank).

On the other hand, fighting out of webrange enables you to spring a trap and get away, so you live with having less EHP, doing less damage (at ranges you want to be in a shieldfit), and lack of actually very very useful midslots (for solo/2-5 people gang).

Now, imagine, if you make it quite easy for a ship to tank another ship for a minute or two minutes, what is the result? Will more people fly close-range ships, and risk being tackled balls-deep in web+scrambler range for over two minutes? Only station huggers where they can deagress & dock, or bait & blobbers profit from increased tanking ability.

The rest will just fly longer-ranged kiting ships more, resulting in less, not more, viable fits.

Yes, sherlock, the best counter to virtually anything is "bring more DPS / ECM (if small scale situation)". So?

Nobody serious is going to base discussion on alliance tournament, since it's best understood as a sport within EVE. However, when you discuss tanking and it's role in small engagements (not the my 50 BS small gang nonsense), we're talking about 1-5 ships which are not realistically going to be all high damage BS, either.

Naturally, "more DPS" is the universal answer. But when we talk about anything more then 5 people an active tank is just irrelevant because of sheer mechanics, since a personal tank is only useful when you are being actually shot, while remote repping is useful when any of your gangmates are being shot, and DPS is useful always.

People which go in ten man gangs, for them, an active tank is a waste of database space. And that is fine, too. However, what are you even doing in this discussion? Your solo kills are either frigates, which is fine and fun, but anything larger and you're in 5-50+ man gangs. Active tanks mean nothing to you, except for PVE.

You see, a Myrmidon with three reps is bad as a generic PVP ship. It's slow, short ranged, and has bad DPS. Those three combined make it's EFT superiority to other BCs (as if BC 1v1s are the norm) go to waste on TQ.

Cyclone is actually a better active tanked ship, although naturally it does have weaknesses. It is an example of a sensibly designed active tank ship; it has enough slots and fitting for a decent tank, decent DPS, tackle and mobility, and if boosted to Tier 2 standards would be quite great. If more ships which are designed to tank were designed along the lines of the Cyclone, they would be perfectly viable.

Active armour tanks have no viable sub-BS ship because of the specific problems of armour-tanking (being more slot intensive and nerfing speed on top).



Even if we accept the rest of the post, this is the problem with boosting tank. Naturally any tank will fall eventually, it's a matter of when, but extending fights is a bad thing.

If you want more viable fits, then what needs looking at is specific woes of active armour tanking for one (where the main problem are slot and fitting, and loss of speed from active rigs), and easing fitting and cap of active shield tanks. The amount tanked is largely fine (bit on the low-end on unbonused ships, but arguments could still be made for active tanks if they didn't gimp your fit horribly).

I'd argue that some of the "potential" changes to slot numbers and layouts of some of the tier 1 bcs, and field commands address some of the concerns you have posted here. While total speculation, the 10% rep bonus per level present on the new incursus may make it's way to some of the other t1 Gallente lineup. If these speculated changes go live I can assure you that they will have a very significant impact on active armor tanking on specialized hulls which brings me to the followup point...

On unbonused hulls buffer tanking with the usage of resists and plates is almost always superior due to the nature of local vs remote reps in pvp but also because i believe these modules are not adequately balanced. You will only be able to achieve proper armor tanking balance when both passive and active fits are viable on an unbonused hull. This means that adjustments to fitting cost, cap consumption, and overheat bonus may inevitably need to be looked at.

Finaly tank ability with ancilary shiled booster (for shor period of time) is compared to other dual LAR or +100k ehp on armor ships, and most post are like.

OMG im not more so cool while solo, CCP hurt my feeling, was ok to got 130.000ehp or dual lar with full cargo of cap boosters but no more , meh meh CCP plese nerf those module this is unfair, before patch i always laugh in enemy face while solo but not anymore im so sad

It's already that way after the first Eve beta version about 6 or 7 years ago, you just re sub right?

Armor has only really suffered in 2 ship classes; battlecruiser and cruisers. There's some debate whether a bunch of Rokhs are supperior to a bunch of Abaddons (Rokhs are superior in 0.0 IMO). Armor battleships are still dominate and have been for ages and will continue to be.

Armor setups are also viable with most Frigates and destroyers. Mainly because of the relative level of small weapon systems projected damage and destroyer and frigate velocity.

If CCP scaled frigate uniformaty to cruiser class. Then blasters would have as much effective range (applied and projected damage) as autocannons and 70 - 80% of the effective range of lasers. The aforementioned would be with null and barrage ammunition alone. No use of mulitple tracking enhancer.

I made this argument awhile ago, with regard to uniformity. CCP has done the aforementioned to a certain extent with the changes to Null ammunition. You can now do as much effective damage as a shield-Rupture @ 24,000m in a Thorax.

Armor cannot be as effective as shield with regard to cruisers and battlecruisers. For the most part, these ships excel @ skirmish warfare and few excel @ conventional warfare. What do I mean? Only the Drake and to a lesser extent a Naga excel @ slug matches with battleships. both ships have it all in thier class. A large amount of effective hit-points, projected and applied damage and velocity.

The other battlecruisers have far less effective hit-points and projected and applied damage. That leaves them only one option. Hit and run tactics (skirmish). These ships have ALOT of damage and high velocity (Hurricane, Harbinger, Talos, Oracle, Tornado).

As far as Ancillary Shield Booster. Like I've said. Increased defense is not a boost to small gang and solo pvp. It's a NERF. Cpt Branko has Articulated that point alot better than I have, but I've made that argument forever. Especially with frigates. Trying to go threw ships with alot of defense takes time. The less time a solo pvper has to destroy a ship the better. It's not rocket science, just fact. Large defensive setups encourages Blobing. So, limiting these modules to one per ship seems like the correct move.


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And what can discourage blobbing ?

No matter what you do, blobbing will always exists in EVE. And as I said, if you have a 10+ local spike while fighting someone, either your target is a bait or they are neither with you or your oponent and you will both leave the field simultaneously.

On the other hand, active tank is, by design, a burst tank more effective for short and low scale fights or skirmish (hit and run, burst while hiting, rest while running). As I said, problem would appear if any ship would use this module, but nobody will unless they are solo pvper, or would see some triple rep hyperion in armor fleets.

But let's consider you are right and better active tanking promote blobbing ; what can solve the problem ?

Call it whatever yuou want, the question remain : what could be a solution ?

And as I said, if someone is with a blob, he will not have an active tank, because he will have logi. This module allow small gang to not bring a logi, hence to have more dps. I don't really know about solo even if I think that won't change a lot as I already explained, but it's certainly a godsend for small gangs.

An easier to fit active tank (which takes one less lowslot, for armour). If you look at medium ships (which are very common), the 350-400 DPS active tank you get on an average with an active armour BC isn't that bad. It outdoes a buffertank in situations where you receive less then 800 DPS or so, bonused ships even more. While it's not uncommon for even medium ships to do more point blank, none of them come even close at range.

The reason why they are bad however are excessive fitting costs, and excessive use of slots (an active armour tank uses 5 lowslots, which leaves you with only one damage mod, which simply does not work). If you could make a ranged fit with an active tank, it would be actually quite useful. Even in (very small) gangs.

As for battleships, while reducing fitting costs and slot use could also help, I doubt it would do too much. If your BS gang is very small, you want the midslots (eg. Typhoon wants a painter, everyone would like to throw on an ECCM because what if Falcon, then you are BS so you need plenty of webs because what if we engage afterburning cruisers, etc), and if it's bigger gang, you want plates for the EHP, and remote reps.

As for how to reduce the number of slots required, it's quite easy: make "two in one" reppers which have the fitting requirements of a single current repper* but with the caveat that no other tanking modules can simultaneously be active. So you can't make broken ridiculous tanks, but can squeeze a current 5 slot tank which is not something special into 4 slots and less fitting cost. Reduce capacitor booster fitting requirements somewhat, also, to reduce the overall fitting costs of (all) tanks. Active shield tanks just need a slight-ish fitting reduction (and again, cap booster fitting reduction); perhaps less cap requirements would be also nice.

* Which could stand to have their fitting requirements lowered as well as cap consumption, for possible use in plate+rep fits.