Ships & Modules

Lies! For a long time after the stack nerf implementation shield tank was considered non doable for PVP. The first shield tanked PVP ship commonly used after the stack nerf implementation was the vagabond and other speed tankign ships like nanophoon. Back then if you could nto git MWD, Injector, Web and disruptor in mids you were considered WORTHLESS in PVP because everyone was expected to carry tackle!

Only with the tier 2 BC that buffer shield tanking arose to be something meaningful, but even so secondary. Active tankign on that age started to be considered stupid and massive armor tank buffers were the NORM! Undeniable and absolute norm on PVP, specially battleship size. The shield tanking only took a rightful place in combat when the type of engagements became so that tackling became a secondary concern and just amassing huge amounts of firepower so that you needed less shisp to instantly POP a given target.

Peopel seems to have amazingly short memories in here.

Irrelevant. But its still tru that are lies that shield tanking are the norm since beta. Both before and after the nano age armor was the rule. BEfore the nano age, beleive it or not active armor was very used. After the nano age super plated was the norm specially due to AOE doomsdays.

Also the nano age was half a year on its first occurrence when polycarbons were introduiced. The second nano age was longer but much less predominant. Even so it dit not encompass more than 1 and half year.

There does not need to be any trajectory calculations. What I'm proposing is not something akin to a fps where "projectiles" are given physical properties determining distance and time of flight. Instead a line can be "drawn" between the firing ship and the target, if any celestial body intersects this line then the firing cycle will not complete. Celestial bodies do not move in eve so no movement checks are needed for objects that will potentially intersect this line.

These new Ancillary Shield Boosters are just stupid.

Buffing active tanking in PvP yes, but not by making the existing shield boosters and armor reps obsolete and introducing a bunch of new problems.

I've noticed a lot of people referencing TQ in the forums, and people must realize that TQ isn't an example of balance (ships or anything for that matter). Characters would kill their own mothers to win a fleet battle (and thus will ruin eve with identical ASB fits from now till ever) . Armor tanking was difficult before and now is simply worthless (ill never kill a tengu w/ my myrmidon again ). I will never be able to impress anyone by my tank again (in any ship). Hero tanking is a thing of the past; now its just "damn i'm lucky his boosters ran out first". My one greatest hope, is they nurf the crap out of the ASB any one caught using it will die horribly like every cheater should.

People should read a thread before posting in it...

1. Blob will always be appealing, ASB have not change this fact, and nothing will ever change it.

2. ASB is useless if your ennemies are more than 6 or 7. People saying the module is obsoleting buffer don't know about alpha or about the power of logistic ships.

3. Three or four ships can kill any ASB subcap fit in less than two minutes.

According to this, the only scale where this module can be a problem is for 1 or 2 ships on each side where lenght of fight will be significantly increased.

IMO, this is not a problem, because the module allow active tanking to be viable for up to seven men gangs where it free up a logi pilot for a dps ship, which every one agree it's key for small gangs. On the other hand, ASB fit are not so much more powerful than active tanking fit some solo/duo pvper use, but free them some slots. If the module were balanced with capacitor active tank, that would not be a problem ; the problem is that capacitor active tank need a buff.

As Cpt Branko says, fitting are crazy for active tank module and need to be reduced. IMO, they could also use a buff to efficiency (more hp repaired).

I'm a bit late to the party, but I can give my take on it.

Single ASB are not a problem at all. They provide an option for shield buffer on an equivalent level to armor buffer ships of the same hull or class, with some equivalent sacrifices made in speed and damage to allow for the modules' difficult fitting requirements. It means that every race's first tier battlecruiser can get around 100k EHP when buffer tanked, and I think that's great. And of course it only really functions in a small gang environment as they are incredibly susceptible to burst damage and alpha, and that's a suitable drawback as well.

Now I do see a lot of people complaining about the Brutix and active armor tanks; the way I've seen it for years now, the Brutix hull (and the Myrmidon, and probably the Hyperion) is in dire need of an increase to its active tanking bonus, probably up to 10% per level. As it stands the Brutix cannot fit an active armor tank suitable to fight off much more than weak HACs and T1 cruisers, and as it's been pointed out the shield buffer Brutix remains probably the strongest contender for for the all-around best fit. Therefore I see using the Brutix's active armor tank as a very poor example to compare to, say, the Cyclone (a ship formerly best known not for being powerful but simply for being better than people would generally expect which is now truly formidable in its own right) and that such comparisons are simply not fair for reasons that are beyond the scope of the discussion of ASB.

Generally speaking though, I see no issues with active armor tanking either in PVE or PVP, and no serious need for big changes or new modules there; the new armor hardener even makes an excellent supplement to the missioning Dominix in place of an EANM or Damage control.

The big question on everyone's mind is of course the use of dual ASB, particularly the use of dual XASB on ships with formidable shield bonuses and/or mid-slot counts, ships that were already strong tankers and can now field shockingly powerful tanks that are nearly impossible to beat without simply wearing them down. This includes the Maelstrom, most Scorpion hulls, to an extent the Nightmare and the Rokh, as well as the Vargur and Golem. Certain battlecruiser hulls can also fit it fairly effectively, such as the Sleipnir, the Cyclone, and certain T3 cruisers (though largely at the expense of their general usefulness in a fight). The Maelstrom is probably the most notable as it is the cheapest and most viable of the above options, able to field a nearly capacitor-independent tank (larger than the traditional X-Large tank) for at least five minutes and gaining a web over its traditional incarnation. It is also less expensive.

Many people feel this is quite a bit overpowered, and in truth it does present some issues with 1v1 or small gang fights as there are virtually no alternatives to dealing with the tank other than sheer DPS or massive alpha. While a single ASB can be overturned much the same way you would finish off an armor buffered ship, as long as you are dealing damage slower than their reps can repair you may have to deal well over half a million raw damage to take out a single ship -- as all the while it is fighting back at full capacity -- without options for alternative warfare to end the fight before they are out of charges.

Do note that they are extremely capable and can yield some very impressive performance, but at the same time they actually do not benefit from gang links the same way that traditional capacitor-dependent active tanks do and with a full complement of drugs, implants, and gang links a traditional tank will often be as strong or stronger with slightly fewer charges used (in exchange for capacitor vulnerability).

While dual ASB is not great in larger fights as it generally means you have anemic resists and mediocre-to-poor buffer, a single pilot solidly outfit can probably take on four to twelve enemy ships without great concern with a ship costing under 300 million isk, and in the end it is up to CCP to decide if this is desirable or not. I myself suspect that it is probably fine but may need tweaking, and there are a number of possible ways to do this without making it impossible to fit more than one:

Perhaps:

fitting additional ASB could add on to the reload time of all fitted ASB by 10 or 15 seconds for each additional module.

their boosting strength could have a stacking penalty applied.

fitting multiple ASB would require a very small amount of capacitor to activate when charges are loaded (say maybe 20 for an x-large) instead of none.

their boost amount could be reduced or their reload time increased by a fraction when your ship is below 5 percent capacitor

Pick one of the above.

I would really like to see there be a subtle and elegant way to restrict their usage rather than an ugly hard limit to the number of modules that can be fitted; I also think it would be good to see that incorporate some way for them to be reasonably countered other than by bringing bulk DPS and alpha and just beating them down through sheer brute force.

Gosh, that's not a very good fit. You had enough DPS to break him either way, though.

I kind of agree. The Myrmidon does seem good enough in general, mostly because it can dedicate its entire low rack to tank without worrying overmuch about damage output, but the others definitely need more. The Astarte especially is incredibly underwhelming, and I can find no good reason to fly a dual rep Astarte.

As for armor reps, you kind of have a point there as well, at least for medium ships. Part of this problem stems from the existence of battlecruisers, which can hit cruisers and each other very solidly for large amounts of damage more than battleships can. Battleships can get decent tanks out of dual rep; the Typhoon is pretty good, the Dominix is quite adequate, there's nothing wrong with the Tempest, and the Megathron is actually just as good as the Hyperion with its extra lowslot. In medium format though, there are a limited number of ships worth putting an active armor tank on, the Stabber Fleet Issue being one of the main exceptions as long as we're talking about armor bonuses.

Anyway, do keep in mind that there aren't very many ships that are good in PVP with active shield, either. Plus, armor and shield are made to be completely different; armor has a strong bent towards buffer and resists, shield has a bent towards active tanking, recharge, and burst tanks. I don't think there's a huge problem with there being only a limited number of ships good with active armor, but I do think that the Brutix hull and Hyperion could at least use a boost.

Nano age is togay, tengus 5150ms, cynabals with speed over 9000ms...