Ships & Modules

Inferno introduced ASB's which have greatly improved active shield tanking. However I feel that armour has been left in the lurch and the reactive armour hardener just does not fill that gap.

Now, I know that shield =/= armour. They are very different. Armour is better at buffer. Shield is better at boosting. Armour reppers are supposed to be less cap dependent. Shield boosters are supposed to be very cap hungry. However with ASB's, capacitor has been completely decoupled from active shield tanking and active armour tanking is extremely cap hungry.

An Ancillary Armour Repairer is not an option though. Letting an armour repper work like an ASB would be wrong. So I thought about how an armour repper could complement what armour is good at which is buffer tanking.

So I had the idea of an Auxilary Armour Repairer. This module would repair a very large amount of armour HP per cycle (say 2 or 3 times as much as a standard one) but would cycle very slowly for the same capacitor cost per cycle, say twice as long.

This would mean that cap requirements of the repper are cut in half but actual hp/s repaired is only slightly better. The ship would then rely heavily on buffer between reps and the pilot would have to time their cycles to not waste them or have them occur too late.

What do you people think?

Every thread I see lately about 'tanking' is always the same. It's always someone asking for the strengths of shield tanking (active) to be applied to armor. If it isn't demands for Ancillary Armor Repairers, it's a request for passive regeneration. You said it yourself in your post, "They are very different. Armour is better at buffer. Shield is better at boosting".

You can't keep demanding that your weakness be made better without losing any effectiveness in your strength. In fact you're going to be getting BETTER at buffer tanking, as I hear T2 armor plates are getting buffed on SiSi.

Ancillary Shield Boosters need to be 'fixed' to have the boost amount based on the size of charges used, but they aren't THAT overpowered, and here's why.

Consider pre-ASBs. If you wanted a sustainable active tank, you had to fit a shield booster AND a cap booster. 2 slots, tank that runs more or less until you die, or until you run out of cap boosters, usually you would get one or two (mostly one) boosts out of each cap charge.
Now consider using ASBs. If you want a sustainable tank, you have to fit 2 ASBs. 2 slots, tank that runs more or less until you die, or until you run out of cap boosters. You get one boost cycle out of each cap charge. You can use both boosters at once, but once you're out of loaded charges, you're going to die.
What has actually changed? ASBs allow you to 'burst' tank a large amount of damage for a short period of time, by using twice as many cap boosters, thus running you out faster... or allow you to tank a lower amount for a longer period.

Granted the boost needs to reflect the size of the cap charge used, but other than that it's pretty much just module-implemented overheating for shield boosters.

I will agree that the adaptive plating is crap. I'd advocate giving it about 2/3 of the resists of an EANM and then allowing you to script it so two resists are more and 2 are less, or one is a lot more and three are less.

Either way, shield and armor tanking are different. Stop asking for them to be made the same.

I see this brought up almost constantly as a thinly-veiled "nerf the ASB" comment (when people suggest reducing the minimum charge's boost). I personally don't see why anybody gets upset about it in the first place, if CCP hadn't allowed any but the smallest charge in the first place we wouldn't hear a word about this "issue".

Anyway, I do see a fix that would work, just in the opposite way the anti-ASB crowd proposes. Balance the module itself around the smallest charge, and allow the larger charges to give a higher boost proportional to their size. People will probably scream "OP!" but let them, it will actually be less powerful to run the modules with larger boosters, just more burst-focused, which can certainly come in handy in certain situations. The overall amount tanked will actually be quite a bit less due to the reloading cycles, and you'll run out of cargo space faster too.

The reactive armor hardener with scripts would likely work well. There are a number of ways they could do it, scripted EANM, a script to change its base resists before it adapts, a script to have it auto-adapt, anything that makes it better than "I'm at 30% structure, but finally my armor resists are HUGE!"


This could actually be argued to be a good thing, as Paikis mentioned, the end result of ASBs is very similar to the result of overheating a traditional shield boost/cap boost tank. Also, given how the reactive armor hardener doesn't stack, it actually reduces the same amount of damage for both low and high resist tanks. It might apply 10% to a 50% resist and only 5% to a 75% resist, but that's still a 20% reduction in incoming damage in both cases.

Paikis, I agree armour =/= shield and I'm not asking for a repper that is powered by cap booster charges as this would not be a good idea.
The main issue I find with ASB's is simply the fact that it completely decouples (actual) capacitor dependency for tanking. This allows you to active tank whilst using neuts or being neuted heavily. Something active armour tankers couldn't dream of.

What I'm suggesting is a module that works differently from ASB's and standard armour reppers but reduces the capacitor burden by doubling the cycle timer. Also dismissing active armour tanking and leaving it inferior to active shield tanking instead of competitive but different removes a play style from the game. Which isn't good.

Say we took an example of an Enyo that was fitted with a single rep module and a 200mm plate.

This would give the ship a very reasonable buffer tank and using a Small Auxillary Armour repper it would have a reasonable amount of armour rep without utterly gimping it's capacitor. The skill of using the repper would come in the timing of it as it's long cycle time would mean you don't want to have it rep too early and waste valuable hp or end up loosing all your hp before the repper kicks in. This kind of module would require the pilot to think about his buffer aswell as his repair efficiency as he has to wait long periods between cycles. The active side of the tank isn't anywhere near as good as the ASB fit but it doesn't go inactive for 60 seconds. The pilot could always dual rep fit with these to get ASB effective tanking but would end up relying very heavily on capacitor. But only half as much as the current dual rep fits due to double cycle times.

This kind of story repeats across other ships and ships that benefit the most would be those that have an active tank/resist tank bonus.

Like I said. The main objective of this module is to reduce the capacitor dependency of active armour tanks but not utterly nullify it by letting armour reps use cap booster charges.

Shield buffer tanks and armour buffer tanks are quite balanced. A shield-buffer tank has advantages in range, damage and speed, and loses some EHP or none depending on what ships we are talking about.

If you want to bring slaves into the equation, that is also fine, but they're still well balanced. The shieldtanks can bring snakes, and increase their advantage in speed even more. Any sort of gang settings (especially with 5+ people) bar RR BS gang I'd prefer a group of shieldtanks over armourtanks. Because they'll be faster, hit harder and further, which easily compensates for some EHP lost.

The neuting is a nonfactor. Sure, an invuln can be shut off; but this is not realistically relevant. In solo settings you will die or at least run out of shield at which point you turn the invuln off / melt the other guy's face before you get neuted to death (unless you fight with a neut-bonused ship, or a larger ship with 2+ neuts, in which case you're boned anyway, shield or armour); in gang settings you are simply blown out of the water before it is a factor.

The imbalance exists, and has actually existed before introduction of ASB, but not so much, in active shield (which was actually viable and is now very viable) vs active armour (which is in a sad state). Saying "but armour has better buffer" is just muddling the issue. Yes, it has "better buffer"... but a shield buffer tank has better speed, range and damage then armour buffer. It is not an argument to not try to make active armour tanking a bit more useful.

I think that trying to boost tank directly or such is a bad idea, because it is in nobody's interests that ships permatank each other, but it is really bad right now.

I personally favor the idea of Armor Repair / Shield Boost scripts that trade reduced cap efficiency for faster cycle time. This includes the removal of ASB because they wouldn't be needed and because I think they are poorly thought out.



The goal is to let an active tanked ship survive a bit longer when under heavy fire (ie when being shot at by a small gang).

I posted this as proposal in the Assembly Hall but it didn't get any comments: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=131438

This addresses only part of the problem (that active tanking suddenly becomes quite bad above a certain threshold of incoming DPS), but it's a much better way to provide unsustainable burst tank than these ASB's.

Troll harder, mate. But I'll bite. Yes I do feel that it is a huge issue with Armour Repairers. You can't just "top off" your Armour like you can Shield, plus you have to suffer full DPS until the end of your cycle which might be fatal without a DCU.

I doubt that's how they are meant to be.

Just because it is the only thing that does work doesn't mean it is how it is supposed to work.

Why else would we have active Armour Modules?

Repairing at the end of the cycle is easily the smallest problem. Turn reps on before you get to 0 shield, and this timing problem goes away.

The big issue is that, eg. 2 LARs consume over 3k more grid then two plates, not counting the grid spent on the injector. Two MARs and an injector take 1 more lowslot, one more midslot and the same amount of grid as one 1600mm plate based tank. Then, to add insult to injury, repair rigs reduce speed.

Don't even compare the cost of fitting a 2-midslot + 1 lowslot buffer shield tank, both in slots and fitting, to a dual-MAR tank.

That's why you see shield-gank Brutixes as the only viable Brutix setup, for instance, etc.

Yes. My slaved dual rep dual LAR tri hardener + dc ship has more EHP then a shieldtanking 2 LSE 2 xl-ASB 2 INVU 2X SBA ship with crystals. You have some fascinating insights into tanking.