Player Features and Ideas Discussion

(Updated tl;dr at the bottom of this post)

Ever since I started EvE, I was struck by the fundamental imbalance of Amarr/Caldari resist tank bonuses vs the gallente/minmatar active tank bonuses. This morning, I took an EFT look at what Fleet Command Ships would be fitted like if gang links were nerfed to affect only on grid fleet members as often suggested (most recently in CCP Ytterbiums latest devblog). This really pointed out the tank bonuses imbalance.

Edit: Clarification: This is about resist vs. active tank bonuses. The command ships are just an example.

Part I: The fundamentals

First of all, let's demonstrate that the resist bonuses are (almost) just as good for active tanking than the active tank bonuses.

All skills at V Prophecy with just a medium armor repairer II fitted: up to 70 ehp/s repaired.
All skills at V Myrmidon with just a medium armor repairer II fitted: up to 72 ehp/s repaired.

That's less than 3% more for the Myrmidon.

All skills at V Ferox with just a large shield booster II fitted: up to 110 ehp/s repaired. (not counting pasive regen)
All skills at V Cyclone with just a large shield booster II fitted: up to 114 ehp/s repaired. (not counting pasive regen)

That's less than 4% more for the Cyclone.

Note: When counting passive regen, the Ferox actually gets more total regen, but that's due to a stat difference between the hulls, not to the difference between active and resist bonuses.

Considering that the hull bonuses don't suffer from stacking penalties, additional fittings are irrelevant.

As a reminder, the resistance bonussed ships get 25% more out of armor plates, shield extenders and passive shield regen. I won't go into details of that simple to understand fact.

Finally, the resist bonuses, as opposed to active tank or buffer tank bonuses (a few ships have them), do also help incoming remote repairs, which is probably their greatest strenght.

Part II: On grid gank links (OGGL)

Considering that:

• In order to use all 3 gang link mods, you need to put too much fitting resources (via command processors) in anything but Fleet Command Ships (FCS) or Capital ships, so t3 links and other BC sized ships won't be used for OGGL.
• You won't always be able or willing to bring a Capital ship for OGGL.
• Local tanks are not strong enough to withstand fire from an entire opposing fleet.
• MWDs help in keeping up with the fleet, ABs help in damage mitigation.

Buffer tanked FCS with MWD or Dual Prop would be the most commonly used ships for OGGL.

Let's have a look at the numbers for such ships.

Before implants and external links (ignoring the onboard links wouldn't make much sense), with t2 tank (and rigs):

Claymore, Minmatar FCS: Can reach 141k EHP (MWD, meta4 650mm arty) or 122k EHP (dual prop, meta4 650mm arty)
Eos, Gallente FCS: Can reach 141k EHP (dual prop, no PWG left for medium guns) or 128k EHP (dual prop, t2 electron blasters)
Vulture, Caldari FCS: Can reach 220k EHP (MWD, 250mm t2 rails) or 186k EHP (dual prop, meta4 250mm rails).
Damnation, Amarr FCS: Can reach 326k EHP (MWD, no PWG left for medium guns) 313k EHP (dual prop, t2 rapid light missile launchers).

The former two don't have resist tank bonuses.
This shows that the basic OGGL Damnation has over twice the EHP of a basic OGGL Claymore or Eos.

With implants, external links (from vulture or damnation with mindlink) and deadspace (C-Type) tank:

Claymore: Can reach 256k EHP (MWD, meta4 650mm arty) or 225k EHP (dual prop, meta4 650mm arty)
Eos: Can reach 310k EHP (dual prop, no PWG left for medium guns) 266k EHP (dual prop, t2 electron blasters)
Vulture: Can reach 320k EHP (MWD, 250mm t2 rails) or 262k EHP (dual prop, meta4 250mm rails).
Damnation: Can reach 751k EHP (MWD, no PWG left for medium guns) 630k EHP (dual prop, t2 rapid light missile launchers).

Not only does this show the ridiculous difference between armor and shield pimp buffer tanks due to slave implants, but also that the Damnation and the Vulture have large edges over the Eos and the Claymore simply because they have resistance based tank bonuses, which are a must have in fleet combat situations where you can expect to be the primary target.

Note: The Damnation has a big advantage, because it also has a buffer bonus on top of the resist bonus, making it the subcapital ship with the biggest buffer tank in the game, by far. I belive that all fleet command ships should get similar bonuses, because of their role.

As a final thought on this particular case study, one could argue that it is legitimate that the tank linking ships have bigger buffers because they would probably be higher on the target priority list.

Part 3: Conclusion (tl;dr)

The resist bonuses help with active tanking, buffer tanking and remote tanking, while the active bonuses only help with active tanking, and they don't even help (considerably) more with that than resist bonuses do.

This creates an imbalance in ship usability in situations where buffer and/or remote tanking are required, because the active tank bonuses are essentially wasted.

Possible solutions:

- Replace all active repair bonuses with resist bonuses
- Replace all the resist bonuses with buffer bonuses
- Make active repair bonuses affect incoming remote repairs (would still not help the buffer issue)
- Increase the base HP of the active bonused ships

I would prefer the first solution, because it would offer more choice when choosing which ship to bring for any given situation.

Feel free to share your opinions on this.

Good thoughts - however, EFT shouldn't be used as the be all/end all of ship designs (as good as it is) ; It can generate marginally (only a few percent) different values to what you can personally acheive.

Also, the different bonuses reflect their roles anyway - e.g. Myrmidon was designed because the non-capsuleer pilots getting into the Brutix threw themselves at the enemy and ended up greasy smears, while those ships that had systems designed for mid-battle repairs tended to fair better.

So, I think they should look at them a little, because yes some forms are a little overpowered (and this is coming from a Damnation pilot) which should be brought into line a bit more, but not at the exclusion of the differences that make them unique ships.


Also, the plural of bonus is bonuses, not boni :)

i will say a resounding no. ships with resist bonus are more pvp based for buffer, whilst boost bonus are not buffer nor used in pvp (unless stupidly rich with emphasis on stupid.. unless its a hawk :p )

I think you didn't get the point.

Resist bonussed ships can do everything the active tank bonussed ships can do, but not the other way around.

Since we fly ships, not bonuses, it is worthless to talk about bonuses in isolation. You need to look at the entire package.

So you are now saying that the problem is Slaves, rather than the Vulture's resist bonus? Confusing.

HICs have a specific role that requires high EHP. It is easy to argue that this also applies to Fleet CS. Other ships, however, do not have such a clearly defined role, and hence a comparison that uses EHP alone will not be useful.

Agreed.
If I knew how to customize EFT stats (like simulating a myrmidon with resist bonusses instead of active bonusses) I would.
I am trying to get the focus on the bonus alone because this is not about the stat balance (base HP, speed, sig, etc) between the ships.


Nope, just saying you should compare shield ships to shield ships and armor ships to armor ships.



This is where we disagree. The HICs show that at some point, someone at CCP undestood that active boni are just not viable in fleet situations. I think it is very useful to compare two types of defensive bonuses with regard to their impact on restricting ship usage. As I demonstrated, active tanking bonusses are just plain worse than resist bonusses in every regard. So let's get rid of them.

The new devblog by Ytterbium seems to be saying that they will be looking to balance active /passive and armour/shield tanks when they begin working on battlecruisers and battleships \o/

Hopefully this will go some way towards making active and/or armour tanks more useful; but with regard to your argument and numbers - I agree whole heartedly

Why are you trying to remove a fun tanking style?

In short, **** off and no, active armour tanking doesn't need to go and in fact must not. Have you failed to work out or watch how others make it successful in PvP?

If it's not competitive enough, then improve the modules, bonuses or ships designed to be involved in it. Don't remove it because there aren't armour Crystals, or resist bonuses help with buffer and RR fits too, or link ships have issues.

Active tanking bonuses just need to be substantially higher than passive tanking bonuses...

Look at the incursus.. Its divine.

Like the thoughts. A bit sceptical cause of alphamaelstroms.

You can change ship information rather easily with eveHQ, if you want a resistance based myrmidon, this could be fastest.