Ships & Modules

Back a few years when ccp reworked the transport ships, I pointed out the uselessness of repping bonuses on these ships. The dev in charge of rebalancing at the time simply didn't get it. Can't remember who it was. But he insisted on backstory straight-jacketing of these ships.

I told him in the thread, sorry can't be arsed to find it, that these ships were going to be fit the same and it wouldn't involve active tanking. They would all have their lows and rig slots either fit with cargo capacity or agility/speed. The mids would then either be shield tank (in the event you needed to survive a second or two of fire before hitting warp) or some defensive ewar (damp, TD, ecm) aside from the prop mod.

In this regard the racial tanking flavors made no sense. These ships perform a role that is independent of racial tanking modes. So active armor or shield tanking bonuses were not going to get used. But of course what did we get. We got racial active tanking bonuses. Even worse, we got racial slot allocation. And because of that racial slot allocation and the way they viewed balance the Caldari BR while only getting a couple lows got a much larger base cargo capacity, and the amarr got only a couple mids and even though more lows the base cargo capacity was made very small. They sorta knew the lows would get used by cargo expanders but still I guess thought that people would fit an armor repper.

Maybe when the new set of rebalancing devs get to this ship class they will do them right. Until then, make do with the slots you have available. Put defensive ewar or shield buffer in your mids in case you get decloaked and shot but not tackled before you hit warp. And put agility/speed in the lows. And only put as much cargo capacity in the lows as you absolutely need. A slow to align and warp BR can be decloaked, tackled, and destroyed, especially in a wh or nullsec bubble.

The deep space transports it can make some sense to use the tanking bonuses. Those can be used for pve activities where tanking npcs briefly and having the added warp strength are usable. Although, again, the stupid racial slot and base cargo capacity predispositions make no sense and conflict even with that role. Meh, someday they'll fix these things.