EVE General Discussion

Okay, then use a Heavy nos. Or load a useless ammo type which has no chance in hell of hitting, and fire it at the target without actually doing any damage to it. Whatever gets implemented, people will find a way around it.

You're also forgetting the obvious implication that this will help logi tanking just as much as it helps active tanking, which sort of works contrary to the point of implementing it.

On a more constructive note, I honestly don't think this is a good idea. Implementing limitations like this are sort of contrary to what makes eve great; that a force with twice as much firepower is actually twice as potent, that nothing can stop you of making use of your superior numbers, that it's a sandbox with no artificial restrictions.

To balance active tanking, I'd push for a small nerf to EHP (down to 80-90% of what it is now), and buffing NOS into useful counters to neuts - so that as long as your opponent has cap to neut you, you can use a nos to steal that cap and re-use it. This means ships like the Nos-curse and Nos-domi can go back to their fearsome, active tanked small gang roots.

Is this going to make active tanking viable on a large fleet scale for anything apart from triage carriers/siege dreads? No. As it should be. Fleets are meant to work together to survive, not to have one or two ships being able to solotank everything while needing minimal help. This is a team game, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ok, change the slot layouts in a balanced way for hundreds of ships (Including capitals/frigates/whatever).

And then what ? You'll get more DPS on an armor ship, fine. If you still fit tackling modules/MWDs/capbooster, you'll still be short on tanking, but because of tackling modules instead of damage mods...

The actual problem isn't the scalability of active tanking. A ship that can hold the DPS of 150 peoples alone isn't something I would call realistic. A ship that can hold the DPS of 150 peoples with 15 logistics seems more balanced to me.

That means, active tanking stays in small scale warfare.

That's why the fixes I've put in the OP are all about NOT increasing the flat efficiency of armor repairers/shield boosters. Active tanked ship would be able to tank too much. Maybe you're thinking about your Brutix tanking 2 Hurricanes, but I'm talking about a Maelstrom tanking 6 Vagabonds, 3 Cynabals, a Dramiel, a Rapier and 2 hurricanes. And yes, it's possible, but I just don't want to buff that again. Instead, I'm trying to remove the pain in the butt that comes with fitting active tanks on ships.

Brutixes are always shield fitted, I've never seen Hyperions around so can't tell, never seen Cyclones either.

Why ? Because it's easy to make it fail, and hard to make it effective. And I want that to change, and I believe the fixes in the OP will at least partially fix the problem.

Buffer tanking is difficult to break because it's just a huge HP pool without any kind of stuff that you can shut off. And it's pretty easy to fit one, because of the überlow fitting requirements.

I don't really want to normalize, I want to slightly reduce fitting requirements for active tanks so it's easier to fit.

I've posted stats about how hard to fit a Cyclone/Brutix is compared to the buffer tanked version of them.

I don't want active tanking to be a walk in the park, I want it NOT to be like running in a Lion's cage with a meatsuit.

There is already plenty of disavantages with active tanking, let's cut some of these off.

This is a suggestion for armor reps... not sure on shield boosters yet.

Instead of having the armor reps continually cycle, have them hold cycles, while adding to the armor HP even while you are at 100% armor. This will increase EHP while the rep is on full cycle, but keep its sustained repair amount in smaller fights.

Example:

You are in a large fleet battle, and have 2 large armor reps fitted. your max armor HP is 5k. your reps can repair a total of 1k each per cycle. Before you land on grid you activate the 2 armor reps and let them reach full cycle, now instead of repairing nothing and cycling again, they hold at full cycle for your ship to take armor damage. With my proposed changes each rep will effectively block 1k damage in .5 (can be changed) seconds. So if you are primary and alpha'd, you now have 7k armor HP.

For smaller scale warfare, you probably will not take 1k damage in a .5 second time span. So if you would take armor damage, and the .5 seconds runs out the rest of the available armor repair form the module would be wasted.

Using the same ship from above, you have 5k armor HP, and 1 rep with 1k HP per cycle. You get attacked with your rep on full cycle but the enemy only deals 500 damage in a the first .5 seconds to your armor. your rep would block the 500, but waste the other 500 and restart its cycle. The enemy now has the while 10 sec cycle time ( or however long it is) to deal damage to your original armor hp.

The armor reps will function the same if you already have armor damage, repairing any damage only up to 100% then cycling again.

Thanks for the responses CCP Greyscale.


Not sure if you read past Page 3 - but I'll make a quick post on my thoughts here :


#1 - The other issue with active repping is that you can get vaporized in massive fleet fights before you can ever get a repair off - this is especially pronounced on the armor repping side of things.


Looking at current game mechanics - adding some kind of buffer tank would be necessary to ensure some survival for active tanks while the rep kicks off - otherwise you'll never get to use your active tank. This can easily be done by adding some plating along with an active tank, but gets hungry on the fitting side - but I don't think that decision is necessarily bad or poor for a player. I think solid tanks always ask more than players want from them. You can't get max DPS and max tank and that is good. Everyone needs to make a sacrifice somewhere on their tank.


One thing to look at is the concept of the Shield Boost Amplifiers. Currently, they give a passive bonus to shield boosting, so keep that shield bonus, HOWEVER, you can make it a CHARGE taking item that can take a consumed item that when activated provides a massive boot to armor repair rate for a short time - of course create a similar item for an armor repairer. The item could be simply a capacitor booster, and maybe the duration of bonus is based on the size of the cap booster consumed - this would provide a cargohold limitation but also put a bit of a limitation based on the size of the ship that is using the booster... it does create a "cargohold" competition for using those boosters for Cap Boosters or this Active Booster idea which adds decision making challenges.


In some ways it would be like a mini-siege module - so maybe it could take strontium? Or maybe just create a sub-cap "siege/triage" module with different bonuses/penalties and not so debilitating.


I would say the item would have to provide a greater bonus than having simply used that fitting slot for another repairer - so I'd say at least +150% or more while running that Active Tanking Amplifier.

I have my idea to fix the problem :
Active tank can be described as a capacitor tank with the major drawback of being non scalable with incoming fire.
In this way of thinking, my idea is to give armor reper and shield booster a script which turn them into armor/shield reinforcer, turning them into active buffer.
small/med/large reper/booster would then absorb 10/20/30 % of armor/shield damage taken with capacitor at a ratio of armor/shield hp repaired for activation cost of the module (which is 2hp/GJ for tech2 armor reper and 1,5hp/GJ for tech2 shield booster ; increased by ship bonuses/rig).
Number can be tweaked of course, but this system would resolve the problem of scalability of active tanking by allowing it to function at its full effectiveness whatever the incoming dps ; full effectiveness being consuming all the capacitor.
Overload could increase the absorption amount by 10-20%, allowing the ship to tank more damage, but to consume its capacitor even more faster.

With the numbers I suggested here, here what happen with an abaddon using 5 slot for tanking :
abaddon 3eanm,DC,LAR2 : ~79% median resistance + 30% (new LAR) ==> 85,3% median resistance ==> 72279 aehp (armor ehp) ;; 21683 damage mitigated ==> 10841 capacitor used
abaddon dc, 2eanm, 2plates : ~75% median resistance ==> 84500 aehp

Then, active tank keep its natural drawback (cap use, less ehp than buffer tank) but now scale as well as buffer tank with damage. Better : current active tanking remain exactly the same and active tanker will have more options for fights ; and active tanking bonuses on ships will not be useless anymore in fleet !

How about a "panic mode" on the active tank mod that allows you to survive a fixed amount of time (eg 10 seconds) no matter waht the incoming dps is and then the module shuts off completely until you rep it in a station.

This would mean there would be a real trade off again between plating and effective tank. If you expect that your buffer fit will keep you alive longer than 10 seconds you fit the buffer and if you suspect to live less you fit the active tank.




but then again this is basically a paladin shield and therefor must be a terrible idea

stop telling me ppl posted in this thread kthxbye

Damage would be instantly converted to capacitor damage.
I made a thread in features and ideas : https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=35905&find=unread
(xhp/s is not scalable with damage, as CCP Greyscale explained)

Read it, and sorry, don't love it.

The idea that you'd have 500+ ships shooting at you and you tanking it is stupid.

I still think the focus should be on creating a disincentive to everyone attacking the same target.