Ships & Modules

Ancillary Armor reps should be fixed to break the single rep mold; As much as I enjoy ASBs on the hawk and caracal, they are remarkably OP, especially if the parent ship gets a rep bonus. I would like to see them get fixed by breaking the single rep mold, and not using capacitor. The current balance is entirely unfair, and should have an armor equivilant in the AAR. That and ishkur should get a rep bonus.

Besides, think of the fun you could have in boats that get a rep bonus; incursus, myrms, hyperion, etc. I'm kind of sick of seeing "trolololol ASB ALL THE THINGS!" from combat herons to indies.

It's kind of gotten out of hand...

This is fairly true I suppose; I'm mostly using the dual rep hawk as a template since the normal tactic for dual MASB in frig warfare is to switch from one to the other during a reload cycle. I thought it would be interesting if they did the same for AAR, since I could see the issues you're mentioning be negated on the medium and large sizes of the module, since that seems to less of an issue at that size.

ASB's are fine, it's the Hawk that is OP.

Double bonussed oversized ASB is ridiculously overpowered and need to be brought back to line.

Comparing Hawk and Vengeance, it is more efficient than AAR + AR (T2) both for burst and sustained tanking.
Oh and it uses no cap !

[quote=Bertrand Butler]You are comparing a hull that has a 37.5% bonus to shield boosting with one that just offers an increase in resists.

THAT specifically is why i was asking about adding a rep bonus to the ishkur AAR using cap, and can only fit one. You actually illustrated my point pretty nicely for me since as you were referring to ships that get the rep bonus vs those that get resists.

No, you're right, they're not the same. ASBs are broken as hell and fun to use for the same reason. You try to stack an active shield tanking ship with dual ASBs vs an active armor rep ship over a protracted fight, the shield setup will win almost every time as long as he's fielding proper resists. ALL I am proposing...is to drop the single-rep only requirement, and go with the capless approach. Regular shield reps have already been relegated to pve activities, which is all well and good, but the concept of "active tanking" tends to dominate most of the time.

Here's an interesting thought experiment; active tanked myrm vs dual rep cyclone. Myrm gets less in the way of active HP/s, but gets better resists. Cyclone gets better HP/s, does slightly better applied dps and has the option for neuts, which could disrupt the reps on the myrm. Which do you think would win in most engagements with that setup? Which do you think would win between rocket Breacher an blaster incursus?

There's a lot of questions to be answered here, but generally the issue that crops up is that ASBs tend to sacrifice a little more in the way of fitting for active tank, and AARs or normal reps tend to balance a bit better on the ships in regards specifically with fitting.

What WOULD be the downside to expanding AAR in relation to where active shielding is now?

@catherine try ur dual asb hawk vs my vengeance?

Despite the Vengeance having 4 tank mods + 1 tank rig (and 41sec of cap) versus the Hawk 3 + 2 (3:14 min of cap, that's including a nasty neut), the Hawk win sl (184 v 224 ehp/s) at sustained tank and completely blow the Vengeance at burst tank (288 v 419).


I think ASB need to be brought down to same effectiveness than AAR, not the oposite. Regular shield booster are almost non existent now on PVP ships.

I have to respectfully disagree; AARs need to be fixed a little as I was stating first. ASBs ARE overpowered, but the issue with shield reps has always been their cap usage vs their reps. Many armor rep boats can easily be made stable, but shield reps tend to go with short bursts, which have to be managed properly as to not cap yourself out. ASBs circumvent that balance issue entirely with not factoring capacitor into that equation at all. While it would be nice to draw out their rep length or reduce it, that issue remains with the cap usage, so unless they drop said cap usage significantly and give armor reps a better burst rep than is current, I don't see the two being balanced at all in relation to each other any time soon.

But again, my point is about buffing the AAR, not nerfing ASBs. I'm just using them to illustrate a point about how lopsided active tanking is right now, a point most people who do small-scale pvp can attest to.

You have to sacrifice a huge amount of fitting resources and slots to fit dual ASB that doing so it really just not worth it. Also post-nerf dual ASB builds only sustain about 70% of the dps it says they tank in EFT since they charges don't last a minute. This is why even though you can tank 191 EM damage with heated asb + pill on a hawk, you still see many hawk loss mails of dual asb hawks dying to solo vengeances while taking only about 7k damage.

A small comparison:

Small AAR:

Fitting 5 CPU 5 PG
Overheated:
Reps 171.6 Armor each 3.825 seconds, has 8 charges
Reps 1372 Armor with a single magazine in 30.6 seconds
Uses 320 cap for a total of 8 charges.

Medium ASB:

Fitting: 50CPU 12 PG
Overheated:
Reps 160.6 Shield each 2.55 seconds, has 9 charges
Reps 1445 Shield with a magazine in 23 Seconds
Uses no cap.

Small AAR costs almost nothing fittingwise if you compare it to a MASB. There are very few frigs that can easily fit MASB without any fitting mods.

Furthermore the auxillary nano pumps are boosting the total amount of a SAAR reps with a very small pg drawback. Cap is usually not a VERY big issue as a typical frig fight usually ends by 30-35 seconds.

Last but not least, you get free med slots when using SAAR, which are invaluable.

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About the dual MASB Hawk:

Do not be misled by numbers in EFT. EFT shows a tank of 541 dps overheated. This is only for 23 seconds. If you are planning to drag out the fight by staggering the MASB's, you need to run one booster for 60 seconds, the another for 60 seconds. So 541*23/120=104 dps effective tank during a long fight....not really impressive at all. MASB Hawk should be realised as a buffer ship.