Ships & Modules

So today I EFT warrioring and I noticed something when constructing an Archon and Chimera side by side. First, the Chimera's capacitor is smaller then the Archons. But most importantly secondly, I noticed that both the local and remote reps for the Chimera (shield reps) took a TON more cap to activate over the armor reps. In the local reps this isn't a huge deal due to cycle time and rep amount but for the remote reps, I found that both rep the SAME AMOUNT and have the SAME RANGE yet have DIFFERENT activation costs. So CCP, why is that?

EFT print screen: http://prntscr.com/733ybz Notice the capacitor amounts. Recharge amounts are roughly the same.

In-game comparrison of mods: http://prntscr.com/733zds

according to the in-game info on the mods the activation costs are different, the numbers in EFT are off slightly.

The mods in game have been made with the same range, repair points etc. So why would they need different activation costs? So if they had a different range and or a different amount of repair each cycle i could see the activation cost difference.

Capacitor is a harsh way to balance for shield ships.
Their tank is mid slots, the biggest boost to capacitor is from the following module groups capacitor relay, batteries and capacitor boosters are all mid slots.

Shield also is heavily weighted to being active tanked, so your tank can be neuted away.
I do prefer logi, seeing the repairs land straight away.
I also prefer the speed.

However, armour get, better signature tanks, better eHP (slave sets prime example), better resistance to neuts, more mid slot utilities, more capacitor.

Over all, I think the balance lies more in armour tanking's favour.

Cool thing about shield ships and capacitor is if you don't use local reps, using low slot cap mods is a very easy decision. One I might argue is very much worth the extra usage cost.

Which ever one is the mid slot one then. Capacitor relay, flux, charger w/e
I did list pros and cons. I would gladly give armour tanks the repairs at the start of the cycle for shields to be more capacitor efficient.

Shields regen, armour does not.

I think everything has been covered now.

Fun fact: 11% lower reps for 24% more cap is what people call efficiency.

And lightly tanked gank boats are not the ships you bring up when comparing tanks.

Seeing how I'm the finest engineer in all of New Eden, please allow me to answer your interesting question of why the act of regenerating shields cost more energy than repairing armor/hull.

Let's start with remote armor repairers. They work on the principle of delivering nano-assemblers - tiny robots which can repair structure or armor - via a condensed energy beam (which is a basically a tractor beam working in reverse) to the target ship.

So, the only energy cost here is in the projection of a small energy transport beam which delivers nano-assemblers to its intended target. Once delivered to a target ship's external plating, the nano-assemblers continue to function via their own internal energy supply, which are actually nanotetrahydrolon fuel cells invented in YC-107 by Dagnard Resus of Carthum Conglomerate R&D division respectively.

Now, as for those remote shield boosters and transporters, they don't actually repair anything. They simply transport energy to the target ship, circumventing the said ship's capacitor, and depositing raw shield energy in form of ionized gravitons directly into the main deflector array.

So, you can certainly deduce where the added power cost comes from. Not only does the remote shield booster transfer vast amounts of energy through space but it also has to channel that energy properly and by all costs avoid accidental fallout into the target ships capacitor which would cause an instant overload of the said capacitor and cause one undoubtedly spectacular antimatter explosion.

You see, during any transfer of power there are losses incurred. The bigger the transfer is, the bigger the losses are.

I hope this answers your question.

Respectfully,

Anuri Suaraj
Chief Remote Power Transference Engineer
Amarr Imperial Academy

Bingo.

Pretty much this. And it also allows the dreds/carriers to use more cap or damage lows making it that much better. And it scales down pretty much the same way.

The flip side is that in group fights with remote reps you see armor being stronger (at least in brawling scenarios) because of the stronger buffer and more efficient reps. That combined with the fact that local buffer can use no cap means that people don't have to worry about getting insta blapped just because they get neuted out.