Assembly Hall

As we all know, active tanking doesn’t work in a large-scale PVP setting. There is no effective method of making it so a single ship is able to tank a large gang of enemy ships without making its tanking ability extremely overpowered but on the other side of the coin a number of ships have active tanking bonuses where they are only able to fully maximize their potential when in a active tanking fit. The problem with armor repair bonuses is that the resistance bonus on similar ships is nearly or as effective in the same active tanking role.

So what do we do? Do we boost these active tanking bonuses, while increasing the chance of making them overpowered, in order to be more effective in that specific role than the resistance bonuses but still leave the ships still relatively unseen in larger fleets? Or do we just scrap the active tanking bonuses in preference of the resists and start seeing higher occurrences of new ships participating in gang warfare and potentially new fleet compositions while at the same time still have the same participation of ships in PVE and small-scale PVP? I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that the latter is the better alternative.

Let us then increase the scale further to take a look at capitals, specifically triage carriers and dreadnaughts. Both ships’ siege modules give bonus to local repair amount, prevent remote repair or energy transfer, and lock them in place for a five-minute cycle. On the small-scale, they currently work moderately well as they are able to tank towers and small gangs until capacitor neutralization starts to occur. However, on the large-scale both of these ships fail catastrophically. Dreads can only be fielded in the initial engagement of a tower and only stay on the field for a minimal amount of cycles without risking massive losses. As soon as an enemy fleet shows up that is greater numbers than your subcap fleet can handle your dreads become next to useless in turning the tide of battle and are going to die if they get tackled or left in siege. Similarly, numerous killmails from the recent WN/CFC conflict demonstrate that triage carriers are unable to function in large-scale fleet engagements, as high alpha will simple melt the carriers between rep cycles.

So again what do we do? The first step to fixing these two capitals is to again move away from the active repair bonus on the siege/triage module in favor of a resistance bonus. Leave to duration bonus alone, but switch the amount bonus to a comparable resistance increase that doesn’t stack similar to a damage control. But what does this mean? By adding resistances you are essentially increasing the amount of time a given amount of opponents need to burn through your tank. You will no longer see a carrier or dread repping back their entire shield or armor in a single cycle, but you are much less likely to see these same ships getting volleyed between reps. An additional bonus of this change is that you are still getting a bonus from the triage module and the fuel used even before you turn on your repair mods and when you are no longer able to use them (i.e. capped out).

A second step if the first proves insufficient in proving a place from these ships in large fleet engagements, especially with the massive numbers of supers currently being fielded, is to potentially allow remote repair on sieged dreads (I’m not entirely sure if this would be the best idea for carriers). These are committed assets and will live or die based on the success or failure of the fleet, which is more than can be said for supercapitals. In their current form, even though you may have a massive fleet of capitals, these ships still come down to each man against the entire enemy fleet. All you can do is sit helplessly and hope that your fleet can kill more enemies than they can kill of yours. The current system is a step away from the idea of group helping each individual become more than what they could be separately. By making this change it shifts the dynamics of capital engagements from who has more to who has better tactics and provides a method in which smaller entities could potentially engage larger capital fleets and with superior tactics have the potential of winning.

TL;DR change active repair bonuses on ships and siege modules to resistance bonuses and potentially allow RR on sieged dreads in order to provide a larger selection of viable ships for gang warfare.

Its an interesting concept but by changing this would not put a lot of ship with nothing but the same bonuses and there by eliminate the diversity? A good example of what you are talking about is the Mega/Hype/Abad comparison

with all level 5 skills

A properly fit active Mega can tank about 150 more dps then a Hype and because of bonuses has better tracking then the Hype with only a slight drop in over all damage dealt (made up for ofc by the tracking bonuses) you can compensate for the dps put out by the mega by replacing the faction antimatter with void and still have better tracking then the hype.

An Abad can active tank about 100 less dps then a Hype can however gains the tremendous advantage of being able to also buffer tank with extreme success.

So why ever use a Hyperion? That problem does need to be addressed other ships have similar problems in their respective counter parts tend vastly outclass them.

On this same line of discussion maybe some one could shed some light to me on why some ships get stupid bonuses that make no sense for the race IE Gallente getting a falloff bonus or a Minmatar getting an optimal? should it not be considered that bonuses like these are 99% of the time worthless to the ship and there by making it unused in favor a ship that has bonuses that can all be used for its maximum effect?

Defensive bonuses only really matter when you're taking damage. Yes. Less buffer means you can be alpha'd easier. But the difference in buffer isn't all that great (need to check when I get home from work as I have done a lot of research on this)

Remote repair received bonus would allow you to tank more long term whereas resist bonus would allow you to tank more short term (alpha)
That seems to be a fair trade off. 

Stopped right there. No single ship SHOULD be able to tank a large gang of enemy ships for any reason. Also...armor tanking works very well...this is why everybody uses it.

Not supported, I like the active tanking bonus on the Gallente ships and do not feel removing this diversity improves the game. Is some balancing of active tank verses buffer required, yes but this is not down to the active tank bonus.

I would be interested in a dual rep Mega fit that can out tank a Hype? Even a T2 dual rep a Hype can tank 1100DPS and has a extra mid for a tracking comp or webber. Can you post this please.

So is there an actual argument for keeping the active tanking bonus aside from "I like them" and theoretically decreased diversity? I'll repeat again, even with the same bonuses, you wouldn't fly the nighthawk in the same way you fly a sleipnir just in the same way blasters require different techniques for success than pulse lasers. Obviously you wouldn't close to zero with lasers when facing blasters. So while you are decreasing diversity within the bonuses, you are creating more diversity in the fleets that people are going to use as more ships become effective for large-scale pvp.

As a side-note, this defensive bonus could be switched to a percentage of shield/armor capacity if you wanted to maintain the diversity within bonuses. But really that type of bonus goes more with Amarr/Caldari than Gallente/Minmatar.

Spugg your comparison is flawed. Aside from the fact that your comparing the abaddon against the hyperion (you're really saying you're going to fit all tank in the lows for hype? lol), leaving out the link bonuses is a huge boost in your argument's favor due to how the resist link applies and stacks with the resistance bonus.

Probably the best comparison you can do for this argument is the Absolution vs the Astarte. When fully fitted out with the astarte using 1 dmg mod and navy antimatter and the absolution using 2 dmg mods and conflag the ships become almost identical aside from the resistance bonus. Gun damage and range is 684 vs 682 and range is 11.7 to 12.5. Tank-wise they both have a resistance hole that should be filled as well. They both use an ACR and trimark in the rigs. They're as close as you're likely to find for this comparison. I'll post the fits if it proves beneficial to the argument.

So let's get down to the numbers. I'll show the numbers without and then including T2 Damnation ganglinks and fleet bonuses (you can expect these in any large-scale fleet engagement so why are you leaving them out?)

W/O Links and Bonuses
EHP
Absolution- 105,997
Astarte- 83,903 (20.8% Difference and 21.2% with just fleet bonuses)

Rep Multiplier
Absolution- 6.112
Astarte- 4.816 x 1.375=6.622

HPS per Guardian with 4 RR
Absolution- 2086
Astarte- 2260 (7.7% Difference)

Now let's compare with the links and bonuses
EHP
Absolution- 145,010
Astarte- 110,905 (23.5% Difference)

Rep Multiplier
Absolution- 8.24
Astarte- 6.034 x 1.375=8.29675

HPS per Guardian with 4 RR
Absolution- 4157
Astarte- 4186 (0.7% Difference)

So my conclusion? In minor engagements where there are no logi or command ships you fail to receive any bonus so you are at minimum 20.8% ehp behind you counterpart. In small-scale engagements where you wouldn't find command ships but find logistics you get a alright bonus. You aren't likely to get chewed through in seconds so ehp becomes less of an issue here and 7.7% per logi is pretty decent. However, in large-scale fleet engagements your idea of using the bonus for remote repair fails to hold up. Not only do you have 23.5% less ehp (so the chances of logi being able to lock you up and begin applying reps before you pop are lower) but your rep bonus only gives a 0.7% increase in applied reps versus the resist bonus as well.

Alright, I ran your numbers for the abaddon vs hype and got the same numbers. I personally wouldn't fit my abaddon or hype like that but we'll go with it for comparison's sake. The rep multiplier is the number you use to multiply the amount repped before dividing by the cycle time in order to calculate defense efficiency aka HPS. +70 HPS difference isn't what I'd call good. +218 HPS per guardian is a bit better, but the enemy only has to bring one or two more dps ships to negate that advantage. Also there is is the issue of alpha. The bonus doesn't help if reps don't land. Third, look at how your bonus scales on other ships as well, such as in the case of my example of Absolution versus Astarte it's only a 5.8% increase. Fourth, have you looked at how that increase will effect active tanking? 7.5% addition tank can mean a lot in 1v3. Fifth, your proposed bonus still leaves these ships inferior in any situation where they're aren't active tanking or have a large number of logistics.

There was one other thing I would like to mention. By removing these active repair bonuses from hulls in exchange for equal-opportunity bonus such as resists, you're likely to drastically diminish demands for active tanking improvements. You'll notice how there are very few complaints about how the abaddon or rokh active tanks. It is because, while these ships can active tank quite decently, they have an equally viable buffer tank for fleet combat. Conversely, the hyperion and brutix hulls seem to get the short end of the stick. Their bonus makes it so that they are only good at active tanking, but their tanking is only marginally better than ships that have other bonuses, and if they attempt to buffer tank they are drastically behind similar ships in their class. So if they can only do one thing, reason says that they should be able to do it really well and so people complain because that isn't the case. Make it so these ships can be competitively flown in most situations and people will care less about how active tanking stacks up against buffer tanking.

The real problem is large fleet fights have been reduced to:

1. Entire fleet aligning to celestial.
2. Entire fleet locking up one target.
3. Entire fleet pressing F1.
4. Entire fleet locking up another target...

You get the idea. If large fleet fights were actually broken up into dozens of smaller fights, you would see active tank bonuses shine again. Until then; enjoy your predictable fleet dog fight of hundreds of ships primary one person at a time and they race to see who can finish the overview list first.

Boring.