Warfare & Tactics

There are a couple of kills I've had recently where the targets had both a plate and a repper in their low slots. I thought this was not recommended? One pilot has a decent KB and the other was so-so. I'm assuming that perhaps this statement is something people say in general but leave it to the experienced players to know what their doing with such fits?

Depends on circumstances, was everywhere 2-3 years ago.

The plate/rep combo can be very effective when fittings allow for it and you expect a fight to last more than the 40-50s that it takes a MAR to outperform a second plate.
Becomes increasingly worthless as you pile on numbers though, which is one of the reasons why it has fallen out of favour .. average gang size has gone up and everyone are packing neuts today so active tanks have become very niche and highly situational.

Not to mention it gives an easier break period to bolt and rep if needed or if you've killed and are damaged, if going back to the station isn't wanted or there are none around.

Straight active tank and no EHP is straight PVE more or less.

Full passive tank with high EHP is for fleet work where you expect to be remote repped and you want to make sure you live long enough to have your fleet get reps on you.

The combo tank is essentially treating the armor rep as an HP mod for small gang work where you don't expect to be getting shot by more than 3-5 ships. The question is do you expect to get in enough rep cycles to repair more HP than you would get from a plate. If the answer is no go full EHP, if yes you will hang on longer with the rep than with a plate. The advantage is that you don't lose the agility or speed that a plate causes as in small gangs each member has to cover more bases and just being a brick is not helpful. Additionally it avoids fitting against another stacking penalty if you're talking about a rep or a third plate on a battleship for example. The disadvantage is you need cap which is why you fit cap injection and don't worry about your cap so much. Unless you end up vs. a Domi or Curse that likely has multiple neuts you're tank will run fine with 30% cap instead of 70%.

EDIT: This applies to armor tanks not shields. In general if you're active shield tanking get a larger booster and spare the extra grid by not fitting shield extenders. The short cycle time of shield boosters means you'll make up the EHP much faster than you will with armor reps.