dont forget the other aspects of shield boosters. A X-Large T2 booster only gets 600 hp for 400GJ while a T2 Large Armor Repairer get 800 hp and 400GJ.

Armor has 1.5 cap/hp ratio while shields have 2.0.

And if your going to compare an ASB to anything do it against the AAR:


The Large Ancillary Armor Repairer does 1350hp for 400GJ (assuming nanites loaded) and does it for 8 cycles (120 seconds)

The X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster does 980hp for 0GJ (again assuming cap charges loaded) and using cap booster 400 does it for 7 cycles (35 seconds)

AAR repairs 10800hp total (90hp/s)
ASB boosts 6860hp total (196hp/s)

So, the shield ship becomes vulnerable within 35 seconds. it's not a matter of 1 being more powerful than the other, it's all reliant on playstyle. armor is more passive and drawn out while shield is quick and fast. With an ASB fit shield ship your hope is to kill the enemy before you run out of cap boosters. With armor, you hope to outlast the enemy and use your utility mid slots to keep him where you need him until he has exhausted his options and is vulnerable.

AS for fittings, it's an opposing situation, Armor needs more PG while shield requires more CPU. Shield fits require more cpu than armor and vice a versa. Along with generally higher resists armor also has the option of the 1600mm plate where shields do not have a similar option.

It's all about playstyle.

But the main reason shields have a X-Large booster is because armor has a 1600mm plate, which gives almost 2x as much hp as Large shield extender.

The issue with the playstyle argument is that the low DPS tankable of the AAR means that one style is far more limited in it's upper bound, while the AAR can simply pulse reps in lower DPS scenarios and extend it's operational time before reload. This allows a shield ship to operate just fine in an armor ships range with a bit of attention but the armor ships can't do the same or reasonably upgrade to larger mods. I don't think there can be a reasonable argument, even from a situational standpoint, made to support the idea of the AAR and ASB being equal.

Shield

Advantages
Higher agility/speed
Faster active repair
passive recharge
Mid slots - more dps low slots
Modules use less PG

Whine Whine Whine Whine, Cry Cry Cry.

Anyway, I fly solo, armour tanked ships in combat all the time and can honestly say that armour tanking is in the best position it's been in since I can remember. The latest buff is excellent and very welcome. You can now fit a viable kiting armour setup, passive brick, or active tank and not be at the kind of disadvantage you would have been 6-12 months prior.

Shield/Armour should have different pro's and con's, otherwise there's no choice and choice is good.

The only thing I am waiting for is a limit on the number of ASBs, same as AAR. I don't understand why shield can have two fittted and armour only one.

The additional 15% breaks pretty much the entire Gallente repair line of ships.

The additional 15% is to compensate for the loss of resistance bonus form warfare links, with links applied it puts them in the same (or extremely close) position as they were before.

Legion-boosted Gallente active-repped ships were broken.

Given how different buffer fits scale compared to active-repped fits with encounter size, all active rep bonuses should just be removed from the game. Gallente hulls would still often use armor reps because it lets them maintain their speed, but when fights escalated beyond the size where local active reps are useful these hulls would switch to buffer rather than being completely trash.

Not everything in the game happens in a large fleet.

+1 though i do worry about two ships.

The hawk :
Will have an INSANE tank with faction reps/crystals/blue pill

The Incursus:
Already borderline OP with the reps, even without boosts. Nuets are a somewhat effective counter but a 15% bonus on top will make this little brick nearly unkillable to its t1 counterparts (unbonused)

Some ships will be stupidly overpowered with this changes.

The Incursus will destroy t1 frigate balance.

i fear this might be true the ship is already a pretty tough nut

Problem is that Gallente boats have accumulated flaws through the years as neglected hulls tend to do and with Devs sorting each problem but treating them separately (not stepping back to see whole picture) ... then you throw in a tangential change such as this ...

I have no problem with gallente being OP at close range brawling, minmatar being OP at edge-of-disruptor-range skirmishing, amarr being OP at mid-range fleet work and caldari being OP at slinging missiles from beyond the edge of lock range.

Nor I.

But if a person can only eek out a 50/50 with a 1k+ tank and 5-600 dps within scram/web range as is the case of the Diemos then that person has problems that the Devs cannot solve .. hell, I'd gladly take a 3-4:1 fight with a ship sporting those characteristics.

There is more than enough room to down/side-tweak before you get to the 50/50 or even 2:1 mark in when it comes to the rep bonus blaster brawlers. They need a weakness beyond neut-spam (can be weaker cap for instance), pure and simple.

Caveat: Reason why I do not want an OP active rep/blaster hull (besides the obvious) is that they will flood space and force everyone else to pack neuts just to compete .. and neuts affect my Amarr boats a lot more than the rep/blaster hulls as I do not have all the mids to mitigate their effect. Just so we are on the level

[quote=Veshta Yoshida]
I have no problem with gallente being OP at close range brawling, minmatar being OP at edge-of-disruptor-range skirmishing, amarr being OP at mid-range fleet work and caldari being OP at slinging missiles from beyond the edge of lock range.

Welll... first of all, on a pvp op I always ensure that there are neuts in the fleet....

Not everything is fleet and for every point of "weak" the active rep bonus may accrue in blobby weather it gains five points of "OP" as scale decreases. Otherwise a sensible thing, one can never have enough neuts in case of a logistics or Hail-Mary carrier appearing.

As for the rest .. you really want to balance HACs against ships 3 (4 if you include T3) sizes up the ladder? If so then all the other hulls will need significant changes

You have logis even in small fleets, all rep boni (bar maybe on frigs) are dumb and shouldnt be in game as they are.

That is strictly a PvP interpretation. The active rep bonuses are quite good on PvE boats.

PVE balance:
I used to think in terms of PVE for game balance, but these days I realise that where it really matters in in PVP. Most ship losses occur in PVP and this is where incremental improvements can prove pivotal. PVE for many is "just for the money" and they will just pick the best ship for the job without any emotional attachment. They treat it like a piece of farm machinery, if you will.

PVE players tend to get more emotionally attached to their PVE ships I think, since they see them not as workhorses, but as a mark of their progress in the game. That's certainly where I was a few years ago.

Local tank:
I use local tank in PVP small fleets of cruisers and battleships. However in order to do so successfully, you have to be *very* careful about your targets, and you need to take some ECM.

Everything has a counter (except the 100mn tengu... sigh)