The Joy of Remote Repairing
2009-10-29
In EVE, like most other MMOs, I play something of a healer. In EVE that involves (for me, at least) flying a specialised cruiser fitted with remote shield-restoring or armour-restoring modules, and following my friends and their battleships around waiting for someone to need shields or armour.
I qualified for a new ship the other day, bought one and took it out for the first time this evening. My other logistics cruiser restores shields, so I thought that having one that instead repairs armour would help me cover another base. Except it's just nowhere near as much fun.
Let's backtrack a little.
EVE ships have three kinds of hit-points. Except for a small chance of a little damage skipping a layer, you generally take away all the shield HP, then the armour HP, and finally the hull.
Each ship tries to resist or negate damage in a particular way, depending on its class and how you equip it. In a slightly unfortunate clash of terminology with other MMOs, the method and modules intended to defend against damage are called the ship's 'tank' (players also use 'tank' to refer to the ship in a fleet designated to take the damage, much like other games, except that the aggro mechanics in EVE aren't generally as complex and you don't get complete control over who gets to tank. And that's PvE, of course: in PvP the enemy will leave the strong defences until last and look for glass cannons and flimsy support craft).
Armour tanking and active shield tanking are similar: you want to harden (i.e. improve the damage resists for) one kind of HP and fit one or modules that spend capacitor to restore it. Optionally you can increase your maximum HP to survive damage spikes, but it's always a trade-off against something. Shields have a modest innate recharge rate, allowing a less common third kind, passive shield tanking, which hardens shields, extends shield HP (since recharge rate is proportional to size of shield) and/or improves the recharge rate.
[Other ships might try and be fast enough to avoid damage, 'speed tanking', or fit no tank at all and hope the rest of the fleet can protect them. They're not relevant to the story]
Anyway, because it was the logistics cruiser belonging to my character's race, I first learned and normally fly a shield-restoring ship. The other day, after some lengthy skill training, I bought and fitted an armour-repairing ship. And the problem is that the latter just isn't much fun to fly...
Don't get me wrong, if you're in a fleet full of armour tankers and the incoming damage is heavy (and you can somehow keep your paper-thin cruiser out of its way) an Oneiros could be invaluable. After all, armour tankers have improved their resists, making it point-for-point more valuable to fix their armour than their shields.
But everyone takes shield damage first. In my Basilisk I can heal the outermost hitpoints, which is damage I know someone is going to take. As soon as the fight starts someone takes some shield damage, I fire up a shield transporter or two (or five, in extreme cases) and it starts going away. If they're a shield tanker, fine: the shields would probably hold anyway but with my help people can take more risks. If they're an armour tanker the shield restoration is worth less, mathematically, but if you can feed them enough shield HP they won't be using their own tank at all: that's priceless.
The armour repairer is the opposite. If you can find an armour tanking under fire, that's good: you can give him some armour HP, take the strain off his own tank. It's not brilliant fun, but then nor is giving shield HP to a shield tanker: either way unless you're in a really tough battle you know they would be fine without you. (When you are in a really tough battle it's all just awesome either way. But my corporation currently doesn't run the insanely dangerous level 5 missions, leaving 6 or more of us rolling over content that I could clear on my own [albeit more slowly]).
Using an armour repairer on a shield tanker is just dull. Shield trumps armour, so rather than being in a position of power rendering moot your target's tank, you're sitting around waiting for someone to run out of shield and take some armour damage. I went through a whole mission without even activating a single repairer (after that I went back to the station and got the Basilisk out instead).
I'm pleased to have qualified for an Oneiros, in case we ever take armour tankers to the really hard content. But I don't plan to fly it again any time soon: the Basilisk is where the fun is.
I qualified for a new ship the other day, bought one and took it out for the first time this evening. My other logistics cruiser restores shields, so I thought that having one that instead repairs armour would help me cover another base. Except it's just nowhere near as much fun.
Let's backtrack a little.
EVE ships have three kinds of hit-points. Except for a small chance of a little damage skipping a layer, you generally take away all the shield HP, then the armour HP, and finally the hull.
Each ship tries to resist or negate damage in a particular way, depending on its class and how you equip it. In a slightly unfortunate clash of terminology with other MMOs, the method and modules intended to defend against damage are called the ship's 'tank' (players also use 'tank' to refer to the ship in a fleet designated to take the damage, much like other games, except that the aggro mechanics in EVE aren't generally as complex and you don't get complete control over who gets to tank. And that's PvE, of course: in PvP the enemy will leave the strong defences until last and look for glass cannons and flimsy support craft).
Armour tanking and active shield tanking are similar: you want to harden (i.e. improve the damage resists for) one kind of HP and fit one or modules that spend capacitor to restore it. Optionally you can increase your maximum HP to survive damage spikes, but it's always a trade-off against something. Shields have a modest innate recharge rate, allowing a less common third kind, passive shield tanking, which hardens shields, extends shield HP (since recharge rate is proportional to size of shield) and/or improves the recharge rate.
[Other ships might try and be fast enough to avoid damage, 'speed tanking', or fit no tank at all and hope the rest of the fleet can protect them. They're not relevant to the story]
Anyway, because it was the logistics cruiser belonging to my character's race, I first learned and normally fly a shield-restoring ship. The other day, after some lengthy skill training, I bought and fitted an armour-repairing ship. And the problem is that the latter just isn't much fun to fly...
Don't get me wrong, if you're in a fleet full of armour tankers and the incoming damage is heavy (and you can somehow keep your paper-thin cruiser out of its way) an Oneiros could be invaluable. After all, armour tankers have improved their resists, making it point-for-point more valuable to fix their armour than their shields.
But everyone takes shield damage first. In my Basilisk I can heal the outermost hitpoints, which is damage I know someone is going to take. As soon as the fight starts someone takes some shield damage, I fire up a shield transporter or two (or five, in extreme cases) and it starts going away. If they're a shield tanker, fine: the shields would probably hold anyway but with my help people can take more risks. If they're an armour tanker the shield restoration is worth less, mathematically, but if you can feed them enough shield HP they won't be using their own tank at all: that's priceless.
The armour repairer is the opposite. If you can find an armour tanking under fire, that's good: you can give him some armour HP, take the strain off his own tank. It's not brilliant fun, but then nor is giving shield HP to a shield tanker: either way unless you're in a really tough battle you know they would be fine without you. (When you are in a really tough battle it's all just awesome either way. But my corporation currently doesn't run the insanely dangerous level 5 missions, leaving 6 or more of us rolling over content that I could clear on my own [albeit more slowly]).
Using an armour repairer on a shield tanker is just dull. Shield trumps armour, so rather than being in a position of power rendering moot your target's tank, you're sitting around waiting for someone to run out of shield and take some armour damage. I went through a whole mission without even activating a single repairer (after that I went back to the station and got the Basilisk out instead).
I'm pleased to have qualified for an Oneiros, in case we ever take armour tankers to the really hard content. But I don't plan to fly it again any time soon: the Basilisk is where the fun is.
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