Brisc, buddy, I love the hell out of you, but you’re wrong. @CCP_Rise - you should also pay attention to this, because there’s a huge chunk of crap you’re not thinking of. But first, lemme just say one thing about the ‘too much capacitor’ bull.
When a Force Auxiliary enters a fight, they are usually doing so at 25% capacitor, because they just jumped in. If you’re going to nerf their cap stability, figure out some way to not beat the crap out of their cap right away.
Now, on to our example. First off? This is a bad example.
In this particular example, @Brisc_Rubal, you’re objecting to this fax tanking 6 million EHP over 20 minutes. This mino fit, absent any implants or command bursts, has 1.16M ehp. 643k of that is in the shields. So we can drop out the 516k of the armor and structure from the discussion, because it wasn’t repping that at all. That drops the damage tanked to the shields, which took 6,725,612-(174,291+342,039), or 6,209,282 raw hp of damage. Now let’s look at the resists.
Bouncers and Ogres. Bouncers do explosive damage… he’s at 81.89% resist there, and Ogres do Thermal, where he’s sitting at 77.7% resist. Congratulations in firing into 2 of his 3 solid resists. EM’s his ‘hole’ at 72.1% (as it is on most shield-tanked ships that aren’t T2 Minmatar). Hint: SHOOT HIM WITH EM.
Once we factor that in, and the fact that you guys were (based on the numbers in the killmail) shooting 78% explosive, 22% thermal (and the one bold Phoenix who shot him with the right damage type!), he’s looking at 756,068ehp in the shields. There’s also a friendly fleet on-grid, and Brack Region, even Brack Region…, is smart enough to use command bursts. I know this particular pilot definitely is smart enough to insist on them. So if we factor in properly-bonused boosts, he’s sitting at 1,028,356ehp in the shields before any implants.
This means that over 20 minutes, he repped 6.03x his shield EHP. Over 20 minutes.
Here:
[Osprey, Comparison]
Damage Control II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System IIAdaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Booster II
Medium Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 200
Medium Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 200
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield Booster
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield Booster
Medium Murky Compact Remote Shield BoosterMedium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
That’ll do the exact same thing, with the exact same <2m of cap stability.
Yes, that Minokawa only has 1m46s of capacitor if it’s running everything. You know what’s interesting, though? You’re shooting it, so it doesn’t have to run the incredibly cap-hungry remote shield boosters. Turn those off, and it’s 41m of capacitor. By the way, turn them off on the Osprey? It’s stable without either cap booster running.
The Minokawa is less stable than the Osprey. And the Osprey can receive remote cap transfers (this one isn’t), remote reps, and is still mobile. The Minokawa’s sitting in one place, unable to escape, unable to receive remote assistance.
This is a bad example.
Next, to reiterate: you say this took 20 minutes to kill. 6.7 million damage over 20 minutes is 5,600 dps. Being generous? It’s TWELVE Megathrons.
What the hell were those Machs doing? I know what they weren’t doing. They weren’t shooting EMP into that Mino’s resist hole. (if they were, it wouldn’t have shown their bouncers as the primary damage source).
So, to be clear: This is a bad example.
That doesn’t mean the overall thrust of the argument is flawed. A triple-ancillary local repping Force Auxiliary can be insane to try to break. BUT THIS EXAMPLE IS BAD. THIS IS THE 240 MILLION ISK TICK EXAMPLE. This example, when you actually do the math, is NOT one of the problem cases. This is a single local rep doing 1/10th the work it’s capable of. This thing CAN rep almost 2 dreads of incoming fire, 52k ehp. It didn’t have to.
This is not the example you want to be hanging your hat on.
As one of the most experienced logi pilots in the game, the issue with Force Auxiliaries is twofold:
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Remote Repair is overpowered. If you have enough, you only die if they can volley you off in a single shot. If you don’t have enough, nothing on God’s green Earth will keep you from losing, badly. No tactic, no brilliance, no nothing. Logistics is the singular point of failure in any large-scale combat.
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Capital ships are large-scale combat, whether you like it or not, whether it’s a large number of capitals or not. They have the EHP to be large-scale combat, period. This has been true since the moment Force Auxiliaries were introduced not because of the Force Auxiliary, but because of all of the new capital modules that went in at the same time. Triage carriers were never this individually unbalanced.
I respect the work that was done in trying to ‘fix’ Logistics (and for the love of GOD, can we call them something else? Logistics is moving shite around. These are tender ships, engineering ships, hell, call them Fleet Auxiliaries!), but up and down the size scale, it’s not fixed. The bigger the ship, the more obscene the logistics capabilities get because of the capacity for survivability of the hull class (S/M/L/XL). I strongly suspect that the glaring hole in the Logistics chain at ‘Large Hulls’ contributes to this: T1 battleships are supported by T2 cruisers, so those T2 cruisers have to be able to survive in T1 battleship fights.
Well, they don’t.
They don’t need to be able to survive. They need to be able to do their job and have a chance to survive. And T3Cs just make it worse. My Logistics Legion doesn’t need to be able to come in at 3x the tank of a battleship with 1/3rd the Sig Radius.
Overhaul the whole damned thing. PLEASE. Frigates to Faxes.
(Actually, the frigates are in a pretty good spot.)