I asked about this on Reddit, and nobody had an answer. However, no flames either. So I’ll ask here. Why is there no ship with bonuses for remote hull repair? Would it be OP somehow?
Brutixes are a popular choice for hull-tanks. The Hecate is even given bonuses for it. Point of fact, it seems a viable choice on many Gallente hulls. Remote hull repairers are a thing, but it seems they’ve never been given any love. Hull-tanked ships (in my experience) seem to mostly focus around hit-and-run brawls, but could be opened up for wider fleet use with a ship that could make efficient use in doling out remote hull reps. Maybe it could be a thing for the Navitas/Thalia/Exequror/Oneiros?
This is a question, not a suggestion (yet). I, like many, have ideas about the game; however it seems that more often than not one person’s “improvement” would be another’s detriment. Let’s see what I may have missed…
Being unable to rep hull during fights is the thing that makes it distinct from the other two levels of tank. If the gameplay for it is just like armor, might as well armor tank. Also, from a lore perspective, “Slap on a new plate here” is a lot less complicated than “Build a new galley out of this wreckage.” So I wouldn’t have much love for better hull reps.
We do already have hull extenders… that’s reinforced bulkheads… and a hull invuln, in the form of the DCU. Might be fun to have damage-specific hardeners for hull, call 'em things like “Anti-Spall Padding.”
This makes sense. And I get that hull tanking is used to free up low slots for extra damage mods with the idea that “I can out-punch the other guy before dying… barely” - which can be a fun card to play against an opponent. I wouldn’t want to upset that tactic.
Perhaps a middle ground might be to rework remote hull reps to be similar to Entropic Disintegrators - just to make it different and allow different strategies. Shield reps land at the beginning of the rep cycle. Armor reps land at the end of the rep cycle. Hull reps land steadily, but slowly at first, ramping up to a maximum potential if uninterrupted. This would be in keeping with lore as it is more difficult and time consuming to frame up damaged girders than it is to weld down deck plates. They could still be as ridiculously short ranged as they already are, forcing the logi to be in the mix with the brawlers; and nearly as cap-hungry, meaning a pilot has to make quick/difficult decisions regarding capacitor use/fitting and being very vulnerable to capacitor warfare all the while.
It’s just an idea. And perhaps not the best one ever.
If they boosted hull reps like youre suggesting it would lead to dual tanked ships. Throw some armor on, throw some hull on. Now you have an active armor tank with good resists and a bulk head with DCU and then some making the hull resisits 75%+. It would be a little OP because if your repper couldnt keep up your hull would go a lot further before popping.
As far as Ive seen the hull reppers and hull logi is for a one time fee of buying them for free reps laters. Just need a bit of time and a refit. Possibly dock up to recharge the cap because you got out by the skin of your teeth. This is pre-tethering days of course.
The Exequror, Oneiros, scythe, scimitar and fax machines have a drone repair bonus. But I suggest you use those for after action repair before you can get back to your spam-a-del.
Most ideas are bad ideas… recognizing that is one of the first steps in being smart.
This idea… I’ve always been on the bandwagon of hull reps being fine where they are… Hull tank has always had the highest EHP potential. I’ve even used hull buffer tank reliably in lvl 4 missions. However, adding a spool up to hullRR might not only be workable, but interesting. The spool time and max reps would be effective balance levers to make sure it’s not OP, but still has the opportunity to be useful. The mixed-tanks concern I think is overblown for the same reasons you don’t mix armor/shield tanks successfully. Really, the big advantage of spool up hullRR would be recovery time between fights, which I kinda feel would be more positive than anything.
I understand your point here, and I don’t mean to slam what you’re saying. Balance is a difficult line to walk. However, isn’t this exactly what an assault DCU does? Temporarily boosting your hull tank to allow local reps to catch up?
Hull diferentiates from Armor and Shield on the following:
-you can get a huge buffer out of it due to Bulkheads and Transverse rigs
-you get consistent omniresists from the Damage Control module
-no speed or signature radius penalty from fitting hull mods
-mids are free for something else instead of focusing on capacitor compensation
however, this system doesnt come without limitations:
you loose cargo capacity which means you cannot carry as much ammunition as Armor or Shield focused ships
Hull Repairers have long activation cycles and dont rep as much which means you cannot properly use them for combat like Armor Repairers or Shield Boosters. they are more for making local reps after the battle finishes.
Hull upgrades occupy a lowslot and thus certain hulls may not be as adept at using Hull due to lack of lows.
Remote Hull repairers have the same limitations as the local version, in fact, i dont think there’s any logi that provides bonuses for Remote Hull Repairers so that is relegated for an out of combat situation
the system is basically heavily focused on a passive doctrine. repairers would be required to be looked at but any buff may make hull tanking quite broken because the modules are distributed between mids and lows so people could both use bulkheads and carry an oversized hull repairer or ■■■■ like that.
I would like to see a Hull-repairing Logi, even as a limited issue AT ship - I mean it’s not like the team designing AT ships isn’t running out of ideas.
Hull tanking was supposed to be the field of Gallente ships. It’s why you see most if them havung more structure HP then the other racial classes.
The issue is unlike armour and shield, most hull resistances are flat and a single DCU gets you up into the high 60s or mid 70s in percentage, as mentioned before it frees up low slots.
Giving hull reps the same bonuses takes away the element of choice if they don’t change how resists work, as you’ll just dual tank everything for armour/hull with hull logi, using the armour as your initial buffer. This is a vastly more superior method then trying a shield/armour buffer setup for fleets since all you need are a DCU and a single hull extender with your armour or shield package, combined with rigs, compared to using most/all of your mids and most of your lows.
It’d need a drastic change across multiple ship lines to change hull tanking before we can talk about hull repping. Oh and the assault dcu doesn’t just buff hull resists, it buffs all of them to help you catch HACs and AFs while they’re in their primary buffer type still.