I’m fitting a ship and wondering, is there value to having a ship stable at 60% as opposed to 30%? Would you be more resistant to cap warfare in some way? I always thought cap stability was binary, you have it or you dont. But I’m wondering if there is more to consider.
As far as Pvp is concerned, having more Cap stability is at a disadvantage as you are more often fighting in shorter intervals and theory crafting can be geared more towards “just enough cap” in that sense, where by using more mods for damage/survival are probably favoured and not trying to achieve 60% cap stability over 30%.
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Yes, in general cap stability is not of tremendous value in PvP, especially if there are trade-offs with other ship features. However, let us assume that all else remains equal on said ship. Is there ANY benefit to more cap stability?
The higher your capacitor stability is, the harder it is to break it with energy warfare for instance. If someone puts a neutralizer on your ship, it’s basically nothing more than an additional module with capacitor consumption. With just 30% stability, your recharge may break while at 60% the neutralizer has no effect.
As Cicada indicated, that usually comes at a cost. You need to dedicate lots of slots to capacitor modules as opposed to resistance, HP bonus, damage modifier mods or your own ewar modules. In that scenario, a capacitor booster with cap charges is better than 3 lows/mids dedicated to cap stability. In PVE, it depends on what you do. If you do not run missions or exploration against Blood Raiders, no high cap-stability is necessary.
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I guess in the situation where you can predict Nuet pressure like in a C4 Combat Anom, and you know that, after running the site time after time that you need extra cap stability then yes? I could be wrong.
What gave rise to this question was an issue regarding selection of abyssal mods. I was wondering if I should select a mod which provides more stability, but less of another trait, or vice-versa. Thank you for the info, it has helped a lot.
For PvP you (sort of) know what you will be engaging, so take an energy neut of the appropriate size, and apply this to your fit. Does the ‘extra’ cap stability let you stay cap stable once the neut is applied? What about two?
That’s the line of thought I’d go down when considering ‘extra’ cap stability (or cap stability at all for a PvP fit), it may let you get away with engaging an additional target (or not having to break off immediately when one shows up), or it may enable you to engage additional smaller targets… of course it may be of no additional benefit in either scenario 
such is Eve.
Regards,
Cypr3ss.
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I would argue yes. Extra cap is good so long as it doesn’t hamper over all effectiveness.
This has been an ongoing debate for ages.
Problem is many fail to understand that 1/2 modules fitted kill the use of others, but the fitting window in most cases still have most active and thus provide an incorrect CAP stability.
How many would have an AB or MWD running longer than 30seconds, or have those two or an MJD running while in siege/Bastian mode? These and other short run modules cause confusion for many when it comes to CAP stability.
Ideally you turn off every module and then turn on those you’re most like using at that time to figure out how stable your ship is.
I have ships that are -58% with everything running, but pure combat mode its +98% stable. Even have few in the hundreds stable in combat mode.
Key thing to remember is she stable when you need it to be, if you can turn 1-2 modules off to be stable with a good % you’ve done well.
Being stable running everything means your’ve sacrificed something to do so, or its a specific role designed fix.
As others have said, don’t rely on the fitting tool default view.
See the percentage as a cap buffer. as you would see a shield buffer. The delta (excess capacitor recharge rate) is also interesting, see it as a shield regen rate.
In practice, the buffer allows you to take incoming neut/nos cycles without being sucked dry (and have cap dependent modules shut down). The recharge rate tells you what constant neut pressure you will withstand, assuming you survive the initial hit.
Cap warfare is often very taxing on the attacker’s own cap. That means that a typical neuting attack will often begin by a big “alpha” cap hit and then, if you survive that phase, lower long term pressure.
The typical victims of a “cap alpha strike” are the T3C and T3Ds in many of their fits. (this can be mitigated by cap batteries such as the Thukker Cap battery which in addition to cap capacity provide resistance vs cap warfare).
basic examples (made up numbers for clarity)
ship is stable with 100 GJ remaining and has 13 regen per sec is hit by another ship neuting 120 GJ every 12 secs (so 10/sec)- chances are that it will be fully dry on the first cycle and will run into all sort of issues (at the very least, modules to reactivate manually). The fight may be lost on the neut alpha strike.
ship is stable with 140 GJ remaining and has 8 regen per sec. The fight will not be lost in the neut alpha strike and but has to be won quickly or will be lost on sustained cap pressure if it lasts.
a typical example here would be a very fast, cap stable, high DPS hecate being baited by a neuting ship. No cap buffer essentially means quick hecate death instead of hecate melting target.
of course, there are many other subtleties, such as the timing of the cycling, the effective range, the use of cap boosters, etc… as everywhere in Eve.
Thanks for the well reasoned response. “Alpha” cap strike is an interesting consideration and I’d need to look at the ships in my engagement profile to see what I might be facing in that regard. Pyfa has a graph to show cap level over time and you can apply neut pressure by adding a hostile ship to a bottom tab with the necessary mods active. I played with both versions of my ship and could see how much longer my cap would last with different fits under the same cap warfare effect. That was also very instructive.
Just going off the title.
I personally think that cap stability is great in ratting. where you are less focused on tactics and more focused on blowing ■■■■ up. PVP on the other hand i guess it depends. personally it helps to have replenishment. Using capacitor boosters always helps. but that uses charges.
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