I know this is going to fall on deaf ears but I’ll say it anyways.
That is an overly simplistic view,
It isn’t the tanking style itself that is important… is it the pros and cons each specific tanking style.
Shield tanking generally allows one to fit for better damage and speed at the cost of utility and raw EHP. It’s active tanking style is VERY capacitor intensive, but very fast.
Armor tanking generally allows one to fit for better utility and electronic warfare at the cost of damage and speed. It’s active tanking style is slower and easier to punch through, but has the potential to last longer.
Hull tanking has similar traits to armor tanking, with the added benefit of achieving massively higher EHP numbers relative to shield/armor tanking and being so niche that few suspect it (meaning that if you lock horns with a hull tanked ship, you won’t know it until you are committed and probably won’t be able to get away in time).
Yeah… they are all variations of of “absorb damage until you die”… but the devil is in the details and that alone can make or break certain engagements.
Or alternatively hull should really mean internal structure and not yet another layer of armor.
Once you start getting into hull, systems and modules should start breaking and/or degrading, with an increasing risk of catastrophic failure at any stage. That percentage of total destruction starting slight and increasing the deeper into hull you get until it’s a certainty (basically hull at zero). Infact some solid hits (or from certain weapon types?) should start getting through your armor and damaging your hull once your armor gets below a certain point say 25% or so, and with it that a small chance of breaking something.
We have heat damage system already, wouldn’t require much of a change. I suppose perhaps some mechanics to degrade certain systems (top speed, targeting, shield recharging etc) to give it a bit more flavor.
For example have a look at how things start getting compromised and broken in Everspace once your shields are gone and you start taking a lot of damage.
On the contrary, having only two layers of variable resistances is making things more predictable. Yes, I believe that the lack of a layer of resistances is what actually breaks this for more than one reason, no matter if they’re being changed specifically for these ships … or not.
There’s a whole layer of HP and resistances missing, meaning that these ships would need to be buffed HPwise accordingly, which would increase their mass significantly due to the fact that a missing layer of HP + reistances needs to be compensated for.
So let’s assume that’s not so much of an issue.
You end up with HP + resistances in shield and HP + evenly spread resistances in Hull, because that’s how Hull works. Unless they change hull resistances specifically for those ships, which I doubt will yield any satisfying solutions, because they’d have to be balanced against the resistances of the first layer of HP.
Assuming shield resistances stay the same, there’s a hole in EM. That’s a slot lost to fix that and not fixing it isn’t really an option. Alternatively CCP spreads resistances out evenly, like in Hull, turning it into a perfect omnitank.
Only the SocT line of ships has a perfect omnitank, iirc.
One layer of variable restistances isn’t enough.
That’s why there are two.
From how I understand it, there’s a reason why there’s two and not just one layer of variable resistances. One is simply too simple. Makes it too predictable to figure out the weakspots due to a rather limited way of possible fittings. There is no “unlimited amount of possibilities”. In fact, the amount of viable fittings on such ships would be even lower either because resistances need to be fitted, or because the ship is going to be slow and heavy.
Even if the base mass doesn’t increase, ships with Shield/Hull only will be bad speedtankers due to high signature radius and potentially additional HullTank. Ships with Armor/Hull will also be bad speedtankers due to the sheer weight added thanks to Armor and or Hull modules.
So, basically, these ships would be destined to be brawlers.
That’s why, as far as I can see, this not actually dumb idea isn’t going to happen.
When people shoot ships they expect to be fitted in certain ways (which is the norm), then noticing something that’s different from the usual will definitely cause a reaction. She’s not wrong at all about what she’s saying, but these ships are not going to provide what she thinks they’ll provide.