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So far I've been largely unimpressed with armor tanking. I'm either doing it in the wrong ship (Rifter) or doing it the wrong way. So I'd like to hear from you all.

I've got a NOS and a repper. The latter eats more than the former can provide though. Is this the way it is supposed to be, where the NOS is just defraying some of the capacitor cost of the repper? If so, then it doesn't seem worth it really, like I could use that fourth HI slot for more damage output or something.

Thoughts?

Get yourself into a tech II armor repairer. Slap on a 100-200mm piece of armor. Also try to patch what your resists are lowest against/depending on what you are fighting.

Post your setup and I'm sure people (myself included) will be happy to critique.

The NOS can't make up for the drain of the repper, so you need some kind of cap power relay or cap recharger for any serious tanking. On top of that I found the Rifter a tad cap starved to start with, but I guess it's bearable if you are using projectile weapons.

In my PvE Punishers I fit:

2xMed Pulse Lasers, 1xDual Light Pulse Laser, 1 NOS
AB, Cap Recharger
Small Armor Repairer II, 3xCap Relay

All the recharge gear it's a bit on the excessive side, you can get rid of 1 of the relays or the recharger for something else and everything still mostly works. This setup allows me to have the guns, AB and repper going on basically forever, with cap sitting at about 40%.

I don't know about PvP, as most encounters so far have been against big ships that blew me out of space in 5 seconds, repper or not.

Yes if your running an active tank you're going to need more than a Nos

You could try cap batteries and/or cap rechargers in the mids or cap power relays in the lows (levelling the energy skills may help a little)

Or you could move to a hardened active tank, and swap the repper for a/some active hardeners (those energised thingies)

Alternatively you could move to a passive tank, use the passive hardeners (the nano one for e.g.) and the biggest plate you can fit - this might be the preferred option if your weapons fit is cap hungry

It also depends if its a PvP or PvE fit you are working on.....

I got jumped in my passive Osprey by a Vexor over the weekend, my huge passive tank took him a little by surprise (typically he Nos'd me to try and stop my shield boosting..... :-D) and I was actually out tanking him (and thus winning the fight) until he managed to target jam me at which point, unfortunately, my drones couldnt finish him off quick enough (FoF missiles next  :x)

Ok, I think I get it :) CPRs sounds like and a recharger. I'll try that. Is it even worth having the NOS up if I can fit one recharger in a mid slot and one or two in low slots? If not, my setup would look something like this:

High
(3) 150mm ACs
(1) Makleth Rocket

Mid
(1) Recharger
(1) Webber
(1) Named AB (or MWD, though man is that a cap hog too!)

Low
(1) 200mm Reinforced Nanofiber Plate
(1) Armor Repper (replaces Reactor Control Unit)
(1) Cap Relay

My weapons don't really feel cap hungry as it were, but I've not really tried the hardeners too much. I tried active hardeners at one point, but I kept forgetting to turn them on :)

You need an armor repair in the low slot.   Doesn't take very many skills to equip one.  If you can afford it, get rolled tugensten plating.  Other than that, it's a matter of turning it on and turning it off before it sucks your cap dry.

I'm totally stupid. I meant repper and not the RCU. Going to edit.

'Armor Tanking' is using your armor repairer to repair damage faster than the other guy can dish it out.  Right now, you're just taking the damage.

Try using the Small Armor Repair II; its a huge boost over the normal one, has fairly low reqs, and isn't that expensive.  

Edit:  Ooh, that makes more sense.  Still, use a T2 version. 

I forgot how much armor HP that plate gives, but you might want to look into armor hardeners. Try to replace that plate with a hardener against the main damage type the NPC dishes out.

Good idea. One thing I haven't yet done is have different equipments for different encounters.

After checking the Rifter's and 200m plate's stats, you might want to keep that plate. Depending how fast your cap drains*, you might want to replace the cap relay with the hardener, so you can run it and keep the plate. Not sure about your current skillset, but it's of advantage to have at least Energy Management IV for increased cap, gives you +5% cap per level. Hull Upgrades is also handy, gives you +5% armor hitpoints per level.

* = Depending on the difficulty of the spawn you face, you will never get your cap empty, so sometimes that cap relay or recharger is useless.

I'm armor tanking Level 2 missions in a rifter. Low slots are plate, cap relay, and repper. I had a lot of trouble before adding the cap relay, but that really pushed it over the edge. I can't tank infinitely, but I can take out everything the NPC world has thrown at me so far. I haven't tried the NOS, I'm just using rockets.

Also check your skills and make sure you aren't sitting on any useful skills at level 1. I found quite a few that at some point in the past I trained to level 1 for this or that gadget that I could bring up to 3 in a few hours. Given the 2-4% that are usually on each skill I was dubious, but a few percent shield here, a few percent power here, enough to mount that next step up plate, and so on can really make a difference.

Yeah, Num asked what I was going to ask, but I'll mention specific skills.

In Engineering: Energy Management (Cap. Capacity.) & Energy Systems Operation (Cap. Recharge)
In Mechanics: Rep. Systems. 

I had a really hard time until I got Rep systems up to 3.. that 15% is a LOT of cap savings.

And caught my own comment, I looked at my character and my energy management was still sitting at 1. By the time I get home from work, I'll have 10% improvement.

Num,
are you playing a new character or an old one? Are you in the corp? If not, why not??  :-D

I've been kicking around off and on for a few years, mostly off. 4m SP, but a lot less real experience than that sounds like and most of it is mining, transport, and industry. I'm in NBSI Academy right now, kicking around Verge. I was looking for something structured to learn pvp.

Your welcome to come play with us (obviously), we try to have pvp practices now and again and various pirate corps shoot at us when we dont play with our heads on a swivel.

At least join channel f13 if you haven't been doing so already.

Please come visit us in S-U, so we can kill you like your other NBSIA buddies. :V

And your mentors for that matter.

Done. (My first fleet action actually.)

Yeah, it was some nice action. However your parent corp should hold by their word and actually try handling us alone. Until now, they've always brought allies.

I'm completely insulated from the politics. I just had never done PVP and they were recruiting for training. So far I'm learning a ludicrous amount. I wish I'd done my learning before clones cost me half a million though.

The best PVP is in fleet actions like yesterday. That's about it. Anything less than a fleet battle is usually just the gang with more DPS pushing or camping the gang with less of it.

Anyway, it was fun yesterday. We caused quite some damage onto you, though we wasted hundreds of frigs, that is if you exclude the first wave that included some battleships. Sadly, some few of our membership are getting cocky and putting expensive ships (cruisers and upwards) on the line when a huge threat comes down. And that just out of spite because somehow they feel that jihading frigs is below their dignity.

Wait, are you CONiN, 206, or GF?

Goonfleet.

One starts to wonder if you've killed me. (Goddess knows, everyone else has)

I doubt it. I popped only a single NBSI Academy player, he was called Kelador Stormwolf. The time I was online, before the Axis of Faggotry came for a visit, I spent most of the time ratting or hunting those SUPRM clowns.

You're in a corp with fnln  :lol:

Since before Goonfleet already.