Confused with Fitting tool - Tengu vs Drake

[Brititos]

I'm back to the game after nearly 8 years. I remember doing nullsec sites in my ratting tengu so brought the ship back from where I left it in nullsec and started playing with fits. I need your help folks to understand something.

Here are fits,

Drake that I used for L3 missions recently

Spoiler

[Drake]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Thermal Dissipation Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Shield Hardener II
EM Ward Amplifier II

Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Hobgoblin II x5

Scourge Fury Heavy Missile x241

and here is Tengu

Spoiler

[Tengu]
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Missile Guidance Enhancer II

Adaptive Invulnerability Shield Hardener II
Pithum B-Type Medium Shield Booster
Pith X-Type Anti-Explosive Shield Hardener
Pith X-Type Anti-Kinetic Shield Hardener
Pith X-Type Anti-Thermal Shield Hardener
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner

Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters II
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II

Tengu Core - Augmented Graviton Reactor
Tengu Defensive - Amplification Node
Tengu Offensive - Accelerated Ejection Bay
Tengu Propulsion - Chassis Optimization

Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile x360

What I don't get really are numbers, especially around shields. Here is the summary according to the fitting tool:

• EHP - Tengu: 23,388 | Drake: 51,284
• Shields - Tengu: 3,875 hp | Drake: 13,365 hp
• Shields recharge time - Tengu: 1050s | Drake: 302s
• EM resist - Tengu: 50% | Drake: 59%
• Thermal resist - Tengu: 85% | Drake: 67%
• Kinetic resist - Tengu: 84% | Drake: 65%
• Explosive resist - Tengu: 82% | Drake: 71%
• Passive recharge - Tengu: 9 hp/s | Drake: 110 hp/s
• Boost rate - Tengu: 90.5 hp/s | Drake: 0
• DPS - Tengu: 529.8 | Drake: 430.9
• Alpha - Tengu: 1,418 | Drake: 2,484

Now, I understand that I may have some subsystems skills not perfect, level 3 and 4 but so big difference? How come Drake seems to be twice as tanky as 10 times more expensive ship.

What I'm missing?

[Kyle Hargrove]

Ciao Biritos!

You're definitely on the right track, but missing a bit of context - not a problem!

Let's assume skills at All V for the sake of simplicity and compare two things: tank and damage.

The Drake is a passive recharge fit - to understand how much it can tank you should look at its passive shield recharge rate. In the case of your fit, peak recharge is 328 EHP/s vs omni. Mind you this is _peak_ recharge, so that is the _absolute most_ you can tank, because shield recharge rate is not uniform! The buffer helps a bit to have some leeway, but the moment you get more than 328 DPS, your clock ticks quite fast.

The Tengu is a hardeners + active repair fit - it tanks 383 HP/s vs omni. Should you be in an emergency, though, you can also overheat various modules, and oomph the tank up to 674 EHP/s. You shouldn't count on that, but just trying to tell you that there is that option.

In evaluating tank in this case, however, a key point is to look at velocity and sig radius: the Drake moves at 425 m/s with 389 sig radius; the Tengu moves at 587 m/s with 189 sig radius. As PvE gets higher in level, the DPS increases, but also NPC ships tend to become bigger, and thus apply better to bigger, slower targets. Yes, the raw numbers don't seem much higher on the Tengu, but if you keep moving (and you should), you are going to get far less damage than the Drake because of your smaller size and faster speed. This is the so-called "signature tank" or "sig tank".

Then, moving to damage. To get a fair comparison, you can look at it in two ways: either you compare identical weapon systems, or you try to understand why the weapon systems on the two ships are different.

Heavy Missiles (HMLs) are the long-range weapon systems for Caldari medium, while Heavy Assault Missiles (HAMs) are the short-range weapon. As with all other weapon systems, long-range weapons do less damage and tend to have worse damage application, while short-range weapons do more damage and tend to apply better.

On the Drake, you get 377 DPS using CN Scourge (I assume Scourge because the Drake only gets a damage bonus for kinetic missiles, sadly... This is the so-called "kinetic lock"). CN Inferno gets 251, by comparison. If you were to put HAMs on the Drake, you'd have 475 on CN Scourge and 317 on CN Inferno. The range on the HAMs though is very low (25 km at max skills), and since you're so slow they're not really an option.

On the Tengu, you should definitely put T2 launchers. Flying a T3 without T2 weapons is quite criminal, IMO! Assuming T2 HAMs, you get 754 DPS on CN Scourge and 603 on CN Inferno. The difference is less, because the Tengu's sub has two missile damage bonuses, the larger of which is not kinetic-locked (because it's RoF). The Tengu also has much better range on HAMs, at 40km, which paired with a better speed make it so you don't need to fit HMLs, which anyway would do 598 DPS on Scourge and 479 DPS on all the rest. HAMs also have better damage application, so they are the weapons of choice on the Tengu.

The Tengu therefore becomes 2-3x as effectie as the Drake (still assuming perfect skills) for, as you said, 10x the price (and the risk of SP loss). These numbers are, all in all, quite in line with many other things you will find in EVE - it's a game of heavy diminishing returns!

Let me know if this made sense and you have further questions!

Ciao,
Kyle

[Brititos]

Thanks Kyle.

I aware of all DPS things but the tank is the main source of confusion.

I didn't take the sig radius and speed into account, foolishly assuming that both will be comparable as battlecruisers.

If you don't mind, let's dig deeper

Okay, Drake: 13,365 shields with 302 seconds recharge rate so 13,365/302 = 44.25 average recharge rate. Peak then will be 44.25 x 2.5 = 110.63 which is what the fitting tool says. So far so good so I'm going to assume that the Tengu 9 hp/s is also peak passive.

What about the active shields then. Essentially how 110 passive compares to 90 passive. My understanding is that:
1. Passive will be 110 when shields are down to around 25%. The further up the less recharge. Makes sense.
2. Active can be applied at any time and be flat 90 all the time (assuming no overheating).

How do they compare though? If I get steady 100 hp/s damage coming, my Drake will drop shields probably to around 30% and it will hold there. In the same time, in Tengu, I will be able to add 90 from the active tank which means shields will be steadily going down starting with 10 per second. As they get to 25% the passive will reach its peak at 9 hp/s which means there will be still 1hp bleed that will eventually take my shields down.

Am I correct so far?

Now, the question I'm curious is what will be effective damage on both ships when included resistance and sig + speed. I remember there used to be some tool that was simulating it but that was almost a decade ago. Is it still hanging out there somewhere?

[Kyle Hargrove]

Hmmm... You're definitely in the right direction, but still a couple things to look at.

First, the tool: what you're looking for is PyFa. What you probably refer to is EFT, and it's long dead.

The main source of your confusion I guess is the fact that you are comparing raw HP/s and not accounting for resists. Incoming/outgoing damage including resists is the so-called "effective HP" - you can find more info here.

Now I'll look at each ship individually.

On the Drake, your maths is right: the peak recharge is 110 HP/s which, accounting resists and assuming uniform incoming damage, gets to 328 EHP/s (do you need me to break down the maths to get this number? let me know). The regen profile is also what you are describing: you initially regenerate less than the max 110 HP/s, and after 25% the regen rate becomes much lower. Refer to this graph for details. Because of this, if you get over 110 HP/s in incoming damage when you are at 25% shields, you will start breaking fast.

For the Tengu, I suggest you completely ignore the passive recharge, because it's really negligible. As you correctly said, the Tengu boosts 97 HP/s, but, accounting for resists and assuming uniform damage, it's boosting 383 EHP/s. So if you wanted to break the Tengu's tank, assuming it doesn't overheat, you just need to apply at least 98 HP/s in damage, or 384 EHP/s. Now, if you want to maximise the regen you get from passive recharge (that'd be kinda silly tho, since it's so minor), you would probably start boosting once you are at around 30% shield HP. The shield booster gives you some 8% shield per cycle, so that would keep you in the 30-40% region, which has very good shield regen.

The main point you're missing in your previous calculation is that you're assuming that dealing 100 HP/s to the Drake is the same as dealing 100 HP/s to the Tengu. Even ignoring application, this is not the case, because the Tengu as higher resists. So you need a higher outgoing damage to deal the same 100 HP/s incoming damage to the Tengu.

If you want to start looking at application, then you need PyFa. Make a simple fit for the attacking ship, then drag it in the "projected" tab in the lower part of the window of the Drake/Tengu, and hit CTRL-G, then start playing with graphs.

Let me know!
K.