Friday Fit: Hugs Tinker

Reading EvE history, I've always been fascinated by the era
of the spider-tanked "Pantheon" carrier. What's a "spider
tank", some of the new players may ask? The basic idea is to
get a bunch of ships with good Remote Repairer and Remote
Capacitor Transfer (RCT) module bonuses and, rather than
having them act as support for an existing fleet, just let
them *be the fleet.* I want to be part of that, but (a) I
can't fly capital ships and (b) Pantheon carriers
really aren't a thing since a bunch of CCP changes to reduce
their overpowerededness in this role.

I will admit to working on what a spider-tanked Velator
fleet would look like. That's how much I want this.

Anyway, I got to thinking that Signal Cartel needs a
spider-tanked Hugsfleet™. Following that train of
thought down its dubious tracks, the obvious choice seemed
to be a logistic (logi) cruiser. Normally, subcapital logi
ships wouldn't make a good spider-tanked fleet, since it's
so hard to fit them for damage while still keeping their
repair abilities up. But *We Are Signal Cartel.* Festival
launchers require no fitting resources to speak of.

The next question was how much tank I could get out of
fleeted logi cruisers. The answer turned out to be
devastatingly small. Maybe I'm missing something, but it
sure looks like a good local tank will totally trump
anything that the remote reppers on a reasonable-sized fleet
of logi cruisers can do. A few hundred EHP (Effective Hit
Points, a measure of damage taking resists into account) per
ship per second is all I could get out of the spider. If you
could that from several ships onto one target it starts to
look like something, but dealing with target-switching and
multi-targeting was going to require a bigger fleet of logi
cruisers than I believed Signal Cartel could field. After
all, logi cruisers are expensive high-skill ships, and we'd
just be in them for the love.

--

While looking at some logi fits on
[O.smium](http://o.smium.org), though, I rediscovered a
well-known (but not to ignorant me) tanking style that just
might work\: the "Tinker Tank". The basic idea is simple:
give up on the remote repairers and concentrate on Remote
Capacitor Transfer (RCT) modules to power a partner's local
tank. The Tinker is a tanking style that has been and is
widely used in EvE tournament play.

(An aside for the unfamiliar: RCTs are "speshul". You can
transfer some of your capacitor to another ship, but *that
ship receives much more capacitor than you consume.* Thus,
if two ships with RCTs apply them to each other, they both
get a potentially very large capacitor bonus using nothing
but their high slots.)

The common plan is to use a hull with good local repair
(Armor Repairer or Shield Booster) bonuses and free up all
the capacitor generation needed to run the thing by relying
on another ship's RCTs. The RCTs need only high slots, and
the tank mounted can be fierce. A logi ship with large
RCT bonuses can work too, though.

Thus was born the Hugs Tinker Basilisk. I chose a local
Shield Booster active tank because it left the low slots
free for other needed fittings, and I needed the logi
cruiser RCT bonus that only the Basilisk and the Guardian
have. (I also tried some other shield tank options, but none
of them really worked out.)

The Hugs Tinker Basilisk turns out to be able to repair more
than 2100 EHP per second. Let me say that again. 2100
EHP/s. Oh, and please shoot it with railguns. 2900 EHP/s
against Antimatter.

The Hugs Tinker has a Mandatory Festival Launcher. It has an
Electronic Counter Measures (ECM, "jamming" opponents from
attaining target lock) module along with the usual ECM
drones, to help it avoid damage and get away when the hugs
are returned a bit too vigorously. It is *cap stable* in
fleets of two or more, and has a *spare RCT* for unforeseen
circumstances (e.g. application of Energy Neutralizers by
the target of affections).

The cost is pretty "reasonable" at 151M ISK of fittings on a
213M ISK hull. If price is no object, for 1B ISK total
(pinkie to corner of mouth) the tank can be blinged up
(Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Fields, Gist X-Type
EM Ward Field, Co-Processor II, Multispectral ECM II) to an
astounding 2900 EHP/s against uniform damage.

This feels like a good fit.

```
[Basilisk, Hugs Tinker]

Dread Guristas Co-Processor
Damage Control II

Pith X-Type X-Large Shield Booster
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Field II
Compulsive Scoped Multispectral ECM

Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Festival Launcher, Barium Firework

Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier II
Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier II


Hornet EC-300 x5
```

(A word about the Pith X-Type X-Large Shield Booster. At 67M
ISK this is a cheap module for what it is able to do. In my
opinion every shield booster fit for cruisers or larger
should consider using this.)

So what are the downsides? Many.

1. This is a high-skill super-tight fit. My engineering
   skills are pretty good, and yet this fit uses 99.31% of
   CPU and 99.58% of powergrid for me.

2. 364M ISK is still a lot of ISK for something that will
   almost certainly be blown up sooner or later.

3. There's no propulsion module (Afterburner or Micro Warp
   Drive) so the escape plan depends entirely on being able
   to jam the opponent with ECM and warp out. A
   jam-resistant tackler is going to just hold the victim
   until enough firepower is brought to bear.

4. A jamming ship (Falcon, Blackbird, etc) can stop the RCTs
   from working. This leaves 10s of cap and then the tank
   just vanishes. (The normal plan is to jam the enemy
   jammer first, but this isn't really Credo compliant.)

5. A Void Bomb, if somebody happened to have one handy,
   would completely empty the capacitor, draining the energy
   needed for the RCTs to operate. See 4.

6. This ship has only 14600 EHP of actual shields. A very
   powerful "alpha strike" could blow through them like wet
   paper, rendering the fast local repair rate as moot as
   some analogy involving mootness.

7. Finally, and importantly, the resists (against the four
   possible incoming damage types) aren't all that
   even. This ship handles "only" about 1500 EHP/s against
   EM damage and 1600 EHP/s against explosive.

Nonetheless, I'm eager to go Tinker Hug someone. If it's
possible within the limits of the Credo, a small idle
gatecamp gang without ECM might be an ideal objet d'amour.

But I'll need at least one partner...

--

*[Thanks to @Thera-Scanner for correcting my broken history
in an earlier draft.]*

--

OK, shred away! I'll be disappointed if someone doesn't find
a serious problem with or an easy improvement of this fit.