Tuesday Friday Fit: Hugs Spider

Sorry, @Anchovy-Aideron and @Thera-Scanner: I just couldn't
wait to kick off the return of Fitting Friday, so I started
early. Hope you won't be mad at me.

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Reading EvE history, I've always been fascinated by the era
of the spider-tanked 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) spider-tanked 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
logistic cruisers. 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.

So 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 tank. A few hundred EHP per ship per
second, is all. If you could keep that from several ships on
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 noticed that a logi
ship can mount a wicked local tank.  It looked like maybe
there was another way! What if I gave up on the remote
reppers and concentrated on the RCTs?  I could build an
impressive tank indeed if capacitor use was no longer an
issue.

(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.)

Thus was born the Hugs Spider Basilisk. I chose a local
shield active tank (using Shield Booster modules to repair
many hitpoints per second locally) because it left the low
slots free for other needed fittings, and I needed the RCT
bonus that only two of the logistics carriers have. The
Basilisk fit the bill. (I also tried some other shield tank
options, but none of them really worked out.)

The Hugs Spider Basilisk turns out to be able to repair more
than 2100 Effective Hit Points (EHP, a measure of damage
repair including avoiding damage via resistances) per
second. Let me say that again. 2100 EHP/s. Oh, and please
shoot it with railguns. 2900 EHP/s against Antimatter.

The Hugs Spider 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 Spider]

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 ridiculously cheap module for what it is able
to do. Honestly, every shield booster fit for cruisers or
larger should be using this.)

So what are the downsides? First, 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. Second, 364M ISK is still a lot of ISK for
something that will almost certainly be welped sooner rather
than later. Third, 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. Third, a jamming ship
(Falcon, Blackbird, etc) can stop the RCTs from
working. This leaves 10s of cap and then the tank just
vanishes. Fourth, 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. 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 Spider 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...

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