armor-plate
Latest
EVE Evolved: Retribution 1.1 and armour tanking
While MMO characters typically fall into specialised tank, healer, and damage-dealing roles, most ships in EVE Online are a combination of all three. Fitting a ship for PvP is a careful balancing act between survivability and damage, as it doesn't matter how much damage you can deal if you don't stay alive long enough to apply it. Active tanking setups that focus on repairing damage have unfortunately seen very limited use in PvP, being effective only in solo fights and very small-scale gang warfare. In most fights, a passive buffer tank that just maximises effective hitpoints will last longer than any active setup. The Inferno expansion helped to solve this problem with its new Ancillary Shield Boosters that consume cap booster charges for a huge burst of shield hitpoints. Tuesday's Retribution 1.1 patch now aims to level the playing field for armour users with the introduction of new Ancillary Armor Repairers and a series of balance changes to armour plates, rigs, and standard repairers. The patch should hopefully give gank battlecruisers and tech 2 cruisers the speed they need to compete in PvP and may even make some interesting active armour tanking setups viable. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the role of tanking in PvP today and the tanking changes coming in Tuesday's Retribution 1.1 patch.
US Army developing body armor to protect against 'X-threats'
This one's unsurprisingly been in the works for a little while now, but it looks like the US Army is getting a bit closer to actually deploying a new type of body armor that it hopes will protect soldiers against both known threats and so-called "X-threats." While no one's saying exactly what those threats might be, the key to guarding against them, it seems, is an "advanced generation" of X-Sapi armor plating, which is apparently built from the same materials as current E-Sapi plates but built differently for "additional capabilities." That armor has been the subject of some criticism, however, since it actually adds some additional weight to the soldier's already heavy load, but Lt. Col. Jon Rickey of the Army's Soldier Protective Equipment program says there's still plenty of room for improvement in that respect. It's also, of course, still looking at plenty of other alternatives, including BAE's Ultra Lightweight Warrior program, which promises to cut the weight of helmets, vests and other equipment by twenty to thirty percent.
