I've been trying to do a series of posts that more or less relate to the virtues of armor tanking, and logical setups that involve them and how they counter popular fits of the month. This isn't about weapon balance and it isn't about your opinion on the current shield vs. armor balance meta.

Today, I'd like you to know in even more detail about the efficiency of the armor tank. Now you can't really say that 1 CPU = 1 PG, but in order to compare modules it helps to combine fittings costs into aggregate costs, so you can judge relatively things like HP/fitting unit.

So for starters (@ max skills)(Fu= Fitting Units):

Complex Armor: 42 Fitting Units for 126.5 HP (3 HP/ Fu)
Complex Shields: 65 Fitting Units for 73.92 HP (1.1 HP/Fu)

(Even if you weighted CPU as a less valuable portion of fitting armor would clearly win here)

Also, when you want to look at regen armor wins in a lot of places. I compared the fitting costs of a variety of modules/equipment and their HP/s repair rates to find their efficiency for repairs:

Six Kin Triage Repair Tool (2 targets): 58 Fu @ 88 HP/s (1.51 HPs/Fu)
Core Focused Repair Tool: 70 Fu @ 105 HP/s (1.5 HPs/Fu)
Flux Repair Tool: 28 Fu @ 25 HP/s (.89 HPs/Fu)
Wiyrkomi Triage Nano: 70 Fu @ 70 HP/s (.71 HPs/Fu)
K17/D Nanohive: 20 Fu @ 20 HP/s (.27 HPs/Fu)
Complex Shield Recharger (on base repair rate of 30HP/s): 90 Fu @ +13HP/s (.14 HPs/Fu)
Complex Armor Repairer: 50 Fu @ 5.75 HP/s (.12 HPs/Fu)

So as you can see, remote repairs are 2x to 10x more fitting cost efficient than local repairs. Naturally the downside of remote repairs is that hives can be fluxed, and you aren't guaranteed to have that repair tool nearby. You should note, logis don't have to necessarily be the ones carrying a repair tool. If you look at the Flux Repair Tool above, it practically is worth 3 complex armor repairers for the price of 1/2 of one. It just can't be used on itself.

Freeing up lowslots and fitting costs allows you to fit a stronger slower armor tank which means more points for your repair team, or it means you could be a little more fast/or stealthy.

Examine the benefits for yourself to see what you think.

For more posts on armor related strategies, tactics, data and balance check out...

Nanohive Alchemy: Turning nanites into HP - How to make the best use of healing and regular nanohives.
Dancing the Scrambler Shuffle - Engaging the dancing shield tankers at long range with the scrambler rifle, while mitigating your speed issues.
Tracking Speed Primer: Why, unless you have the element of suprise, distance is your friend as a slow ArmorBro.
The Five Phases of Combat balance in Dust - Applies the concept of Wu Xing to identify 5 major styles of play that each have complimentary and countering styles that could apply to both individual and squad play.

This isn't about weapon balance and it isn't about your opinion on the current shield vs. armor balance meta.

Complex Armor: 42 Fitting Units for 126.5 HP (3 HP/ Fu)
Complex Shields: 65 Fitting Units for 73.92 HP (1.1 HP/Fu)

This only applies if they had no penalties and were of equal value in HP, as in 1 Shield HP > 1 Armor HP. So really the HP/Fu value of the complex armor is much lower, while the complex shields is much higher. Numerically it makes sense but not when you add in resistances, speed, vulnerability to damage due to speed, repairs etc. the values become distorted and takes much more complex calculations to see the value of each one in terms of fittings costs to HP.

I hope I didn't breach your