Reping through swarms is not something anyone should be able to do without and active module but to put this into prespective for you a Shield HAV can rep through swarm fire, taking a hit, using a booster in-between volleys.

You however are highlighting a problem with Passive Armour Boosters as Rattati calls them in that they should not provide nearly so potent an effect when the modules pulses are constant and passive. If anything the effects of a Heavy Repair Unit should come in a similar form to the Shield Booster, and active module which pulses (however several times) to produce a prolific amount of eHP.

What you have to understand about armour and shield is that traditionally shield is depicted as a slow, constant, self repairing buffer that has module that aid that constant regeneration with spikes of eHP.

Armour is consequently depicted as static heavy buffer that has no passive repair abilities and relies on fitting specific modules to even attain any repairs at all.

Now I know CCP Rattati is apparently not a fan of 1-> 1's between EVE and Dust but I think in the case of vehicles this is a necessity.

Passive armour repairs need to die in a fire.

Consider however that prior to CCP Wolfman's Passive Armour Repairers the old Heavy Efficient Armour Repairer boosted 414 armour every 3 seconds for a total duration of 15 second and a total repair value of 2070.

Per second repair values are 414/3 = 138 (what we have now with armour repair skill V and without a native rep value).

I'm fine with the Maddy repair values but only if they are short duration.

Alongside Pokey's suggestion of a 35% Armour Hardener and a 40% Shield Hardener I believe this would do a great deal to balance HAV. Now Armour HAV pilots have to control their repair values as they won't see and instant boost , will have slightly less total eHP, and have no repairs at all past a 15 second window of engagement. More importantly its possible them to ambush armour HAV and deal a big chunk of damage before their reppers come online.

1.
You could lower the threshold yes, though my concerns about raising the resistance to drastically (essentially recreating the initial conditions that caused issues in the first place). And while you may be able to avoid the unbreakable shield regen, you start to run into issues where excessively high resistance values can quickly cause issues. I really think its going to be safest if we keep their resistance values close to one another, and buff shields in other ways.

I mean the whole tradeoff is that shields get regen without the need of a module. Obviously with the addition of native armor repair changes this a bit, but the fact remains that passive shield regen is significantly higher than natural armor repair. I think trading very fast regen with delay ultimately balances out against slow reliable regen.

Now the issue obviously lands in the fact that you can apply multiple repairers to increase passive repair, pushing your armor repair significantly higher than the natural shield recharge which CANNOT be increased. That needs to change and I've been telling Rattati this for a while. Shield rechargers so shield vehicles can do the same thing to increase their recharge at the expensive of modules just like armor can. This needs to happen.


2.
I was never a huge fan of the "flat bonus" between tiers of modules. Tiers of hulls should have tiericide like they do now, but modules should totally be tiered, and I agree that duration/cooldown is not enough to set them apart. At the very least in terms of hardeners, I think moving back to a small % difference between tiers would be appropriate. I also think Boosters should have a similar treatment.

You are totally correct about offering more eHP, and armor should have more eHP overall. Where should that spread be? Not really sure, but I don't feel comfortable with closing that gap with large differences with large differences in hardeners. I would rather we maintain small differences in hardeners (Shields with a bit more, around 5%) and if we have to, take a look at the HP modules themselves. However, I'd REALLY prefer to take it slow and make some smaller more obvious fixes first and see where things land and then re-evaluate from there.

Let me get your thoughts on something I was kicking around a bit a few weeks ago. Let's say an armor repairer reps at 100HP/s, which comes down to 6000HP/minute. What if you set a shield booster to regen 2000HP/cycle and allowed them to be used every 20 seconds, so they could regenerate 6000HP every minute. The overall regen potential is the same, but what it allows is the shield vehicle to access it at a moments notice, which can be particularly useful when you're fighting another vehicle where you may want to access a lot of HP regen in a short period of time. Obviously the numbers are simplified, but do you get what I'm getting at?

Also, thank you for being reasonable and reading what I had to say completely and clearly. I've grown so tired of the toxicity from others, so I appreciate your ability to have a conversation even if we don't see perfectly eye to eye. It is....refreshing to say the least.