Ser Chard wrote:If my caldari assault loses armor, I won't get that back unless I stumble across a repair tool.
Gallente, unless they for some reason forego reppers, will always reach full health again.
That's a huge advantage. Actually... I may try fitting a repper. Many times I die when having my meager armor at 100 instead of at 30 may have saved me. Every time you end an encounter at 50 armor, know that you will not survive another encounter identical to that.
That said, I think armor plate speed reduction should be reduced slightly (2/3 of what it is now?) And reppers boosted by about 1 or 2 HP / second.
Just looking at stats I'd guess that they're balanced when you can fit good reppers (at least 15 / second) but are weak at basic and questionable at advanced until you skill up.
You're able to fit a basic/militia repairer and that will solve that problem instantly.
The problem is that at the higher levels, where you get about 12.5 HP/s if you have a decent buffer, shield regen is over twice as fast.
Also, the Caldari Logistics automatically self-repairs armour.
I agree with boosting the armour repairers, and you're quite right in saying that they're weak (an questionable) at the lower levels. Despite getting 300 or so armour (and notably shield suits at the same tier can break 400) it takes upwards of two minutes to repair that with the basic or enhanced repairers.
At the high end, it's better, but they're still outpaced and it takes a while.
Let's take an example.
You have an armour suit with two basic plates and a complex repairer. You have 340 armour HP, being repaired at 5 HP/s.
This will take 68 seconds, over a minute, to recharge. You are also slowed down by about 6%.
Alternatively, you could have a shield suit. With three extenders, you get 408 shield HP. You are not slowed down. You have a small delay before recharge, about 4 seconds, but you recharge at 25 HP/s. With the shield delay added on, this takes 20 seconds to recharge.
The armour suit in this example has less HP, is slower, and regenerates slower, for the small advantage of having 'constant repair'. In the time it takes for shields to start regenerating, that's worth a mere 20 HP.