Honeycombing: Not Just For Bees

Yesterday's quick post on the effectiveness of the new Auxiliary Armour Repairers had commenters asking about the changes to plates and how they play out.

I'm less concerned with the 20% reduction in base mass penalty of the undersized plates (50, 200 and 800mm plates) and more interested in what the new skill Armour Honeycombing can do for a ship(1).

Our first test case will be a Tristan Frigate. With my skills as a base we have the following stats at Armour Honeycombing level 0:

Base Speed: 388 m/s, align 3.56 s
+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.77 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 883 m/s, align 6.38 s

Armour Honeycombing 1

+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.71 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 887 m/s, align 6.32 s


Armour Honeycombing 2

+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.65 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 892 m/s, align 6.26 s


Armour Honeycombing 3

+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.59 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 897 m/s, align 6.20 s


Armour Honeycombing 4

+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.53 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 902 m/s, align 6.14 s


Armour Honeycombing 5

+ 400mm Steel Plates II: align 4.47 s
+ 1MN Afterburner II: 907 m/s, align 6.08 s

As you can see, the afterburner Tristan gains approximately 25 m/s with this skill trained to level V. Not huge but worth noting. How do we fare with a 1MN Microwarpdrive II?

Armour Honeycombing level 0: 2221 m/s






Armour Honeycombing level 5: 2312 m/s

Let's move up to cruisers, specifically a Thorax.

Base speed: 300 m/s, 5.17 m/s
+ 1600mm Steel Plates II: align 6.89 m/s
+ 10MN Microwarpdrive II: 1704 m/s, align 9.18 s

(We'll skip the mid levels and go right to the top)

Armour Honeycombing 5

+ 1600mm Steel Plates II: align 6.89 m/s
+ 10MN Microwarpdrive II: 1773 m/s, align 8.75s

As you can see, the difference is not excessive (~70m/s more top speed and about half a sec less align time) but there is an argument to made that every little bit helps.


1 - there is a discussion to be had on whether adding new skills like this is a good thing or not vis-a-vis new players versus veterans, but I'm not going to go into it for now. This is merely a post about the utility of the skill.