Hull tanking in the ship with the second strongest shields in the game just doesnt make any sense.
Don't do it.
Can be done (and I've used shieldless and hybrid Corvettes), but it's pretty pointless, and leaves you with much less staying power than a shields first emphasis, even in the presence of things like reverberating cascade.
That said, modules can be so well protected now that even 6k+ hull with 60% resistances will fall apart faster than any critical internal modules, if you spin for integrity and use a few MRPs.
That said, modules can be so well protected now that even 6k+ hull with 60% resistances will fall apart faster than any critical internal modules, if you spin for integrity and use a few MRPs.
Even loaded up on module protection, their protection is expended sequentially so you rapidly lose the multiplicative module protection bonus and your non-repairable powerplant is soon vulnerable if you're purely hull-tanking. A couple of good PA shots to your powerplant and you're still a gonner.
On a big ship with lots of modules, the MRPs get eaten up really fast because your ship is covered in sizeable hitboxes for all the modules. On a corvette it's probably more than half of the hitbox is one module or another.
Take three D-rated module reinforcement packs at 60% protection. You can take a total of 725 random scattered module damage over your entire ship before all MRPs are completely depleted (145*3)*(100/60). So after 725 damage that's really easy to inflict without even aiming at anything in particular, your PP is snipeable for an easy kill, but it's worse than that:
Initially the three MRPs are allowing just 6.4% of the incoming damage through to your PP. A single 4A PA shot will do just 8 damage to your PP.
Soon though, you're down to two MRPs and 16% of the incoming damage gets through to your PP. Suddenly that 4A PA shot does 20 damage to your PP.
Once you're on your last MRP 40% of the damage is getting through and that PA shot does 50 damage to your PP.
So, shieldless hull tanking on a Corvette will use up your MRPs very quickly, I'd guess that the 904 incoming damage an unmodified, unboosted prismatic shield would have your three MRPs gone or almost gone. At that point your HRPs and armour is useless against anything with a Large or Huge hardpoint because that non-repairable powerplant is going pop.
From what I can tell, MRP's offer some protection once your shields drop, but you shouldn't rely on surviving without shields. They just buy you a bit more time and prevent instant death if a well-executed RC torpedoes volley takes your shields out unexpectedly. I've just shown that a 135 integrity powerplant can get 5-6x tougher thanks to MRPs but the way they are used up sequentially means that you still can't really hull tank in 2.2.03 and expect anything like the survivability of shields.
Hull tanking in big ships doesn't make sense for several reasons.
1) It's dangerous. No matter how much module protection you've got, you risk malfunctions and then you are toast.
2) More importantly, you're going to take a lot of hull damage and hull damage on huge ship means HUGE repair bills.
1) It's dangerous. No matter how much module protection you've got, you risk malfunctions and then you are toast.
2) More importantly, you're going to take a lot of hull damage and hull damage on huge ship means HUGE repair bills.
I would say go for it as a fun build if the 3x hull hardness but shield booster diminishing returns went through from the 2.2.03 beta, but as is now absolutely do not do it, it's just asking for a massive rebuy.
I can see the newsflash now:
"CMDR Hulltank loses G5-engineered corvette to a puny DBX with scramble-spectrum"
There's been people who lose their g5 corvette to diamondbacks with shields, let alone hull tanked
