PSA: According to SiSi testing, ships (Nestors) launched from a ship maintenance bay gain NO EHP from any modules OR RIGS. Science contained within.

*If you want the super short TL;DR, then you can do some thinking for yourself and find it in [this image](http://i.imgur.com/ZZ63gR5.png). If you want a slightly longer one and don't care about the general mechanics of tank modules on ships (that aren't piloted), skip down to sections 4 and 5. I'd like to think this whole thing is worth reading, but it's a long one.*

*** #Part One: The Phantom Modules I've recently been sitting on the sidelines of several discussions between supercapital pilots about just what the best things to fit on your mobile depot Nestor are. You've all probably heard similar talk: >"Just fit rigs."

>"No, fit bulkheads!"

>"No, they don't work. But fit a damage control."

>"Why would I carry a Nestor with me?"

>^^"Can ^^someone ^^help? ^^I've ^^got ^^my ^^finger ^^stuck ^^up ^^my ^^nose."

I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and after seeing the Nyx kill that was [posted earlier](https://zkillboard.com/kill/61474340/) (where the Nestor had a DCU, bulkheads, shield extenders and a deadspace EM ward amp) I decided to log on to Singularity to test a few of the most common perceptions of passive modules on unpiloted ships myself. There were a few discussions of this online (mostly relating to the Nestor itself), such as [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4u9e7g/is_the_nestor_actually_good_for_anything/d5nut4l/) on reddit. I went into my testing expecting that something like that thread: that bulkheads and rigs would work, but that would be about it. What I found was a little different. Again, if you want to get right to why I think even the people getting it right have been getting it wrong head down to section 4. If you want to know what tank modules work on unpiloted ships in general, stick around.

*** #Part Deux: Big Rigs Over The Road Racing

My testing methodology started out rather simply. I warped nestors to my carrier, ejected, and shot them. (some of these will be out of time with each other, but I'm putting them in the order that makes most sense now). Throughout ALL of these tests I was using the exact same Nid fit, with T2 Templars.

[Test Number 1](http://i.imgur.com/vgIBThz.png) established the total damage taken for an unfit, unpiloted Nestor. We'll call it 28,755 damage, and I'm gonna round most of these figures a little.

[Test Number 2](http://i.imgur.com/EBKFbFm.png) added Trimark Armor Pumps, giving 33,940 damage taken.

[Test Number 3](http://i.imgur.com/aC1q7aB.png) was for Core Defense Field Extenders, giving 33,400 damage taken.

[Test Number 4](http://i.imgur.com/Vy1RGSA.png) was for Transverse Bulkheads, with by far the largest increase at 35,965. This would appear to agree with conventional wisdom on rigging your mobile Nestor depots.

I then ran a series of other tests for buffer MODULES: [Test Number 5](http://i.imgur.com/dqPIGp8.png) showed that steel plates added nothing over justTrimarks (33,950 vs 33,940), [Test Number 6](http://i.imgur.com/iqskVaj.png) did the same for reinforced bulkheads (35,965 vs 35,965), and [Test Number 7](http://i.imgur.com/Xw8eGti.png) did the same for shield extenders (35,965 vs 35,965. Sue me, I used transverse for this test because I already had one rigged).

[Test Number 8](http://i.imgur.com/H5J4tLq.png) was the final test of this first set, and was fundamentally flawed as a test of resists due to my not paying attention to the actual damage values I was doing and just looking at the total damage on the killmail. We'll get to this in just a little bit.

Armed with the results of these initial tests, and confident I could provide some wisdom to my comrades, I retreated to Discord to discuss my findings with the other tactical and strategic masterminds of Naliao Inc., TEST's number one furry corporation. I was praised for my dedication to science, and the only question raised was relating to resistance modules - my test of the damage control was inconclusive, but based on the evidence at hand I was fairly certain that the module would have had no affect. Still, this warranted a return to the laboratory.

*** #Part C: Resistance Is Futile After a short break to celebrate my parents' Pearl wedding anniversary (congratulations if you somehow end up reading this) and a rather longer one to fix every single problem my mother had found with her phone in the past two weeks, I returned home and logged back onto SiSi. The name of the game now was almost entirely to test resistance modules, and therefore I'm afraid you're going to have to trust my analysis of the game logs for some of this. I am including a link to [a pastebin](https://pastebin.com/9NhDMtiY) of the entire combat log for the relevant login session, and it hasn't been doctored. Not much I can do at this point to prove that, since I have logged in and out and some of the logs were cleared from the window before then anyway. There also isn't anything to tie these to individual killmails without an album I'm going to include [here](http://imgur.com/a/RyvCt). It contains spoilers, and has a couple of kills missing due those ships being launched from the carrier pilot's own ship maintenance bay. This is mostly irrelevant to the rest of my post, but hey. Science.

My first step was to establish a baseline for the damage that would be taken by an unpiloted Nestor with no resist mods fitted. I left station with a Nestor in my ship maintenance bay, launched it, and also took the chance to confirm that it was impossible to scoop a ship that's locked (it is). I got the following baseline hits from my Templars: 3049 shield, **1525** armor, 2044 hull. Obviously these will vary a bit, and I'm just going to make it easy on myself now and tell you that neither of those outer two numbers ever changed throughout the rest of the tests I did. You can have a scroll through the logs yourself, but since that's the only way to verify it I'm not going to bother with putting the damage values for every test here. Also remember I was only shooting EM damage.

Suffice it to say that the damage didn't ever change. I tested the damage control, passive EM shield modules and both energised and non energised armour modules (EM and omni). I didn't ever actually get around to testing resist rigs since I just assumed they'd work, but given the difficulty of knowing what damage type would be coming and the omni EHP given by Transverse Bulkheads I suspect that wouldn't be optimal anyway. It's actually a moot point anyway, because... Wait. Spoilers.

I will draw attention to a few of these lossmails, since they actually show things that should have added actual HP if they worked. [Power Diagnostic System](http://i.imgur.com/fjI8gp9.png), [Energised Armor Layering Membrane](http://i.imgur.com/fFAIXGT.png) (this is a thing? I'd completely forgotten), and [Layered Plating](http://i.imgur.com/tPcFZPZ.png).

Also [this one](http://i.imgur.com/DPfyUd5.png), because it shows how much HP you gain by going up to T2 Transverse Bulkheads (38,200 vs 35,965)

You may have noticed something I said earlier - I said the OUTER two damage values didn't every change substantially, and I left the armour one in bold. As soon as I got to my second test of this session, I saw a different armour damage value - **1464**. This test was done literally just to produce a killmail with T2 rigs, so nothing had changed aside from ejecting a pilot instead of launching it out of the SMB. It didn't seem like much, and throughout these other tests the armour damage value stayed consistent. I shrugged it off, and went back to report my findings again.

*** #Part 4: An Inconvenient Truth That damage value kept niggling at me. I wondered if it was down to the characters in question having different levels of the Amarr Battleship skill trained, but nope - both at III. I wondered if the one I had ejected from had the resists from the skill applied and the other didn't - weird, but it would have made some kind of sense. Okay, time to log on another character with Amarr Battleship V and try that - and nope. The exact same damage values as a the Battleship III character ejecting.

"Alright", I thought to myself, "you've done some good work, you know that only rigs matter. You can go to bed now. Who cares if there's about 60 damage difference when you eject from a ship maintenance bay? That's not going to change much."

But then I decided I wanted to check one more thing. I had to make sure it was down to it being ejected, and not down to it being ejected FROM THE SAME SHIP SHOOTING IT. So I logged on my dread alt, fitted up a quick aligning triple hyperspatialed Phoenix to hurry it along so I could get to bed, and put a Nestor with three T2 Transverse Bulkheads fitted into my SMB. I warped to the carrier, launched the ship, and set my fighters to attack.

The damage values matched, I had a killmail to link to the logs, it should have been fine there... But then I [opened up the killmail](http://i.imgur.com/u2aI3oo.png) for a quick look, and my heart skipped a beat.

28,758.

*28,758.*

**28,758.**

Well, shit.

A [quick second test](http://i.imgur.com/OWEl08U.png) of launching from the dread proved what I was dreading - the damage taken was the exact same (well, one HP off), and all my science had been completely pointless. You can look at the last two sets of fighter attacks in the combat log, the attacks are damn near identical from start to finish.

This pretty much tells me that it doesn't matter whether you fit anything to your Nestor or not. If you launch it from your Ship Maintenance Bay EVERYTHING is effectively turned off, no matter whether it would continue granting EHP if someone ejected from a ship under fire or not. *** #Part V: Test Analysis Please Ignore

*So, what does this mean for all the super pilots out there with T2 rigs and modules on their Nestors?*

Well, actually, it probably doesn't matter that much at all. If you are ejecting a Nestor in a combat situation and it takes any non-AOE (Smartbomb, DD, bombs, PDS) damage then you can't scoop it anyway, because it being shot means someone or something has it locked. Your only chance of repeatedly using it in combat is if you can jettison it, refit, and scoop it again before anyone locks it, and this doesn't change anything about that.

If you were planning on fitting the tank rigs just for AOE damage then sorry. You're out of luck.

*Do rats lock stuff?*

Yes, that includes ratting, don't be a dumb. I'm not going to jump my FAX in to save your Nestor.

*Is this a bug or a feature?*

You tell me. Well, assuming you're CCP. Really, though, I'm not sure if this should be raised as a bug or not. It's weird and inconsistent behaviour, but Eve is basically one huge pile of weird and inconsistent behaviour.

*What about all the ~~bullshit~~ stuff you wrote on rigs vs modules?*

That's all still good science. It applies fully in any case where you eject from a ship and it's getting damaged without you in it. I'm just... currently struggling to think of many of those that wouldn't end in a fucking disaster.

*Phoenix, since you're so smart, what do you recommend I fit to my mobile Nestor depot?*

Well... I see two options. Nothing, or a basic armour repping fit in case you ever have to let a blue hop into it in a REAL pinch. I don't see fitting DPS stuff to it as ever being that useful, but if you whack some armour reps on it and your super ends up stuck totally alone in a system with armour damage and jump fatigue at least you can use it to rep yourself up a bit while you're sitting around.

^^Phoenix ^^takes ^^no ^^responsibility ^^for ^^any ^^supers ^^probed ^^down ^^and ^^killed ^^or ^^stolen ^^while ^^the ^^pilot ^^is ^^repping ^^it ^^in ^^a ^^nestor.

*This is a really detailed post, Phoenix. Thanks! But isn't it a bit late for you?*

Well thanks for caring, FAQ asking voice in my head. It's now almost 2am on a night when I told myself I wasn't going to play Eve at all, and I've got to be up in 6 hours to get to work. But science doesn't wait. Hopefully this post won't have been torn to shit by the time I wake up.