Armor & Production: Overtuning Tank Armors   Tank armors have been through a lot. We won't go into the details of it, but in essence, a tank armor is a big bulky thing that you wear on your back, and it slows you down to a crawl and makes casting nanos a bit of a pain. Or are they? Enter - the art of overtuning tank armors.         First off a small warning - by doing this, your Tank armor will become a temporary item, which means that it only lasts for 48 hours of gametime after which it dissolves into dust and withers away, so be careful not to get into any fights using that one on the last hour or so.   Short history on tank armors, for those of you that haven't been around long enough to remember them. These babies used to be the only backslot item worth wearing, and had a nanocost modifier that worked like this - if you had a nanopool of 1000 and a nano required 800 to be cast, it would drain all your nano. Later on, this was fixed, so that all the tank armors had a nano penalty of adding 100% nanocost, which made that nano cost 1600 instead of 800. At the same time, the Decus line of coats were introduced and everyone started wearing those instead of tanks, since no-one really wanted to raise their nanopool too high, especially soldiers and enforcers casting mk shields and challenger lines. Nevertheless - tanks are back in business now, looking badder than ever! There are eight types of tank armors - all of them can be overtuned using the process we will describe. There are four regular universal-wear tanks, and also, there are four corresponding Omni-Tek versions of them, as such:     Very Light Tank Armor     Very Light Omni-Tek Tank Armor       Light Tank Armor     Light Omni-Tek Tank Armor       Medium Tank Armor     Medium Omni-Tek Tank Armor       Heavy Tank Armor     Heavy Omni-Tek Tank Armor   As you might have noticed, a regular tank armor has some drawbacks - most notably is the nanocost increase as well as the evade decrease. Overtuning removes these penalties and allows for a much more flexible armor - however, as mentioned before - the armor becomes a temporary item for 48 hours of playingtime. This is explained in game-terms as tampering with the electronics too much, causing the tank armor to "crash" and breakdown in the end, turning into just a useless lump of metal. In order to get your own personal tank armor overtuned, you will have to get a Neutron displacer from the local General Tools and Bases store.   Neutron Displacer A Neutron Displacer can be used to etch a storage matrix into a Pure Carbon Crystal. It does this by displacing neutrons of the crystal in various patterns. Make sure the Neutron Displacer is 50% QL of the Tank armor you need built or you wont be able to combine it. In our example we're going to use a QL200 Heavy Tank Armor (because red is so pretty and all)..   + =   Overtuned Heavy Tank Armor This is a very powerful piece of armor. It can be worn on top of another suit of armor, providing an extra layer of protection. By using the Neutron Displacer on the Tank Armor you will obtain the Overtuned version of the tank. Worth noting here is that the Neutron Displacer will actually vanish after doing this, so if you were using it to create Nano Crystals with, you'll have to get another one after making the tank armor. This step takes exactly 2.5 * QL Breaking and Entering skill, and also it takes 1 * QL Quantum Physics end Mechanical Engineering skill, so its not as hard as some other tradeskill processes that spring to mind. Possibly geared towards the more combat-oriented professions. As you can see from the comparison between a regular tank armor, and Albrecht tank armor, and an overtuned version below, AC increases very nicely, and the removal of the nano cost modifier and evade negatives are very nice as well. You might notice that the QL200 regular tank armors have no nano cost modifiers, but the lower tanks do, so its still considered worth it. Overtuning does decrease nano initiative, as you see, but compared to the runspeed, evades and nano cost decreases on the regular tanks, this isn't that much of a drawback. Compared to an Albrecht tank, the 200-300 raise in AC values might not account for much unless the stats the Albrecht gives hold little meaning to you.   Heavy Tank Armor Albrecht Heavy Tank Armor Overtuned Heavy Tank Armor     Chemical AC 250 Cold AC 750 Energy AC 1000 Fire AC 875 Melee AC 1000 Poison AC 250 Projectile AC 1000 Radiation AC 250 Run Speed -50 Dodge Ranged -50 Duck Explosives -50 Evade Clsc -50 Nano Cost Modifier 0 Chemical AC 250 Cold AC 750 Energy AC 1100 Fire AC 875 Melee AC 1100 Poison AC 250 Projectile AC 1100 Radiation AC 250 Run Speed -50 Psychology 20 Nano Init +50 Max Nano +400 Nano Cost Modifier 0 Chemical AC 550 Cold AC 950 Energy AC 1300 Fire AC 875 Melee AC 1300 Poison AC 550 Projectile AC 1300 Radiation AC 550 Nano Init -50   As you can see, overtuned tanks are even better than Albrechts - well, as far as AC is concerned. The Albrech tank armor still has some really nice bonuses that you cant disregard from, and the obvious advantage would of course be that it doesnt disappear! Please do note that the Albrecht cannot be overtuned but still makes a nice comparison to the regular and overtuned versions. Final word: Is it really worth it? Well, our own personal experiences tell us that we like the tanks we have on and wouldn't want to scavenge for another anytime soon. However - 48 hours of playing time is quite a lot, and at lower levels that might very well mean a lot of levels and here we can see a real use for it. If you are a fast leveller, then this might be a very nice option indeed. For many, 48 hours of playing time isn't that much, and for those people we can strongly recommend doing this. For higher levels we wouldn't really recommend this, especially with the Albrecht Tank Armor being as popular as it is. Last updated 20.December 2002 Contributors Greywraith, Atlantean Alastis, Atlantean See what others have said about this article, or post your own comments regarding this in our forums.