4 repping tunings will make active tanking viable.

But then again, you will sacrifice something else.

Its all about balance, want speed + firepower? Ok you can has them, but if you want to be a super man, get out.

The purpose seems to be to give you a way to rep armor without going back to the station. While that's nice, I have to agree that being able to use them in combat for more than 10 seconds would be better. A skill to lesson the armor rep's ac usage would be great, rather than just the skill to increase the rep cycles, which just sucks up more ac.

The point of view that Tiller is coming from though is using a T1 small armor repairer on a character with 1 month of EP in a light bot.  Even a Castel who uses nearly no acc for weapons cant run that thing more than about 3 cycles in a row without draining itself.

You simply just dont have the proper perspective to judge an entire range of armor repairers in the entire game.

well generally green isn't an armor repair race, other races have a bonus that makes it more worthwhile. If you have a t4 small rep with decent skills and it can be worthwhile if matched with some resistance. Medium reps also are useful in some situations.

with not-even-maxed extensions, just knowing what you are doing, you can permarun a small repair, a neut, a sensor amp and an active hardener (activated) on a waspish -> and that against a trojar spawn with several drainers on you (while the neut would be useless there)

in open beta i could run a castel with two small armor repairs + sensor amp, without running into any energy problem.

blue bots having repaired ammount bonus. They probably cant permarun Armor-Reps, but they dont have to (more micromanagement)

Yellow bots having either resist or accumulator bonus -> both are helping there.
Resist means you have to repair less real hitpoints to gain more relative hitpoints.
accumulator bonus means you got better recharge and bigger buffer.

the most important fact here is - you have to train up "basic/advanced robotics" to actually gain those bonuses. Training up the Repair-cycle extension, before the others is not very clever.

last but not least - get t2 repair - or better the prototype. needs less AP for same ammount repaired. and always pair a repair with a hardener for better resists

nope, it doesnt...
shield efficiency depends on the robot size (while the display is bugged)

I'm in a Castel and I am cap stable with the Armor Repper a Sensor Enhancer running.

Even in beta, when I was blue, I found the armor repairer extremely useful in combat.  I had to turn it on and off, not just leave it running.  That doesn't make it useless.

As someone pointed out, yellow resists bonuses mean you don't need the repper on as much.

TBH I have no problem running 4x lasers and the repper on a sensor amped prometheus for sustained fighting.  You just have to know how to fit and manage your accumulator.

EDIT: Dont expect to spend 40k EP and end up both industry AND combat specd.

Put medium Aux accumulator

you will need t2 gear and good skills on engineering