Velociraptor, I think you're overreacting slightly.

Rattati isn't here suggesting that we all go on about how armour should be nerfed into the ground, how OP it is, etc, this thread is about rejigging the modules so that more armour tanking styles than just stacking basic plates become viable (like active armour repair).


My own thoughts are that basic plates are horrendously out of whack. 1 PG 10 CPU for that chunk of HP means that using higher tier plates starts to get silly, especially when the speed penalty on those increases as well. The most economical way of tanking at the moment is simply to stack basic plates.
That is a bad thing.

I also feel that a lot of complaints about armour come from the state of shields. There are some flaws in shield design at the moment - 22 HP basic extenders, for example, sometimes make zero difference whatsoever to TTK if you fit them. That's not strictly on topic here though, I have another thread up at https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=162638&find=unread for that.

Aside from the inherent superiority of stacking normal plates, the lack of use for ferroscales and reactives stems from there not being any reason to use them at all. Reactive plates are simply inferior to plate/rep combos and the only uses for them are really on specific setups where you can only afford to fit one low slot tank module. Using ferroscale plates is pointless because they're outperformed by basic plates - why have 0% penalty plates that are really expensive to fit and give only a small bit of HP when you could have a huge chunk of HP for practically no fitting cost for just a 1% penalty?

Active armour tanking doesn't work because armour repairers are never going to rep fast enough to actively keep you up in a fight unless you have practically no buffer HP. In that case, you're going to die very quickly before your armour repairers can get to work saving you and even then stacking four complex ones won't get you very far at all - just 25 HP/s. That's not nearly sufficient to keep you up in an active fight. It would be far preferable to have + 300 HP or so and then have a token rep to keep you going between fights.


EDIT: % HP bonuses have been thrown around for plates. I'm not a huge fan of that, but Resistance is quite right in talking about proportional weights. Rather than have the plates toned down to match the frame, why not have a mass based penalty?
If you're a dainty little scout putting on a bunch of heavy plates, you're going to get weighed down a ton and lose all your speed advantage (and then some, quite possibly). Suddenly, there's a reason for ferroscale plates!
Meanwhile heavies don't really feel it,. meaning that they don't get weighed down so much they can't jump over a 1 ft railing.

450 armor + 40hp/s would make for a very good active armor rep.

And mean that shield tanking is pointless (unless that's on a heavy).

Come back to me when shield tankers move as slow as me.

A basic plate will cost you practically no speed whatsoever.
An enhanced plate will cost you a marginal bit of speed.
A complex plate will cost you a slight bit of speed, and nobody uses them anyway.

Armour tankers barely move slower than shield tankers. Barely.

You are suggesting a vastly superior tanking form.

Armor tankers usually use more than one plate.
That speed penalty stacks.

As I said, I just threw numbers around.

Yes, stupid numbers.
Instead of admitting that, though, you're actually attempting to defend them.

I was defending the recharge more than the HP.

Which still pretty much invalidates shields as at 40 HP/s there's no reason to use shields.

Besides busting down the health gains of plates, while also bumping up the PG requirements (as the Cat said), the usefulness of Ferroscale and Reactive.. There needs to be one.

If you drop plate overall health, you have to hit Ferroscale as well. If you take a quarter (the number Cat tossed out) a Complex Plate(before skills) drops from 135 to 101ish. A Complex Ferroscale sits at 75 (before skills), meaning there is very little difference between the two (a CR sees no difference). A slight tweak to Ferro health, plus a major change to the PG costs (14 PG for Proto, more than a Proto Plate by 2 for 60 less health...) and Ferro could become quite handy.

Reactives... All they do is save you a Low Slot. I can use a Proto Reactive plate and get +66 armor (with skills) and 2hp/s with a measly 1% speed penalty. Or, if I have the slots, I could put a Basic Plate and Basic Rep, get +93 armor and rep rate of 2.5hp/s. Not only do I get better stats, but, I only use 30CPU and 2 PG, compare that to the 36CPU and 16PG of the Proto Reactive. At least I have the slot for the PG Upgrade?

Besides looking at the fitting costs, how would people feel if Reactives required some level of Armor Repair Skill as well? Maybe make that a tier lower than the Plating, so, Basic would require no level, Advanced would require Lvl 1 (or maybe even 2 so that the skill levels can unlock more things, I know CCP loves access skills), and Proto requiring Lvl 3 (again, or 4).

I was going to suggest equalizing Ferro and Reactive armor values, but, I realized that would make Ferroscale pretty pointless (1% speed reduction is minimal as is, and adding 2hp/s for the same armor amount would be stupid). Unless you make Ferroscale easier to fit and Reactives more difficult (but not more than they are). Let's drop that idea though.



I think it almost invalidates a Logi as well... I'm trying to imagine a suit with 40hp/s plus a core focused... Pretty beastly.

Besides busting down the health gains of plates, while also bumping up the PG requirements (as the Cat said), the usefulness of Ferroscale and Reactive.. There needs to be one.

If you drop plate overall health, you have to hit Ferroscale as well. If you take a quarter (the number Cat tossed out) a Complex Plate(before skills) drops from 135 to 101ish. A Complex Ferroscale sits at 75 (before skills), meaning there is very little difference between the two (a CR sees no difference). A slight tweak to Ferro health, plus a major change to the PG costs (14 PG for Proto, more than a Proto Plate by 2 for 60 less health...) and Ferro could become quite handy.

Reactives... All they do is save you a Low Slot. I can use a Proto Reactive plate and get +66 armor (with skills) and 2hp/s with a measly 1% speed penalty. Or, if I have the slots, I could put a Basic Plate and Basic Rep, get +93 armor and rep rate of 2.5hp/s. Not only do I get better stats, but, I only use 30CPU and 2 PG, compare that to the 36CPU and 16PG of the Proto Reactive. At least I have the slot for the PG Upgrade?

STD Armor Plate: 46.311615
ENH Armor Plate: 25.379241
STD Armor Repairer: 16.569617
STD Reactive Plate: 14.482212
CPX Kinetic Catalyser: 13.557344
STD Ferroscale Plate: 8.176365
STD Shield Extender: 4.469270
CPX Armor Repairer: 3.924042
CPX Shield Extender: 3.407810
STD Shield Recharger: 2.880570
ENH Armor Repairer: 2.354425
CPX Shield Recharger: 2.065597
ENH Kinetic Catalyser: -0.961771
ENH Shield Recharger: -5.199050
ENH Shield Extender: -9.796095
CPX Armor Plate: -10.182913
ENH Ferroscale Plate: -14.605192
STD Kinetic Catalyser: -16.851107
ENH Reactive Plate: -19.929124
CPX Reactive Plate: -27.186393
CPX Ferroscale Plate: -37.907789

Velociraptor, I think you're overreacting slightly.

Rattati isn't here suggesting that we all go on about how armour should be nerfed into the ground, how OP it is, etc, this thread is about rejigging the modules so that more armour tanking styles than just stacking basic plates become viable (like active armour repair).

We need a lively discussion on this one.

Status update (yes I know you know)

Plates are being used to stack EHP in over abundance. There is little drawback to that strategy and the other options are not competitive/viable.

This is having a big effect on the landscape, both brick tanked scouts and heavies, making scramblers/flux weapons out of place.

I would like to hear ideas on how to remedy that. For insight, these are the armor modules ordered by consumption

1. Plates
2. Repair
3. Reactive
4. Ferroscale

out of the three plates, normal plates are 85& prevalent and the other two split the difference.

How to make them viable, and also a bonus question, can "active" armor tanking be viable without being OP. My GA sentinel with 4 pro reps is not competitive, fun, but not competitive.

Discuss.

TLDR: absolutel value increases make it hard to balance across suit types, while percentage based values allow suits to maintain their intended identity without marginalizing other suit classes.

Seems to me percentage-based plates would make Heavies ridiculously overpowered.
Would proponents please address / explain?

Seems to me percentage-based plates would make Heavies ridiculously overpowered.
Would proponents please address / explain?

A mash-up of my favourite ideas results in this solution... (Note: Maths are only for illustration purposes.)

ARMOUR:
- nerf regular plates slighty
- increase CPU/PG fitting costs of standard plates
- make stacking penalties slightly more significant but only apply to armour of the same type
- include movement penalties and rotation penalties
- leave regular plates as 'high alpha' option
- combine ferroscale and reactive plates into one 'high regen' type
- buff armour repair mods
- reduce Gallente passive armour repair to 1 hp/s per level

Alpha Plate example:
- Hit Points: 75 std, 100 adv, 125 pro
- Movement: -2% std, -4% adv, -6% pro
- Rotation: -2% std, -4% adv, -6% pro
- Regen: -0%/s std, -0%/s adv, -0%/s pro
- Stacking: -10% HP and -20% Mov/Rot each additional Alpha Plate

Regen Plate example:
- Hit Points: 40 std, 60 adv, 80 pro
- Movement: -1% std, -2% adv, -3% pro
- Rotation: -0% std, -1% adv, -2% pro
- Regen: +1%/s std, +2%/s adv, +3%/s pro
- Stacking: -10% HP, -10% Mov/Rot and -10% Regen each additional Regen Plate

SHIELDS:
- add 'high alpha' shield option
- leave/modify original shields as 'high regen' option
- decrease CPU/PG fitting costs of complex shields
- make stacking penalties only apply to shields of the same type
- introduce hybrid armour/shield Rep Tools, Nanite Injectors and Nanohives

Alpha Shield example:
- Hit Points: 60 std, 80 adv, 100 pro
- Delay: 6 sec std, 8 sec adv, 10 sec pro
- Regen: 2%/s std, 3%/s adv, 4%/s pro
- Stacking: -10% HP and -20% Delay each additional Alpha Shield

Regen Shield example:
- Hit Points: 20 std, 40 adv, 60 pro
- Delay: 3 sec std, 4 sec adv, 5 sec pro
- Regen: 4%/s std, 5%/s adv, 6%/s pro
- Stacking: -10% HP and -20% Delay each additional Regen Shield

We need a lively discussion on this one.

Status update (yes I know you know)

Plates are being used to stack EHP in over abundance. There is little drawback to that strategy and the other options are not competitive/viable.

This is having a big effect on the landscape, both brick tanked scouts and heavies, making scramblers/flux weapons out of place.

I would like to hear ideas on how to remedy that. For insight, these are the armor modules ordered by consumption

1. Plates
2. Repair
3. Reactive
4. Ferroscale

out of the three plates, normal plates are 85& prevalent and the other two split the difference.

How to make them viable, and also a bonus question, can "active" armor tanking be viable without being OP. My GA sentinel with 4 pro reps is not competitive, fun, but not competitive.

Discuss.

If this is too be fixed for any reason although I BARELY think it's as serious a problem as a couple of other things like BUGS then maybe it should auto scale to the suit. For example, Light suits should have a 10% hit to all plates, medium suits should have a 5% hit, and heavies should be even. So right when it is equipped it will recieve this handicap. No additional plate types, nothing crazy. Just a hit.

I run a 1500 HP heavy with a complex armor rep. If I don't have reps I'm hosed. I also run scout and take out logis fairly often to leave the heavy vulnerable. I don't think brick tanking is a serious issue. There are times where it frustrates me but then I think "maybe my 500hp or less scout shouldn't have gone against that 900 hp logi in the first place. I could have avoided that".

Personally, I'm sick of people thinking they should be able to fight everyone, every-time and have a chance of winning.

That last part
GTFO NOW
This is like
Because im using this gear I get to be super overpowered and never lose to this one thing or two.
That's overpowered.

Basically what you are saying is, when you loose to a heavy it's because the game is bad and not because you were bad or made a poor decision to fight the heavy. Gotcha. I get it now. Yeah, everybody I can't beat everytime is OP. Thanks for enlightening me.

When somebody doesn't have a chance of winning because of gear it's overpowered.

We need a lively discussion on this one.

Status update (yes I know you know)

Plates are being used to stack EHP in over abundance. There is little drawback to that strategy and the other options are not competitive/viable.

This is having a big effect on the landscape, both brick tanked scouts and heavies, making scramblers/flux weapons out of place.

I would like to hear ideas on how to remedy that. For insight, these are the armor modules ordered by consumption

1. Plates
2. Repair
3. Reactive
4. Ferroscale

out of the three plates, normal plates are 85& prevalent and the other two split the difference.

How to make them viable, and also a bonus question, can "active" armor tanking be viable without being OP. My GA sentinel with 4 pro reps is not competitive, fun, but not competitive.

Discuss.