No-one-ganks like-Gaston wrote:tl;dr - The battleskirts are superior in every way to their allies, the blue meanies, and I'm talking to myself publicly about it. The things I'm muttering about are probably very obvious observations, but Gaston isn't the greatest of minds to grace... anywhere.
Discussion is encouraged; trolling is frowned upon but **** if I'm gonna stop you.
I think one of the biggest issues with the Caldari and shield suits in general being considered nonviable is the Amarr. The Amarr just completely overshadow the Caldari in nearly every conceivable way and that shouldn't be how it goes. The Amarr and Caldari should compliment each other, but the Amarr could honestly get along very well without the Caldari. At least in the Dust 514 arena. It's almost as though Amarr was meant to be fighting the Caldari instead of the Minmatar.
The Caldari are supposed to be the long range fighters, which is fine. But the Amarr challenge them in terms of weaponry range and are shield killers, to boot. In a battle between an Amarr with laser weaponry and a Caldari with railgun weaponry, the Amarr would win hands down nearly every time, even in mid-long range battles where Caldari should have the advantage.
Their weapons have similar ranges, but the Caldari weapons have charge up times. They both have an advantage over the other's primary defense, but Amarr's is larger and Caldari has to get through Amarr's shield, flimsy as it is, before they can touch armor with their minor damage bonus. They're nearly dead by the time they get a quarter of the way through an Amarr's armor.
A Caldari's shields won't recharge until completely damage free for a certain amount of time, while Amarr's potential passive armor reps keep them alive even through fire, and it's very easy to get great reps even with just advanced modules.
Amarr is forced to stop shooting because of cooldown, but they can take this brief time to reload as if it were a normal part of combat rather than something supposed to hinder them. Caldari weapons, unless I'm remembering wrong, seem to have small-ish clip sizes and not a lot of ammunition, making reloading frequent, and has the added hindrance of needing to charge the weapon again every time you release the trigger, making you want to keep firing to avoid that second of delay that could be your downfall, while the Amarr can fire as normal.
Caldari's one weapon that doesn't have a charge up time is the sniper rifle, which is more and more useless the closer your target is (when their movement is too quick to properly track) or the farther away they are (when it's harder to line up the shot on a small target), you must sacrifice mobility to use it properly, you have a very small clip, meaning every shot must count, and you have to focus on a single target. Amarr's equivalent, the laser rifle, is best at its maximum range, you can be very mobile with it, aim down sight offers precision but isn't required to be useful, it has a huge clip size, deals massive amounts of sustained damage, does better the longer you're holding down the trigger, and can be swiped over multiple people, making it the perfect suppression tool. Which is what a sniper rifle should be, in my opinion.
The Amarr also have a sexy +4 Battleskirt of the Empress and the Caldari have no eyes and a compensatory crotch cover.
Leaving the realms of direct Amarr/Caldari comparisons, shield modules also just flat out suck compared to armor modules. With Armor Plates maxed out, you get a 10% bonus to plate health. So 8 extra HP from a standard plate module. Not too bad, especially if stacked. With Shield Extenders maxed out, you also get a 10% bonus to Extender health. A proto Extender only gives you an extra 6 HP, though. What? Why don't shield extenders get 3, 4, or maybe even 5% bonus per level? 10% at max level isn't nearly enough for a module that gives you so little. But that's not even taking into account that leveling into armor plates also gives you access to reactive plates and ferroscale plates (though ferroscale seems to be useless on anything but scouts?) which also receive the armor bonus, while you get nothing but extenders for leveling in, well, extenders. Regulators are nice, but having to reduce shield recharge delay kind of sucks when armor gets it naturally. The massive shield HP per second you can get is great, but that, again, depends entirely on your shield recharge delay and being pretty much completely removed from the conflict to be useful in the slightest. And if you're being shot at, you're probably not removed from the conflict.
I guess to end things, all I really have to say is it's a damn good thing the Caldari are allied with the Amarr, because they'd stand no chance, otherwise.
Frowned upon by amateurs: The object of war is not to die for your country but make the other bastard die for his. GSP