Tupni
27
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Posted - 2012.09.23 00:31:00 -
[1] - Quote
To summarize, it feels like shields are overall much better than armor in almost every way that matters, that shields are more deciding in combat than armor, and that ultimately armor is substantially inferior while running for an equivalent cost and providing no real general or specific advantage.
This strikes me as especially odd since the advent of space mining should provide for a considerable influx of materials that would be highly effective in dealing with radiation and kinetic damage, not to mention the inevitable and necessary advances in metallurgy that should have taken place relative to common space travel and general technological advancement. Further still that all sensible shield technology would be much more power intensive and fragile compared to solid armor.
Anyway, here is a comparative list of things I've noticed.
Shields:
- + Automatically recover
- + Have modules to increase recovery, shield strength.
- + Suffer no low health penalty (compared to armor's burning damage)
- + Can equip multiple Power Diagnostic Systems (low powered modules to specifically and significantly optimize shields)
- + Have a lower PG/CPU cost total
- + Have Buffer modules (shield extenders)
- + Do not affect movement
- + More CPU intensive, but CPU extenders have no CPU/PG cost (despite the logical wattage requirement for use and cooling), use the less necessary low powered slot, and is otherwise balanced.
- - May have a larger sensor signal
- - Have no means of recovery from infantry
- -/+ Suffer from Flux weapons (however these also shut down low powered modules which are not as important in shield heavy fittings but can leave amour units bare)
- + Are otherwise equal or relative to armour in every way (same slot total, similar SP cost, market cost, damage absorption) with these advantages.
Armour:
- + Generally higher health
- + Can be repaired by infantry
- - Must be away from combat or the healer is often extremely vulnerable
- - Requires exiting the craft
- - Requires having the pilot get out or to have someone else on board who can, meaning a higher organization requirement in a low communication environment.
- - Requires special equipment to recover
- - Manual
- - Recovers more slowly, cool down penalty
- - Has no slot/PG advantage to compensate
- - Suffers burn damage when low
- - No specific High powered modules to aid armor strength
- - Only HPM that helps armor (Damage control unit) can only be equipped once and does as much for shields
- - Shield equivalent is superior, helps more, no limit.
- - Slower
- - Has equivalent cost in ISK, SP for inferior quality
- - PG intensive, PG extenders have a CPU cost, use primary slot set for armor craft
- - Is not significantly more resistant to damage (as far as I can tell) despite physics.
This is mostly from a vehicular perspective, but a lot of this translates over to dropsuits as well and is partially why heavies often have a hard time of it.
Here are some requests to balance things out, any two or three would go a long way to that end.
- Increased slots on armor heavy vehicles/suits (more armor, bigger frame, more power, more space)
- Lower SP/ISK cost given availability of materials/less tech heavy development
- Anti-grav high powered modules implementing technology similarly available in any standard drop suits to decrease movement penalties.
- Swap armor recovery and PG expansion modules to the high powered side, or create a high powered armour recover module with a higher CPU cost that is automatic and constant
- Power Diagnostic System equivalent module for armor HPM
- Make armor more resistant to damage than shields to compensate for lower recovery and other disadvantages
- Armour resistance modules 2-5% more effective than shield counter-parts and/or suffer no stacking penalty (since shields by their nature are designed to be more resistant and the tech is more redundant or something)
- Give advanced tier armor units some integrated armor recovery (automatic or manual), or at least on Logistics dropships and Special Ops tanks.
- Extend armor shielding to provide better cover players in LAVs/Dropships
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Tupni
Bragian Order
Amarr Empire
7
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Posted - 2012.11.12 00:46:00 -
[2] - Quote
Aq'sa wrote:You forget that armor regens constantly with a repper module- effectively negating incoming damage. This means you have 11.5 armor points /s gaining at all times with 2 complex mods. If I only do 11.5 DPS to you, there is no change to your total hit points- whereas shields only repair after all incoming damage has ceased for their rep delay timeframe. Seems like only a small '+' mark to armor on your list, but in effect - a huge advantage.
I don't know of a single weapon that does less than 11.5 points of damage. I do know that regardless of armour or shields it's more advantageous to duck behind something for cover rather than get shot, and that even innate recovery for a suits' shields is, I believe, more than double that number or even greater.
Also, last I checked vehicles still don't have any passive/automatic armour recovery. But I think the notion stands concerning vehicles, that maybe with a few high level modules you could endure damage where a shield heavy vehicle would have to retreat. Though then again I forgot until this last line that shields have the very same kind of module.
I guess I'm bumping this because it doesn't feel like the issue was fixed in this patch and I believe almost all of these points still stand. |