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Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
359
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Posted - 2013.04.12 17:31:00 -
[1] - Quote
I hear some commonly held vews about the costs and benefits of shield vs. armor tanking fits and I think that people don't think too much deeper than some commonly stated views on these. I think the below thoughts will hold even when the new suits come along. I would like to summarize my thoughts in axioms backed up by illustrations that rebut some common beliefs which will serve as the TL;DR (all bold info) of this all. I'm not trying to establish any beliefs about whether armor or shields are better, but that they should be thought of more clearly in the form of the kind of playstyle that they allow.
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Belief #1: Shields feel safer because they recharge faster than having armor repair modules.
"Subjectively maybe, but mathematically, only sometimes..." Recharge/repair should really be thought about in terms of liabilities and 'cycle time'. BY cycle time I mean the amount of repiars done over the length of time it takes to perform a whole repair. With shields, you shouldn't start to think of your repairs as starting the moment the shields come back. You can be shot at the entire time, you should be concerned about HP this entire time. So shield recharge rate starts ticking as soon as your shield stops dropping.
Example- I lost all of my shields on my assault suit. I had 2 complex extenders bringing my shield HP to 321 (with max shield skills). My shield recharge rate is 29 HP/s, but I have a 10 second SDD. This means that it will take 10 seconds for them to START, then an additional 11 seconds to fully recharge. Assuming I take no damage during the cycle. I'm repping 321HP in 21 seconds or 11.1 HP/s.
IMPORTANT POINT: 2 Complex armor repairer modules will rep 11.5 HP/s regardless of combat damage. Even militia armor repair tools outperform this. Non scout shield buffers have a hard time substantially outperforming just 2 lowslot modules.
AXIOM I: AVERAGE repair rates between armor repair and sheild repair CAN scale equally (but with some tradeoffs).
COROLLARY IA: If you are taking cover to recharge shield, you might as well be using that time to repair armor.
COROLALRY IB: If you aren't taking cover to repair armor, your armor HP buffer either wasn't efficientyly used, or is dangerously small.
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Belief #2: I can be more aggressive as a shield tank because I can move faster than an armor tank and can KEEP getting shield.
"Sort of...but not totally". This all depends on how you define aggression. The clearest way I can illustrate this is by again pointing at recharge times (and depleted shields). If a player with 2 complex armor reppers (player A) trades equal damage against another with none (player B), for the 15 or so seconds player B took cover to reposition/recharge shield, that's nearly 170 armor A repped, while player A is repping shield at at least the same rate as player B.
AXIOM II: RELIABILE repair rates and buffer sizes are the most helpful determinants of aggression
COROLLARY IIA: Controlling YOUR OWN 'repair liability' will increase you aggression.
COROLLARY IIB: Controlling your ENEMY's 'repair liability' will decrease their aggression.
I hope that the above information, so far clearly shows the following...
The buffer-shield tank's biggest liability is that its depletion will drastically reduce its reliability and some weapons can quickly destroy it.
The buffer-armor tank's biggest liability is that it's probably sacrificing shield HP, and can't be repaired, and is slower.
The active-tank's (armor or shield) biggest liability is that it's sacrificing some buffer for speed and reliable repair rates. However while the armor repair is constant, the shield repair can be interrupted.
This brings me to my last point...
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Belief #3: You should fit the biggest tank that you can
"...Could you rephrase that please?" I don't think this is an articulate way to put this point. Instead, think about what you need to do on the battlefield to accomplish your goals. If you are using an "in and out" weapon, you should have the kind of tank that lets you apply quick spurts of damage relatively quickly. You shouldn't have to wait very long to completely heal. Otherwise, your tank isn't really optimally matching your role. Similarly, if you are going to be engaging from far off, it is much easier to mitigate the danger of shields or of having a small HP buffer. Instead...
AXIOM III: You should have the tank that best fits your role.
COROLARRY IIIA: The faster you want to attack, the faster you should recharge.
COROLARRY IIIB: The harder/longer you want to attack/risk exposure, the bigger buffer you should have.
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Once you start to understand the nuances of the different flavors of tank you can start to feel the 'cadence' that it allows you to attack in, how long they can take different weapons' bursts for, the types of situations it can get into, and how to mitigate against its weaknesses.
I look forward to your additional thoughts! |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
363
|
Posted - 2013.04.15 13:31:00 -
[2] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:Beren Hurin wrote:IMPORTANT POINT: [u]2 Complex armor repairer modules will rep 11.5 HP/s regardless of combat damage. Did you mean something else?....
I think we answered this. This was based on 2 repairer modules. My straight up comparison here was doing the math compared to an assault Type II/B/vk.0's max shield recharge rate. I assumed that it would take 10 seconds total to recharge a broken shield and 10 seconds to wait until this recharge. For the 10 seconds you are waiting there, your armor is still vulnerable. Yes... regulators can get the delat to around 5 seconds or less. (At the cost of a lot of CPU see by examples below)
0 Try Harder wrote:
Increasing the shield recharge delay/rate quickly allows your shields to go up. So what you did was look at time in combat while getting hit into armor damage, and used that calculation alone. What you should do is see what the actual time that you are taking armor damage is. Slower shield recharge = more damage to armor. Higher shield recharge = armor is safer for longer.
Again you are hitting on the same point here...but what I'm saying is that when YOU are doing the math you are JUST looking at the time that the shields are recharging. If your shield gets 'scraped' that reduces the time your shields will recharge, if the shield is depleted, it reduces your recharge rate. The MAX recharge rate is what you are repping during a recharge cycle. With a complex recharger, an assault can get this up to 40+ HP/s and more with another recharger. But averaged over the delay time, that averages ~25 HP/s. If you are prone to getting scraped just a bit at any point, this quickly drops below <15 HP/s.
0 Try Harder wrote:Beren Hurin wrote:COROLLARY IA: If you are taking cover to recharge shield, you might as well be using that time to repair armor. If you're not taking cover than you're probably getting shot. Otherwise, you didn't need to take cover to let your shields recharge, you did it for some other reason. Even if you equip four passive armor rep modules, it is not enough to save you from a duvolle or baloc pounding you in the face.
I don't think you get my point here. All I'm saying is that if you are in cover to let your shield recharge, having armor recharge as well would be better than none recharging at all. And if you can spare the speed hit and CPU/PG adding some armor tank helps. (This is basically an argument for a more or less hybrid tank. Which somehow you interpreted this as an argument against...) |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
363
|
Posted - 2013.04.15 14:38:00 -
[3] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:
So what does this mean? Armor tanking makes you take more damage (slow) and can spend less time in combat. Armor tanks have to leave the fight sooner because they take longer to reach safety, and they have to stay out of the fight longer than shield tanks do, because shield tanks can quickly recharge their shield and continue armor rep while fighting.
I agree that armor tanks will always be slower and that is a pretty significant disadvantage. I still think that they can have:
1) a more cost effective tank which means...
2) they can hit harder for at least the same amount of time as a shield tank or
3) provide more flexibility with a logibro due to getting ~75% of their tank on a rez and also
4) Provide more WP (>repaired armor/more likely res) to team in the form of extra CPU/PG for better equipment or utility modules (codebreakers/range enhancers).
Examples for comparison.
So I'm open to being told that "this is not how it's done" but I'm probably seeing this from a biased (i.e. logibro) point of view. I'm going to compare 2 shield tanks, 2 armor tanks, and 2 hybrid tanks. I'll basically only be concerned with the tanking mods for now. Let me know about my math. But you'll see the stats that I'm using for comparison below. I'll call them...
Full Buffer Assault vk.0 (Armor A) - 4 complex plates
Fast Buffer Assault vk.0 (Armor B) - 2 complex plates 2 complex repairers
Full Buffer Assault vk.1 (Shield A) - 4 complex ext, 2 complex regs.
Fast Buffer Shield vk. 1 (Shield B) 3 complex ext, 1 rech, 2 regs.
Hybrid vk. 0 (Hybrid A) - 2 ext, 1 rech, 2 plates, 2 reps.
Hybrid vk. 1 (Hybrid B) - 3 ext, 1 rech, 1 reg, 1 plate, 1 rep.
First lets look purely at the full buffer amount for each, with a little nuance for now...the effective HP against an AR.
Stats- Shield HP/Armor HP [AR shield EHP / AR Armor EHP] (total HP/total AR EHP)
Armor A - 156 / 793 [140/872] (949/1012)
Armor B - 156 / 506 [140/556] (662/697)
Shield A - 611 / 131 [549/144] (742/620)
Shield B - 529 / 131 [476/144] (660/620)
Hybrid A - 321 / 505 [289/556] (826/844)
Hybrid B - 446 / 274 [401/301] (720/702)
These numbers are self explanatory. The pure shield tanks are the worst when it comes to total EHP against AR. This is assuming they have their full buffer. What you are probably thinking is, "Yeah, but shield tanks can get their shield back quicker than armor buffers/fast buffers!!" So that analysis comes in a minute, but first lets look at each tanks fitting cost as a % of total fittings on max skilled suits...
Fit- CPU / PG [% CPU/ % PG]
Armor A - 120 / 48 [32%/64%]
Armor B - 150 / 46 [40%/61%]
Shield A - 286 / 50 [69%/61%]
Shield B - 310 / 39 [75%/47%]
Hybrid A - 336 / 68 [90%/91%]
Hybrid B - 350 / 59 [85%/72%]
Here we see that the hybrid fits are extremely restrictive, requireing much more skimping on equipment/weapons than the armor fits. The shield fits also have less room (in addition to 1 less 'utiltiy' slot in their LS).
Finally we get to repair rates. This gets into the tactics, squad relationships, and the relative values of suit speed. I'm just here to give stats, and then let us use/discuss them as we see fit. New page for this part... |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
363
|
Posted - 2013.04.15 15:44:00 -
[4] - Quote
Finally we get to what I call 'tank speed' which has to do with the rate of recharge over time. This affects how often you can charge into battle, how long you can do this, and what are the risks for this....working on this post currently... |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
363
|
Posted - 2013.04.15 19:58:00 -
[5] - Quote
I think the most interesting comparison is Armor B and Shield A.
EHP
Armor B has 662 HP but 697 AR EHP (with a -20% speed)
Shield A has 742 HP but 693 AR EHP (with a bigger chunk able to be fluxed)
Time to charge (depleted cycle):
Armor B gets 335 HP every 15.6 seconds
Shield A gets 661 HP every 27.2 seconds (or really 308 HP in the Armor suit's 16 seconds( 11 seconds of charging after 5 second delay))
So they really go head to head for sustained HP, while the the Armor will have the slight advantage in EHP and fitting space, while the shield will have the advantage in speed. In this case, if the armor suit can scratch the shield suit's armor (with his better damage weapon) and get away, he will have a significantly better advantage in the next engagement. |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
364
|
Posted - 2013.04.15 23:48:00 -
[6] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:Spectral Clone wrote:Really interesting stuff here :-) i've been thinking about making some tool to determine tanking quality. Very interesting to compare which combo is the best bang for the buck, given a passive skill set. .... You should see him play before you make a judgement on his info :P He puts flux grenades vs shield, but forgets that there are explosive grenades for armor, and a ton of stuff like that. His fits are terrible. If his data is valid, he should be an awesome player, no? 
Post your godfit Try. Otherwise I'll just assue you are trolling and have nothing to offer the community. I've never claimed that I'm some special player, if anything I've given clear indication of my bias. I am a logi bro and I want armor to rep. I also want as diverse of a game as possible and really believe that there is a depth to this game beyond just an all assault-rifle shield-tanking alpha-striking meta.
Please be constructive. |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
366
|
Posted - 2013.04.16 15:18:00 -
[7] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:Beren Hurin wrote:Post your godfit Try. Sure, I'll do that later. Beren Hurin wrote:Otherwise I'll just assue you are trolling and have nothing to offer the community. Awww, but now I'm so tempted not to!
While your waiting you should check out this magazine |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
367
|
Posted - 2013.04.17 11:33:00 -
[8] - Quote
One last selling point of armor is that it means that you can get instantly around 65% of your total HP back with a proto injector if you have most of your HP in armor. |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
368
|
Posted - 2013.04.18 11:34:00 -
[9] - Quote
1) I'm thinking more and more that these scrambler rifles are going to make all of your shield tanks pretty hellish.
2) CCP BLam has confirmed that they have fixed logi-LAVs and their dropsuit repairs will be back in Uprising. THis will help armor tanks A TON now too. It will definitely mean that they will quickly get better armor repairs than shield tanks, unless they do also rep sheild. |
Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
372
|
Posted - 2013.04.18 17:31:00 -
[10] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:Cosgar wrote:Where to you find room for shield modules when your high slots are full of stacked damage mods? You do not, and that's a reason why it is inferior. Stacking damage mods < stacking shields. Beren Hurin wrote:2) CCP BLam has confirmed that they have fixed logi-LAVs and their dropsuit repairs will be back in Uprising. THis will help armor tanks A TON now too. It will definitely mean that they will quickly get better armor repairs than shield tanks, unless they do also rep sheild. Actually, that's MUCH better for shield that it is for armor. Armor already has logi repair tool, but shield does not. The caldari LAV has shield transportation. (Shield transportation is like remote shield repair.) The one downside of shield is that it is not a passive regen that is always on. By giving vehicles or infantry a tool that allows for shield regen even while in combat, it negates that disadvantage. Nice try beren, but you need to try a little harder =]
I was operating under the assumption that they were armor only. If that's the case then it will still mean that shield tanks will have a decent advantage with them. I'm curious to know how exactly their mechanics will work.
You still didn't respond to your impending scrambler rifle problem though... |
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Beren Hurin
OMNI Endeavors
O.M.N.I. Initiative
372
|
Posted - 2013.04.18 19:07:00 -
[11] - Quote
0 Try Harder wrote:
In almost all FPS games I do, I almost always gravitate to the low RoF, high damage and long range weapons. I was disappointed to find out that this type of weapon did not exist in DUST514. I did run around as a sniper when I first started, but I became frustrated with all the glitched terrain, and got bored with it.
I was messing around with the GLU- Tac Assault Rifle with 2 damage mods, a complex extender, and some armor/armor repairs.
I feel like it SHOULD comfortably be fitting inside that meta that you are talking about with long range lethality but slower RoF. Its just that it kicks so hard. Just thinking about it now, I'm wondering if crouching helps...?
I have found MD to be a pretty dangerous weapon, but they are going to be changing with the advent of friendly fire. MD are my go-to choice, but like you said, they are a squad support weapon. It is harder to get as many kills with them because of the slow rate of fire, people will see your targets and help to finish the job you start. |
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