Hmm, the fragment effect is a cool one and should be added.
Also, so what if they dual tank?
We can dual tank too.
We can also fit damage mods.

For dropsuits, one thing to consider with a speed increase is that, in combination with lots of low slots on armour tanking suits, the modules that increase speed would now make speed tanking easier as well. Would a fast Gallente scout benefit out of proportion? A Gallente prototype scout has 4 low slots and 5.5 m/s move, 7.6 m/s sprint right now.

Hey CCP FoxFour, its time for you to shine!
We know you're a Gallente bro, push the people responsible to balance!

Me and Arkena promise, if you manage to make them balance armor and shield, we will stop calling you SoxFour.

So you compare speed penalty vs sig radius?
In what world is it fair?

You suggested fixes would keep shields superior.

I'm disappointed by the lack of feedback, particularly from shield tankers.
Do I need a more provocative title? What about "LOL DUST SUX SHIELDS R SO GUD"?

Good news ... it only took CCP ~ 10 years to start trying to balance Armor vs. Shields in EVE. ... hopefully we'll see a response here "Soon(tm)".

I won't give my input until I am online and you include PG/CPU costs of said modules
You totally glanced over an area where armor is favorable

*facepalm*
The OP is using a rigged set of data where the thesis is being supported but if the OP was to include PG/CPU costs then the data would be more wholesome and thus be a valid statement (given that the argument still holds up which I suspect won't)

You can't purposefully leave out data and make claims.

If we neglect the fact that there has never been a sighting of Godzilla ever in human history, and show nothing but movie footage, Godzilla exists to this day!

Pretty much.
Though I highly doubt armour will ever be 'king'.

nothing wrong with armor its a different play style don't stack armor plates its not worthwhile

shields lack the ability to put on damage mods
armor lacks the ability to put on profile dampeners and scan enhancers

shields are better against burst damage from snipers
armor is better against small arms fire

shields are more solo oriented since people with armor repairs don't gain much
armor are more team oriented since people with armor repairs can heal them

shields lose shields that's it
armor still have shields to come back online as well as their armor

Weapons with significantly higher shield damage than armour:

Laser Rifle, Scrambler Rifle, Flux Grenade.

Weapons with slightly higher shield damage than armour:

Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Railgun, Blaster, Plasma Cannon, Forge Gun.

Why do people always forget that Hybrid weapons actually deal more shield than armour damage? It isn't a huge imbalance, but it's still an advantage to armour tanking, particularly when the armour tankers also have higher base HP to go along with that (slight) edge in resistance against almost all the common weapons on the battlefield.

---

More seriously though, the core mechanics of the infantry side of DUST greatly favour shield-tanking, while HAVs at least (not entirely sure about other vehicles) favour armour in the game's current state.

Flaylock is around 150%, as well as all other explosives.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic due to the HAV imbalance, but I don't think that alone is the solution.

I am going to be honest, I learnt a fair bit reading this post. I actually asked Arkena to make this post as he was explaining armor tanking to me in IRC.

I can't really comment on this very much though as it is not an area I work on. I can and will say however that those that do work on this stuff have read this thread. It actually made it into our weekly community report today that gets sent around to everyone working on DUST.

Thank you very much for this post. :D

What I don't get is why don't shield extenders increase your sig radius? Shields should make you easy to spot on the minimap. The bigger your shield the harder it is to hide.

Also proposed numbers...

Standard Armor rep +4 hp/sec
Enhanced +8 hp/sec
Complex +12 hp/sec

Also why did CCP pick bonuses out of a hat for dropsuits? Eve online has been going through a huge overhaul of all ships bonuses. Yet in dust they can't even get that right?

do agree

armor currently is massively unfair
it would make more sense if fights went on longer so the delay was of more use to armor tankers atm they dont do its pointless

Armor reps need a large buff poss upto 10 for the plex
Armor penalty needs to go find somthing else which does not affect your aim and turn speeds, i dont mind run speed but i better get a larger buffer
Modules need higher hp than current, not by much just abit to help out modules

think there will be more med slot modules coming so that will balance out in time

We'll be addressing armor tanking with multiple updates going forward:
- New armor modules will be released with the Uprising 1.2 patch:
- Ferroscale plates (smaller HP buff but no speed penalty)
- Reactive plates (small HP buff and minor repair rate buff - plates that heal themselves! )
- We'll be reducing the movement speed penalty slightly on armor plates in a future hot-fix.
- Giving proper racial bonuses! The reason the Gallente don't get (the very obvious) bonus to movement speed when armor tanking at the moment is because we use a tag system to confer bonuses to items and currently there is no way to exclude an item from getting a bonus. The only way to do this would be to tag EVERYTHING in the game that isn't the Gallente suit with a tag, which is error-prone and likely to ensure we unintentionally screw up some unrelated skill at some point. This will be corrected as soon as is feasible.

I've seen a couple posts that say 'a few weeks' now... So probably sometime mid July.

1371 EHP for a heavy? that's pretty bad by comparison. why?

in short, the basic heavy suit by design has 800 EHP. having an increase of 500 ehp sounds like alot but, when compared to other classes having 1000EHP the extra 300 is not appealing.

how so?

a shield tanking caldari with an EHP of 1000, using and AR vs. a heavy with 1400~ EHP and an HMG. sounds like the heavy has an advantage, right? think again. that caldari is 1000 EHP of high mobility, maneuverability, and evasiveness.

the heavy suits slow turn speed and movement, in addition to the low accuracy, damage (in general but especially against shields) and recoil of the hmg means the heavy gets out classed.

when you factor in head shots that extra 300~400 EHP the heavy gets doesnt mean anything. so, not only is the suit comparably harder to hit, with the hmg, but now it requires almost as many bullets as another heavy.


now when you factor in that the other suits can use cover more effectively than a heavy, and chip away that extra 300 EHP is not very appealing.

what heavies really need is resistance to damage taken, supplemented with a limited increase in EHP.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=81725

We've considered this, but the problem is that right now there is no good feedback for damage resistance in the game. Adding this without all the necessary UI improvements would likely just end up with the majority of players thinking their weapons suck instead of understanding they're just less effective against certain targets. The current target intel is a very barebones implementation. It needs to be a lot better.

Last but not least. Repair rate vs recharge rate.
This isnt much of a problem in my opinion. Shield is expensive in CPU and PG. Plates are less expansive. Native recharge rate for shield is superior and should remain that way. Because if you fix armor plates so that people use complex, they will have space to fit more reppers, or continue to rely on teammates to heal them.

I really dont think armor users should EVER be able to reach the efficiency of shield recharge. Otherwise, balance will go the other way. Also, it makes sense that an energy based defense reloads faster. I asked a long time for buffs to repair modules. And in my opinion, the bonus given by the skill, allows to reach a decent amount per complex repper.
Also, let's not forget even armor tankers have shield and its regen.

So, maybe it could be buffed. but not by much. Like plates, set a linear progression : 2/4/6 per sec.
To get more buff, use specialty\racial bonuses.

- Main reason why Armor is inferior is because there is no any kind of ewar in DUST. Free mid slots is gold because you can put more ewar and counter ewar modules.

- The game will be whole another thing when webs are introduced. Armor will be able to slow down enemies.
- Damps: Shorten the range of your enemies weapons
- ECM: Offuscate the vision of you enemy. (not completely)
- Painter: Make enemie's sig bigger so you can make more dmg to him

I think those modules should be introduced into DUST too. It would give a lot of variety and strengthen the armor role in the game.

- But some drastic balance changes should be done to the current layout.
Like: Add more HP buffer to armor compared to shield.
Add more speed to shield compared to armor.

Resistances are also a must to be added in the game. This will have 2 effects. There will be Logis outrepping dps. Which imo can add some nice tactics into the game.
2nd one is That it will bring armor more to a balance compared to shield. Armor will have more HP and when u add resistances it will be more EHP overall (effective hit points).

EVE has a quite nice balance atm. DUST should take some ideas from it.

omg the armor tankers are getting a buff lol this is epic ccp if this is your plans just take the caldari class out its complete crap...not even a challenge for me to pop. armor tanks are the only tanks in dust that are even remotely worth it that is why all the old caldari pros have switched out to gallente tanks ccp pay attention. not saying amor is good i think these improvements are awesome and may even make your tanks more than an expensive coffin. but you are incorrect in thinking as far as tanks go you have the worst of it. i have been running tanks and av in dust 514 for over a year. tanks in general are under powered. i hope armor gets some serious buffs as then there will be ONE good type of HAV in dust.

Gun off the field?

No.

Logi's have their place and their Rep tool is just as good.
They can equip rifles as well and aggress the target, just as anyone else.

SUPPORT is necessary.

Run without it, and you will complain about the mechanic.

Those without support, fail. Horribly.

Well then this is a point where we disagree! We're both after the same thing, balance, but it seems we are looking at different ways to accomplish the same thing. Allow me to continue my efforts:

For starters, know that part of my basis for this argument does come from the EVE universe (in EVE, passive regeneration is very slow but can made very powerful by dedicating nearly every slot to it, and it never stops passively regenerating even if empty). That alone is probably enough to make a DEV skip over it without offering any consideration to it (Hey, can we get that EVE logo on top of the DUST 514 logo gone as well? We don't want EVE influencing our totally unrelated game, right?) /rant

Okay for comparison's sake here I'm just going to compare Gallente and Caldari equipment at the prototype level.

• Proto Caldari Assault ck.0:
• 210 Shields @ 25hp/s
• 120 Armor
• Delay: 5.0s (8.0 depleted)


• Proto Gallente Assault gk.0:
• 120 Shields @ 20hp/s
• 210 Armor
• Delay: 7.0s (10.0 depleted)

So we see here it will take a maximum of 16.4 seconds for the Caldari Assault to return to full shields before any modules or skills are factored in. It will take the Gallente suit a maximum of 16 seconds to return to full shields before any modules or skills are factored in. So at this level, the Caldari suit is less than half a second slower to full shields, but is getting a bonus of 90 extra hp in that time (that's not really small).

But we know that the Gallente isn't shield tanking so if we move to armor modules we see the Complex repairs 5hp/s. Most fits that I know of tend to use 2 to mitigate the speed penalty and to allow for better field sustainability (in small scale firefights). So at 10hp/s with a maximum of 209 armor to fill (210 would result in death of course) means it takes the Gallente suit 20.9 (rounds to 21) seconds to take its "tank" from empty to full. Nearly 5 seconds longer than the Caldari suit takes, but it has to use two modules to do it and invest a heavy amount of SP.

So let's throw some Complex Shield extenders on the Caldari suit. We'll go all out and throw 4 on for the sake of pure math goodness. That's (4*66) + 210 = 474 shield HP. Once shields start regenerating, that means it will take 18.96 seconds (round to 19) +8 delay (27s total) for the Caldari tank to go from empty to full. That's 6 seconds slower than the Gallente suit, but a total of 264 extra HP restored. And at no cost to the shield tank. It doesn't have to think twice about stacking shield extenders because there is no penalty. If we start adding armor plating to the Gallente suit, we not only have to consider how much longer it's now going to take us to get our tank back to full power, but also how much slower we'll be moving.

So let's say that Complex shield extender reduces shield recharge rate by -1 per extender. That gives it a 21hp/s recharge rate with 4 extenders (still higher than Gallente shield recharge by 1 and over 2x as much as a Gallente using 2 complex armor reps). It extends the time required to go from 0 tank to full 474 hp only slightly. Originally the time was 27 seconds, now it would be 30.5. Not a huge margin in my opinion, but enough to make a shield tanker consider taking a shield recharge module instead of an extra extender.

Is it a perfect idea? I wouldn't say so. But I do think it might be worth considering. And if I missed any important points here please feel free to present them, I deal more with vehicles than dropsuits!

It's worth noting that the Caldari shield tanker, if this change were to go through, could experience something like this:

3 Extenders + 1 Recharger

He'd be sacrificing one extender so his sHP would drop from 474 to 408. In return, however, his Passive Regen would improve from 22sHP/s (25 - 3) to 31sHP/s (22 * 1.42 = 31.24). This would give him a zero-to-full recharge time of ~21 seconds (408/31) + 8 = 21.16. That's about the same timeframe it takes the Gallente suit with 2 complex armor repairers just to get to 210 HP, and he's getting 408 out of it.

So again, I'm not going to say it's an end all perfect fix (or that it's even remotely close), but we have more armor modules coming out that could help narrow the gap, and the point is that this gives shield extenders an actual drawback where they currently have none.

This also accomplishes the effect of varying shield tanks. Do you go for the extra buffer to give yourself the edge in small combat? Or do you go for the improved sustainability/reliability of quicker regeneration? Again, these ideas could be integrated into the Caldari/Minmatar dropsuits (respectively) to give them slightly increased racial flavor and is a throwback to EVE lore and mechanics as well, without being an exact copy.

You do realize that shields are currently capable of this without adding a passive regeneration penalty to extenders? I mean, I have no idea if 3 complex extenders and a complex recharger even fit on a Caldari Assault Suit (I'd guess they don't considering huge CPU requirements) but it's just for a mathematical example. To provide what the same situation would be WITHOUT my proposed change:

Caldari Full Buff (Pre):
Shields: 474 @ 25 hp/s = 27 seconds to full

Caldari Full Buff (Post):
Shields: 474 @ 21 hp/s = 30.57 seconds to full

So with the added drawback it'd take an extra ~4 seconds for Caldari shields to regen.

Caldari Buffergen (Pre):
Shields 408 @ 35.5 hp/s = 19.49 seconds to full

Caldari Buffergen (Post):
Shields 408 @ 31 hp/s = 21.16 seconds to full

So there is an extra ~2 seconds for the shields to regen.

Not a huge nerf in the slightest, just something that sort of helps "bring it in line". Like I said we've got new armor modules incoming and CCP is aware that there is a slight discrepancy between the two so we may see a slight armor buff in the future. I am more trying to make it so shields aren't as much "free hp at no cost". In EVE shield extenders increase your signature radius making you a much easier target to track and hit. Armor plates increase your mass, which reduce your BOOSTED speed, making it more difficult for you to control the range of your engagement. Both have drawbacks to consider, and some may be less desirable in certain times than others.

Sorry if I wasn't making it quite clear, but I am not trying to suggest a shield tank buff.

Here's a quick MS paint mockup.

Top bar: relative damage of current weapon on target. Current weapon is a laser rifle, it is showing much better damage to shield.

Middile/bottom bar: Shield/armor health. The target has 2x more shield than armor, but with the current intel, you wouldn't know this from the health bars. Much larger length on top shows that we are looking at a shield tank. Player then can know, "Okay, I can expect my weapon will take longer to go through the top bar rather than the bottom."

You mean you'd rather scan the screen and read numbers and do the math to think about your weapons damage than have a color coded hueristic to more intuitively understand you and your target's relative strengths? I think numbers being better is debateable (at least on the infantry level). Also with some players, screen resolution becomes a design challenge.

2/3) There i feel you misunderstood me. Like a lot. The whole point, the main idea of my previous reply is to enhance the efficiency of armor oriented suits to use armor modules. And same goes with shield.

Regarding base HP of the plates. I merely use a roughly x2 multiplier compared to what shield module gives you at the same tier. So yes, i lowered the std one so it would suit that idea.

And regarding the penalty, this suggestion only applies with the other suggestion to add specific bonuses to the basic frame skills depending on the race. (copy pasting here)

- Gallente racial bonus : 10% reduction to armor penalties per level. (You would reach 6% penalty for a complex plate.)
- Amarr racial bonus : 5% reduction to armor penalties per level and 5% reduction to heat build up per level (9% penalty)

So in the end, gallente, the most armor oriented suit gets a way lower penalty that it does now (6% for complex) and with more base HP. 6% penalty for 148 HP. How does that make armor tanking worse ?

Regarding ferroplates now. when i said they shouldnt give much armor, it was in the same idea. If a complex ferroscale gives 90 HP without any kind of penalty ? What do you think shield tanker will do ? Both shield and armor tank. And in my opinion, buffing HP with a defense type that isnt originally the suits purpose should either bring you a very limited advantage, or come with a bigger penalty than the specialized suit. eg, minmatar assault using plates. It happens often in EVE.

You could still have the target indication text. I"m not saying get rid of it. Also your suggestion (show info being the main source of resistance intel) wouldn't be helpful in that it doesn't fix the problem of real-time target intel. Anyway, with regard to the 'over 100% damge issue' that's where the heuristic design comes in. I specifically color coded the bars as a way to suggest that. A ruby red (the same color as regular health bar) indicates 100% (or +/- 5%) damage, a darker red is <95% and a pinkish red is >105%. Then with that and the relative length of the bar on either side of the line, you'd get to see how much more damage your weapon does to shield relative to armor. If the bar on the left looks 50% longer than the bar on the right (120% shield to 80% armor damage) then you know that your weapon will be 50% more effective to shield.

This idea seemed pretty intuitive to me, but then again, I'm a visual/charts kind of person rather than a tables kind of person.

No, you're completely misunderstanding my post. Adding a shield recharge penalty to all shield extenders can in no way make shield tanking any better than it currently is. It only makes it take longer for their shields to reach full power. It is NOT intended as "the fix" to make shield tanking and armor tanking equal. I have already stated that....

I'm trying to understand your last point. It sounds like you are saying that if every item is tag "NOT GALLENTE" then you would be able to do racial bonuses. If this is the case, wouldn't the inverse be true as well? That is you can tag Gallente items "IS GALLENTE" and exclude any item that does not have that tag?

Yes, the fitting requirements of shields in DUST are currently rather high. Although I'm sure I'll hear rage about this, let me make a comparison using like-EVE modules.

Small Shield Extender II:
263 Shield HP
+2m Sig Rad penalty'
23 CPU, 3 PG

100mm Reinforced Steel Plates II:
300 Armor HP
+37,500kg mass addition
11 CPU, 6 PG

First things we notice are that the armor plates take about half of the CPU, but double the powergrid, and that they give slightly more HP than the closest related shield module. The reason it gives a bit more HP than shields is because shields constantly regenerate in EVE so adding extra shield HP also increases not only how much your shields regen each second but also the length of time they have to naturally regen before depleting, so it evens out a bit.

As for the drawbacks, the 2m sig penalty on the Extender makes your ship easier to track. The mass addition from the armor plate reduces your speed while boosted (3m/s under Afterburner and 9m/s under MicroWarp Drive before skills are factored in [NOTE: numbers taken from a Corax class Destroyer]). The gap in speed becomes much much more obvious with the higher tier armor equipment on heavier ships. Actually, it is because of this that I support armor modules not reducing your speed directly but having a more significant impact on your stamina. This feels like it fits more with EVE to me and a lot of people seem to support the idea as well.

Just something to think about.

Absolutely not. Armor and Structure only regenerate with an armor/structure repair module equipped (and unlike in DUST, the module requires capacitor management to utilize, it isn't free passive armor regen).

Basically this offers you the choice of getting an extremely high armor buffer tank in the hopes that you can defeat your opponent before they can break down your wall (with no capacitor draw from a repper) or you can choose to go active armor tank which gives you less EHP but the ability to repair your damage both during and after battle (assuming you survive) but it takes a lot of capacitor to run.

EVE ships can indeed "dodge" bullets though not quite through the same mechanism as in a FPS. A tracking formula is utilized that includes:

1) Ship Signature Radius
2) Weapon Signature Resolution
3) Distance to Target + Target speed (Transversal Velocity)
4) Weapon Tracking speed in radians per second

It is referred to as "speed/sig" tanking when you attempt to "dodge" enemy fire by combining as high of a speed as you can with as low of a signature radius as you can. This works best for smaller ships, such as frigates, versus larger ships such as battleships. Think of this as a Light suit vs Heavy suit.

they can still achieve this, however not when repping has no impact in battle

the only impact in Dust is buffer, then how fast you can get that buffer back and get back into battle

then we just add on the penalty for armor

I would be happy to see solo players using more shield and group players using more armor

but currently there is just no advantage for groups to even use Armor and rely on logi etc

i want to see armor squads and shield squads

Is there a time period set for 1.2's release?

[FEEDBACK] Shield > Armor and detailed explanation why: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=83983&find=unread
Update: New armor modules being introduced in the next patch should address this issue.

Next week is the Dragon Boat festival in Shanghai and our Shanghai office will be on haitus from June 10-12. We will resume our weekly updates on June 20.

Thank you for your interest and support in DUST 514.

I agree with most that have been said in this post but i just want to point out something:
- We can't forget that by only improving the Armor Modules we are also buffing the Shield based Dropsuits because they can also wear the Armor Modules.
So, we definitely need some other type of Bonus to Armor Suits.

I used logical numbers.
I assumed ferroscale between shield and armor.
I assumed reactive the same as shield, and I assumed in HP/s:
1/2/3.
Still doesn't fix many many problems, like Caldari having more eHP and regeneration than armor because armor has to give up eHP for a mere 5hp/s.

No no, he's right.
Shields still benefit more from it.

2/3/4 is a bit too optimistic considering that reps are:
2/3/5.

the idea is to create more skilled players, not cater to wimps. if, it only takes 3 extra bullets to kill a heavy than to kill a meduim frame there is no point to using it.


likewise, with armor tankers with all the penalties and draw backs, if it you only can take 3-4 more bullents whats the point to using it?

if armor is fixed so it is as good as shields... I must stress I do not want them to be identical... ever...

then there is no reason to not have a handheld infantry shield transporter to boost caldari/minmatar dropsuits in the field.

I wonder how their direct and splash interact with the extra damage dealt due to head shots and back shots.
Combined with the presumed bonus damage to armor this could account for the behavior we're seeing (and really be a factor in overall balance).

Right.
Using a prototype Gallente logistics suit with 493 armour, 90 shields, I can confirm that a direct hit from a fused locus grenade, not the M2 contact, will one shot me. At approximately 1 metre away, they will take me down to approximately 100 armour.
Using the M2 contact, it's 1 shotting at about a metre away. I didn't test further than that on the protosuit because it was expensive, and the results were fairly conclusive.

EDIT: The advanced variant, with about 400 armour, was one shotted. At 1 metre, it got OHKO'd about half the time, otherwise leaving it with a sliver of armour.
M2 contacts wrecked it.

Using an advanced Minmatar medium frame with 382 shields and 90 armour, a direct hit from a fused locus grenade was survivable at low shields, generally sub 100, but never breaking into armour. 1 metre away it was 200, 250 shields generally
The M2 variant 1 shotted directly, and at 1 metre took the shields down to practically zero or high armour.

This wasn't a completely fair test, because I was comparing an advanced suit to a prototype suit, but that was in armour's favour and it STILL came out inferior.

This is a depressing result, and I'm not looking forward to isk contact grenades.

if shield tankers werent able to use sheild regulators, and Armor tankers were able to use Armor repers then that could make a difference. also, armor repers need to heal at least +2 hp more and the skill needs to be 5% efficacy per lvl.


lets face it, armor tankers still get shields that recharge pretty fast anyway.
shield tankers on the other hand just have thier shields and once those are agone their dead in the water. but being able to replenish 500 shields in less than 2 seconds, while the armor tanker has to wait 10seconds with a movement penalty is abit harsh a contrast.