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.

All suit comparisons are done using Complex shield extenders, and enhanced armor plates with the assumption ferroscale complex will be the same as enhanced, it could be lower but the different in EHP between suits will be the same as if it was complex.

So I did some number crunching with a Logistics Caldari and Gallente, actually all of the suits except scouts, and assuming the ferroscale at Complex level is EXACTLY the same as an Enhanced armor plate just without the speed penalty, 87 HP 20 CPU/ 6 PG, I got some very promising numbers. I took a Gallente Logistics and a Caldari logistics WITH the 25% shield bonus active, and the Gallente logistics came out with 1033 EHP while the Caldari logistics came out with 1174 EHP, this was using ALL slots for defense modules. I think this is really, really great this is balanced very well, Sort of ill explain why later, the reason this is balanced is because although the Caldari has 130 more EHP, the Gallente has CPU/PG to spare for equipment and the Gallente logistics has 1 more equipment slot, so they sacrifice that extra slot of defense for an equipment; the Caldari logistics ignores this equipment slot for extra defense/damage, if I remove the Shield extender the Caldari has 1083 EHP and CPU/PG for a damage modifier, and/or for equipment slots.

Sort of: I think it is a little way to much for the Logistic Caldari and Gallente to have an EHP of over 1000 and of course all suits will receive a EHP increase between 100-200, but with the current damage on weapons people will be hard to kill, but of course without proper numbers to crunch this is all speculation and I could be wrong. One good thing about this speculation is that even if the numbers were lower, like the complex having the EHP of a basic armor module it would still keep the same balance as above which is great.

Sort of: The Amarr Assault and logistics ak.0 with these numbers comes out lower in EHP than the Caldari and Gallente, so the suit needs a buff, the Minmatar suits comes out lower in EHP than the Caldari and Gallente but this is expected because the Minmatar is the fastest so the trade off for speed/defense shines for them now.

Sort of: The Gallente and Caldari logistics suits come out on top, EHP wise, versus their assault variants. The Gallente and Caldari assault suits both come out a little lower than the Logistics suit variant. This is not true for the Amarr Logistics/Assault and the Minmatar Logistics/Assault, so I propose a buff to the Amarr Assault/Logistics suits in EHP, or an extra High/Low slot, and a nerf to the Gallente and Caldari logistics suits in EHP immediately after/or with the deployment of Uprising 1.2 this will balance all of the suits

Sort of: All suits NEED to get a passive armor repair rate, to balance out the total repair rate of all suits for example the Caldari repair the most shield at the fastest rate, Minmatar second, Amarr third, and Gallente last; so the armor repair rate should be inverse to this putting the Gallente as the fastest and the Caldari as the slowest. This will also help mitigate the fact that armor tanking suits will still be disadvantaged when it comes to repping, since shield tanks will still be able to out tank armor tanks in terms of shield regeneration because of how fast it recharges with no investment, while a armor tank who wants to stay active in battle would need to find a logistic with a repair tool, a triage nanohive, or sacrifice their HP for armor repping thus losing the overall balance. Or a quick and dirty option is to reverse the shield repping to armor for the Gallente and Amarr and adding a small shield repair bonus to them, and a small armor repair bonus to Minmatar and Gallente.

P.S: I ran a total defense fit on the heavy suit, using this and it came out at an outstanding 1371 EHP, this is 300~ EHP above any suit I can make with the same optimization using ferroscale with basic armor module stats, this is great for the heavies you guys should be excited for this!

One more thing, please make sure the ferroscale plates are not higher in CPU/PG than the shield modules, this will severely limit the new possibilities of suit building that these plates will bring and put the shield tanks as the most diverse class yet again, also if everything I said is correct about the ferroscales buff weapon damage by the average ratio of EHP increase across the board. Also have the Reactive plates use both armor repair and armor plating skills, or armor repair skill only, so people still have to spec into armor repping to use these.

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'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.

What he said.
In EVE larger sig means you're easier to hit.

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

Can you confirm whether the Ferroscale and the Reactive Plates will be available for vehicles or dropsuits or both?

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.

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.

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.

You're able to fit a basic/militia repairer and that will solve that problem instantly.

The problem is that at the higher levels, where you get about 12.5 HP/s if you have a decent buffer, shield regen is over twice as fast.
Also, the Caldari Logistics automatically self-repairs armour.

I agree with boosting the armour repairers, and you're quite right in saying that they're weak (an questionable) at the lower levels. Despite getting 300 or so armour (and notably shield suits at the same tier can break 400) it takes upwards of two minutes to repair that with the basic or enhanced repairers.
At the high end, it's better, but they're still outpaced and it takes a while.

Let's take an example.

You have an armour suit with two basic plates and a complex repairer. You have 340 armour HP, being repaired at 5 HP/s.
This will take 68 seconds, over a minute, to recharge. You are also slowed down by about 6%.
Alternatively, you could have a shield suit. With three extenders, you get 408 shield HP. You are not slowed down. You have a small delay before recharge, about 4 seconds, but you recharge at 25 HP/s. With the shield delay added on, this takes 20 seconds to recharge.

The armour suit in this example has less HP, is slower, and regenerates slower, for the small advantage of having 'constant repair'. In the time it takes for shields to start regenerating, that's worth a mere 20 HP.

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.

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.

so you guys aren't going to buff the repair modules? So like won't self repairing plates be better?

Complex armor reps should heal 10hp/sec not 5
put a stacking thing on them so people don't put 4 on and get 40 hp/sec

So far the OP has given a nearly flawless description of shield vs armor in the 3 pages.

1. At first I thought that 25 HP constant regen was a little too much but then I remembered this: Caldari Assault suit with cpu upgrade, 2 complex regulators, and 1 complex shield recharger. Base Armor rep of 4, 7, and 10 is acceptable.

2. Stamina penalty means nothing once you're already engaging an enemy. Have it be 2%, 4%, and 6% movement penalty.

OR

3. Increase plate bonus according to the suggestion of 65, 97, and 130.

4. Mandatory.

5. Not necessary, Gallente suits were actually supposed to be initially slower for having higher base armor :P

6. No, doing this will make the overall gameplay seem a little frustrating on all suits for having to back away from combat too long.

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.

damage mods aren't AS good as you think. Most good players use shield extenders and skip damage mods entirely. Defense in DUST is worth more than a few more DPS unless you're talking about some very specific weapons.

After i play my heavy alt more and skill him up we can talk. I can already say that HMG + Militia Heavy suit often gets wtfpwned by newbie suits. the EHP is laughably low.

the primary concern about heavies is that approaching 1300 HP requires at least 2 complex plates and a crippling speed penalty. Further, without completely maxing out both armor and the shield upgrade skill the base health of a heavy is less than a tanked caldari medium suit.

Before anyone says defensive roles, that's a s**tty copout. sentinels are defensive. Heavies are heavy. Further, the speed penalty is crippling when the defender is so pathetically easily outflanked.

until CCP does 64v64 or higher matches people do not have the manpower to park 4 or more fatties on a cap point.

In ambush fatties are sitting ducks.

to a lesser extent so are gallente and amarr medium/assault suits.

Ask any tactical coordinator in the USMC:

Mobility kills.

I find it particularly depressing that we have shields being generally superior (though not as drastically superior) in EvE as well for very similar reasons.

Off-topic stuff