Numbers aside, I think this would be a step in the right direction. Check it out Iron Wolf.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86590&find=unread

Well I know there is in theory something very wrong between armor and shields and its a bit lopsided favoring shields but right now the tools required to correct this has not made it into the game yet.

Again, one hundred times ovr - Armor should be first and foremost a resistance type of tanking - not a raw HP type of tanking.

If you're just going to copy paste what makes shield tanking shield tanking over to armor, why even bother? It's unimaginative.

Armor tanking should be constant low reps, damage resistance, moderate HP.

Shield tanking is delayed high reps, high HP, no resistance.

It makes them different and different players will find different situations in which they are useful.

Note CPUGRIDHPHP/sMove
Basic Ferroscale Plate 1222500
Enhanced FP 2374000
Complex FP 34136500%
Basic Reactive Plate 103442-1%
Enhanced RP 248653-2%
Complex RP 3614874-4%
Basic Armor Plate 101650-3%
Enhanced AP 206870-5%
Complex AP 30121250-7%
Basic Shield Extender 1832200
Enhanced SE 3663300
Complex SE 54116600
Basic Armor Repairer 201040
Enhanced AR 355060
Complex AR 4511080


that would probably work out, rather than what the crystal ball stats are but that's just imho

While I think your idea would be interesting if implemented correctly, everyone here knows the likelihood of that happening in any reasonable timeframe.

Again, one hundred times ovr - Armor should be first and foremost a resistance type of tanking - not a raw HP type of tanking.

If you're just going to copy paste what makes shield tanking shield tanking over to armor, why even bother? It's unimaginative.

Armor tanking should be constant low reps, damage resistance, moderate HP.

Shield tanking is delayed high reps, high HP, no resistance.

It makes them different and different players will find different situations in which they are useful.

I think a Ferroscale plate should be more on the level of equipping a Reper and Plate of one level lower than what level the ferroscale is.
For example basic would be the quality of a (non-existant) sub-basic plate + repper
Advanced would be the quality of a basic plate + basic repper.
Note that this quality includes PG + CPU costs and the move speed penalty in the combination as well.
To that notion the repair values would be:
1% - Basic
2% - Advanced
3%- Complex

I think a Ferroscale plate should be more on the level of equipping a Reper and Plate of one level lower than what level the ferroscale is.
For example basic would be the quality of a (non-existant) sub-basic plate + repper
Advanced would be the quality of a basic plate + basic repper.
Note that this quality includes PG + CPU costs and the move speed penalty in the combination as well.
To that notion the repair values would be:
1% - Basic
2% - Advanced
3%- Complex

Note CPUGRIDHPHP/sMove
Basic Ferroscale Plate 1222500
Enhanced FP 2374000
Complex FP 34136500%
Basic Reactive Plate 103442-1%
Enhanced RP 248653-2%
Complex RP 3614874-4%
Basic Armor Plate 101650-3%
Enhanced AP 206870-5%
Complex AP 30121250-7%
Basic Shield Extender 1832200
Enhanced SE 3663300
Complex SE 54116600
Basic Armor Repairer 201040
Enhanced AR 355060
Complex AR 4511080


that would probably work out, rather than what the crystal ball stats are but that's just imho

Hmm, maybe there will be skills to affect/enhance the performance of these new plates.

They've talked about giving Gallente (or armor tankers) some bonus to speed penalties on the armor plates before, right? Or was I just imagining it?

I'd assume that would make regular plates more appealing to gallente because they could fit higher hp with no penalty. Maybe Amarr would have some similar but lesser bonus to armor speed penalties? Balancing in context of that might be a little different. I'd want to know if there are other "balance" changes incoming that might impact armor tanking before taking up the sharpie to fix the new modules.

That said, the reactive plates seem really hard to like. I'd think the fitting reqs might be higher (like maybe on the order of standard plate fitting + standard reppers fitting-wise). However, I'd think the penalty on the hp/reps wouldn't be that high. Ferroscale is a bit tougher.

It's difficult to juggle the balance for all this in my head in comparison to shields because suits can fit both modules anyway.

They did, but you know what they said. It isn't currently possible, so pretty much "HEY ARMOR TANKS KEEP GETTING DESTROYED IN BATTLE WHILE WE FIGURE THIS S**T OUT"

They've talked about giving Gallente (or armor tankers) some bonus to speed penalties on the armor plates before, right? Or was I just imagining it?

I'd assume that would make regular plates more appealing to gallente because they could fit higher hp with no penalty. Maybe Amarr would have some similar but lesser bonus to armor speed penalties? Balancing in context of that might be a little different. I'd want to know if there are other "balance" changes incoming that might impact armor tanking before taking up the sharpie to fix the new modules.

That said, the reactive plates seem really hard to like. I'd think the fitting reqs might be higher (like maybe on the order of standard plate fitting + standard reppers fitting-wise). However, I'd think the penalty on the hp/reps wouldn't be that high. Ferroscale is a bit tougher.

It's difficult to juggle the balance for all this in my head in comparison to shields because suits can fit both modules anyway.

Throwing together a Spreadsheet you can view it here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqHgiF-KXQZXdGdrMFA0NW1uOU9ueUQ3YmtLRFVqcHc#gid=0

Reactive plates are basically shield extenders (low HP, self repairing), but with less HP, and movement penalty. Needs to have as much HP as their shield extender counterpart, or else you're just better off using shield extenders.
On the plus side, shields are more costly to fit than the new plates, so even though shields are superior to reactive plates, the plates are easier to fit. I can see how that can be useful.

Ferroscale plates need to have more HP than their shield extender counterparts, they may not have movement penalty (neither do shields), but they still can't repair themselves unlike shields, so they should have more HP to make up for that.

The fitting costs compared to the regular armor plates are terrible for the reactives and ferroscales; they have to sacrifice HP to get what little advantages they possess, increased fitting cost on top of that is unnecessary.

How are CCP so bad at balancing? this is just common sense.

The new plates are meh, and verging on useless. But that has more to do with the inherent issues in shields vs. armor.

The Ferroscale would be nice, but 60 hp at the complex level is bad, should be 80-85. Having lower HP than Shield Extenders while still suffering from 2 of the 3 drawbacks of armor is pretty inexcusable.

As for Complex Reactive Plates, here:

2x Complex Reactive Plates
CPU: 72
PG: 32
HP: 90
Rep: 4hp/s
Movement penalty: 8%

1 Enhanced Armor Plate and 1 Complex Armor Repairer
CPU: 65
PG: 17
HP: 87
Rep: 5hp/s
Movement penalty: 5%

Pretty laughable. Increase them to 60-70 HP, IMO.

Another good point.

Just theoretically fit a Caldari Logi (proto) with 5 Complex Shield Extenders and 4 Complex Ferroscale Plates.

Certain skills at level five allow the following stats:

5HP/s passive armor repair (caldari medium frame skill)
20HP/s passive shield recharge (Dropsuit base)
670 Shields
352 Armor
No movement penalty

Starting to think this game will never be balanced being as the new plates just gave shield tankers more options to put in their utility lows and the armor tankers are just going to be worse in the whole because of MOVEMENT PENALTY - STILL.

This is a real problem, the new plate must be High slot, to prevent Shield tankers from gain the major benefit from the new plate.
And speed reduct. need to be reworked

and if we change what armor do and add drawback to Shield?
Example:

Adding armor a % of damage reduction and giving shield module gaining a (low) % of more damage

PROTO ARMOR PLATE 25% of damage red and 10% speed red

PROTO SHIELD EXT stat's the same but add a 5% of the damage taken.

If armor took away from stamina and shields increased profile, I'd say that's a fair trade.

Thats another good thing, from my point of view Scan profile is not a big cons, couse if you see him first but cant kill him due to his shield this dont solve anything

But here comes the main problem.

Armor need a module for regain what is lost in a gunfight. and thats is the biggest CONS because the rep Module go in the same slot as armor mod.And the Rep rate with TWO PROTO REP is worse than a BASE recharge Dropsuit
And simply add 3/4 shot of AR and gaining weakness that armor has simply is not worth

I think a creative shield extender penalty would be a penalty to not only signature radius but increased delay in shield recharge.

The more extenders you shove on yourself the longer it takes to kick back in from damage.

I think a creative shield extender penalty would be a penalty to not only signature radius but increased delay in shield recharge.

The more extenders you shove on yourself the longer it takes to kick back in from damage.

and because regulators fit on low slots and the complex uses only what 3 grid? especially when you consider the caldari logi gets to what like 4.5 sec delay with one complex regulator? People get carried by that gear all day..

Essentially what it boils down to is that Shield recharge on a Logi is 20 HP/s so after the 6 second delay it starts recharging. Thereby, it will recharge 100 HP in ten seconds. For armor to compete, it has to be able to restore 10 HP/s. This balances them out at 10 seconds, but Shield still maintains superiority in time between gunfire.

Problem with that is that armor repairs even in battle, so if the person is a bad shot, all the shields in the world won't help.

So, we need to buffer armor out so that it's worth having the slow repair. I.e. more HP. If armor tankers are king at absorbing bullets, then the movement penalty is negligible. Unfortunately, most of the issue with shield vs armor tanking revolves around the suits themselves and certain races (Gallente) receive useless ads bonuses.

Bear in mind that certain suits have faster recharge times as well. A level 5 Caldari assault has 31.25 without modules attached.

Just as well another factor is that Shield regulators reduce the time delay, so it's plausible that a Caldari Assault can recharge (with a five second delay as its base) 215 shields in 10 seconds with a single complex regulator that does not take away from its tanking abilities.

Essentially it's not so farfetched as to allow armor tankers to have a -LOT- more HP and retain the movement speed penalty.

well it was just a penalty numbers could get worked out a bit. Then the offset would be to make 'small extenders' that don't stress the rechargers. Also the penalty itself could be a 'multiplier.'

Plus throw in a Shield Refibulator Equipment for Logis to use to kick start a players shields. Getting them back into action faster.

But I'd say giving 2 much of a potential rep is a mistake when you consider armor heavy won't have a delay. For example a armor tanked person with a rep rate of 5 (let's pretend 2 guys fighting have 500 EHP in their respective tanks with none in the other) is hit for 300 and inflicts 200 on his shield tanked opponent. The shield tank must find 6 seconds of cover while the armor tank will be able to regen 30 hp before his opponent even begins to regen not to mention any armor regained during the course of the actually encounter...any fights that were close would be won by an armor tanker if each person was hitting every bullet and has approximate ehp. Furthermore if I as an armor tanker manage to reset the shield tankers delay multiple times he gains an advantage. one spray and pray bullet can delay 100 shield regen.

You realize 30 HP is like, one Militia Assault Rifle round, right? It dishes out 12.5 rounds a second. If anything, I'd still say that shield tankers got an advantage.

As an experiment, I threw on 3 Complex Plates on my gallente assault suit to try it out and I can turn fast enough to land shots on Caldari assault suits at <20m. They simply out-strafe my gunfire. -30% isn't worth the 350 extra armor if I can't defend myself.

Welp first off you need to get good. No one ever uses complex plates...not competitively anyways. You only ever use basic and stack them to reduce the move penalty. They don't outstrafe mine. they just tank me...if you can't hit a caldari logi's strafe speed sucks to be you trying to fight a caldari assault who can fit 550 shields (130 below the logi) and still maintain 200 armor at a higher strafe/move speed. The caldari whores are using 5 shield extenders and 3 basic armor plates with either a cpu upgrade or a shield regulator. They have 1k hp and because the movement penalties suffer stacking penalties the move speed on a caldari logi with 1k ehp will be like 4.4 i believe. and that 30 hp is still more than the shield guy. XD and you failed to add in any other armor gained in the course of the exchange.

can you elaborate Iron on "accelaeration on infantry?" I feel i'm missing context.

First of all - don't ever make the assumption that losing a fight means the player isn't good. I didn't assume that...you said you couldn't aim...

Second, it was three complex plates as an experiment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Cars don't start at 0 and go full speed instantly, neither do tanks nor dropships.

Infantry should follow that rule but albitly it should be a relative short gap between starting to run and max speed much much shorter than the LAVs. After all the rule is followed when falling, so it should be applied while starting from crotch to full stride. The most notable for acceleration would be changing direction or stopping (intertia) however this is probably why it was a hated feature in red orchestra is that it probably killed the 'circle dance' strafing. Which is something many real world scenarios don't do because its more of the fact that you can only afford to get hit once so dancing in a circle the open is extremely stupid.

The Heavy suit would be the slowest to get to full speed but this would allow to give the heavy similar speed to the assault suit instead but give it worse acceleration so it takes them longer to get to the same speeds.

and with that going to bed.

Updated the OP.

Armor is physical, and heavy, in order to absorb impact and protect the wearer. It's the way it is going to be.

I see complaints, but I also see choices. If the PG competes with the desire for a certain weapon, that's a choice. We don't always get to have everything exactly the way we want it.

Seriously, underneath game mechanics being fixed, people will just have to deal with the fact they can't have everything they want at the same time.

The rate of turn penalty on plates (for aiming) should go away entirely imo.

Turning while running/sprinting could remain in though.

However I am extremely iffy on acceleration on infantry, Red Orchestra did it and it was not viewed extremely favorably.

My Idea is as follows - First of all, no movement penalties on any armor anything, Dig? Here's some numbers, they're probably a little on th high side so just use it as reference.

Next, armor plating - High slot.

Basic - 5% damage reduction to armor
Advanced - 10% damage reduction to armor.
Prototype - 15% damage reduction to armor.
Stacking penalties apply


Armor Re-enforcement - Low slot

20hp - 40hp - 60hp


Armor repair - lowslot

2hp/sec - 4hp/sec - 6hp/sec - or whatever it is now... I swear I don;t really care.

Now armor tanking is unique and not copy and paste half assed shield tanking that has to be carried. Also putting the plating resistance module in the Highslot keeps shield tankers from fully dual tanking without sacrificing a slot that could be used for an extender and those suits built for armor tanking with limited high slots from stacking too many.

Kneel, before McDustingham.... Kneel

Reactive plates are basically shield extenders (low HP, self repairing), but with less HP, and movement penalty. Needs to have as much HP as their shield extender counterpart, or else you're just better off using shield extenders.
On the plus side, shields are more costly to fit than the new plates, so even though shields are superior to reactive plates, the plates are easier to fit. I can see how that can be useful.

Ferroscale plates need to have more HP than their shield extender counterparts, they may not have movement penalty (neither do shields), but they still can't repair themselves unlike shields, so they should have more HP to make up for that.

The fitting costs compared to the regular armor plates are terrible for the reactives and ferroscales; they have to sacrifice HP to get what little advantages they possess, increased fitting cost on top of that is unnecessary.

How are CCP so bad at balancing? this is just common sense.

My Idea is as follows - First of all, no movement penalties on any armor anything, Dig? Here's some numbers, they're probably a little on th high side so just use it as reference.

Next, armor plating - High slot.

Basic - 5% damage reduction to armor
Advanced - 10% damage reduction to armor.
Prototype - 15% damage reduction to armor.
Stacking penalties apply


Armor Re-enforcement - Low slot

20hp - 40hp - 60hp


Armor repair - lowslot

2hp/sec - 4hp/sec - 6hp/sec - or whatever it is now... I swear I don;t really care.

Now armor tanking is unique and not copy and paste half assed shield tanking that has to be carried. Also putting the plating resistance module in the Highslot keeps shield tankers from fully dual tanking without sacrificing a slot that could be used for an extender and those suits built for armor tanking with limited high slots from stacking too many.

Kneel, before McDustingham.... Kneel

I would prefer if CCP moved Armor Repair Modules to a High Slot Module as it would:
- allow Armor Tankers to spread out their modules a bit (like Shield Tankers with Shield Regulators)
- it would make Shield Tankers have to sacrifice an Shield Extender or Recharger, or a Damage Mod to be able to get Armor Reps.

The fact that all the new Armor Modules are also Low Slots doesn't help Armor as:
- all Armor Modules take up Low Slots, creating bloat
- all Armor takes up a huge amount of PG, and PG boosting Modules are also Low Slots

I messed with your tool a little bit and I made these numbers.

This assumes Gallente and Amarr suits will receive buffs to their suits to mitigate speed penalties, and enhance their usage of armor plates to put them on equal footing to shield tanking.

http://postimg.org/image/7bm3wn1r5/

This assumes all suits will remain as is.

http://postimg.org/image/dtf15gean/

Sorry, but anyone who thinks the Reactive plates are good with their current numbers fails at math.

Personally I think they should make Complex Reactives be 90 hp, 3 hp/s, 5% movement, then make them require level 5 in both armor plating AND armor repair systems. I've no recommendations for fitting reqs, just that they be useable.

The issue they will have with putting them in High slots is that running Shield Extenders would still be preferable to using Reactives. No shields makes you excessively vulnerable to grenades and other explosive weaponry.

How do you make reactive plates useful though? By making them better than fitting standard plates and standard reps.

I guess like you say... Add in a ridiculously high PG requirement to them, making them impossible for shield tankers to fit, and then add in a racial bonus to decrease PG reqs for armor tankers.

Then armor tankers just stack reactive plates as they will be better than standard plates and standard reps, and leave those to be used occasionally by shield tankers who need a low slot.

I feel like there are better ways to go about it though than to make reactive plates so powerful that standard plates and standard reps become inferior to use for armor tankers. Either way you still need a racial bonus.

I'm Just thinking that the Reactive Plates will make the Armor Reper Obsolete, and the Plate a hell of a lot less Viable

Why Fit a Complex Armor Reper when you could Fit 2 Reactive and have a slight Buffer to boot?

Why Fight a Plate that cant heal, when you can get a plate that can with just a smaller Buffer?

Besides that, this might make it worth some iskies to have an Armor tank Or a Shield tank

Armor- Slower movement/repair, More Buffer
Shield-Less Buffer, Faster Movement, Faster/Natural Regen

Armor- Slower movement/repair, More Buffer
Shield-Less Buffer, Faster Movement, Faster/Natural Regen

If people repeat it often enough, it must make it true.

If people repeat it often enough, it must make it true.

Just saying It s it is. you want a Buffer? Go Armor. You Want a Regenerative Tank? Go Shield.
Just Saying

Make them more powerful and high slot.

Quite frankly l don't want them at all. There is no benefit to implementing them, even if two of these would equal one plate and one repper of the same level. They can't make them weaker than that and they can't make them more powerful, because then one or the other turns useless. And if they are identical... equally useless. Then there are the skill requirements. Are they plates? Are they reppers? If they are one or the other you only get to apply one of the skill effect bonuses to them, or both if you max both skills, in which case you might as well use one plate and one repper anyways. Useless again. And if they get their own skill tree? Bunch of SP needed. In the end it would come down to the skill's bonus and however that will be what separates them from regular plates and reppers. Drastically reduced cpu and grid costs might be appealing and set shem apart from the other skill bonuses in the armor tree.

Agree, +1.

By their very nature they can't do anything but compete with modules that are already in the game. No matter what, one of them will render the other set of modules useless.

Explosives probably need their armor bonus tuned down to 110-120%. Then reactive plates, with no speed penalty, in the high slot, can allow for a more armor vs shields vs damage mods dilemma for armor tankers.

indeed, we really need to have role bonuses on suits, not just skill bonuses

so that we can actually seperate the races more than has an ounce more armor, and the slot layout

and keeping armor on the lows is fine if we see numbers that make the modules work, topped off with some role bonus

i did post earlier regarding possible plate stats (would be after a role bonus if there was one) that would be much better competitively

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av9xiIsYvVjqdDNYbE9obG9SSjdGOTYxVHdXRVlveVE&usp=sharing

would be awesome if IWS added to his sheet too

and as a role bonus -50% PG cost for armor modules, (then 1.5 them)

that works, i was just quickly coming up with some role bonus that made sense as a way that armor plates wouldn't just end up making cal logi even more stupid

oh and the lowering PG statement implied that the numbers posted would be AFTER the role reduction for fitting

amarr really needs like +10% to armor efficacy / lvl though because then with their 3 lows they could

plate
plate
rep

and be the same ehp as

plate
plate
plate
rep

and they would still be the slowest in the game :P

Amarr need a base HP increase since 10% would only equate to around 30-45 HP using 3 complex modules.

With the update, CCP should buff the **** out of armor repairers and make them a highslot.

Reactive plates are basically shield extenders (low HP, self repairing), but with less HP, and movement penalty. Needs to have as much HP as their shield extender counterpart, or else you're just better off using shield extenders.
On the plus side, shields are more costly to fit than the new plates, so even though shields are superior to reactive plates, the plates are easier to fit. I can see how that can be useful.

Ferroscale plates need to have more HP than their shield extender counterparts, they may not have movement penalty (neither do shields), but they still can't repair themselves unlike shields, so they should have more HP to make up for that.

The fitting costs compared to the regular armor plates are terrible for the reactives and ferroscales; they have to sacrifice HP to get what little advantages they possess, increased fitting cost on top of that is unnecessary.

How are CCP so bad at balancing? this is just common sense.

With the update, CCP should buff the **** out of armor repairers and make them a highslot.

I think you're missing one downside of the shieldtanks, 1 flux grenade remove all the shields.. no matter how much shield i have

Any armor modules in high slots is a BAD idea, it would make it even harder to Armor tanks to survive.

How would it be harder to survive if I had an armor mod in every slot?

Cool IWS, you missed that i buffed the armor reps though :P

Fixing now.

Armor tanking suits just need built in passive regen. 2/3/5 at standard, advanced and prototype.

By the way guys this thread is being watched now.

By the way guys this thread is being watched now.

CUT

The only why is to HARD tune the dmg weapon:

Example:


AR 75 % dmg vs armor, keeping the low regen and actual value spd reduct dmg .

MD and EXPLOS 150 % dmg vs ARMOR or you could give Laser an armor pierce ability etc etc
etc etc ( i put just 2 exmp, )
and surprise surprise, with this ALL weapon find their place.

Because now your team need a Explo expert to kill Armor tankers in PC, and this add a WHOLE new world of possibility.
Not only shield logi that run from A-B-C-D but also a Hardcore defense.
This will also make dropship useful, because you can drop your Heavy armored team on a letter guarded by ARdropsuit and kill them all.

The only balance that we must do if we choose this way is to force Heavy drop suit n Heavy weap, or they become un-killable


With this the ROCK-PAPER-SCISSOR WORK

P.S: When I say Armor tank and Shield tank I do not refer to a class who COMPLETELY depends on the tanking style, what I mean is a class who gets the majority of its EHP from said style. No suit should entirely depend on a specific style.

The only why is to HARD tune the dmg weapon:

Example:


AR 75 % dmg vs armor, keeping the low regen and actual value spd reduct dmg .

MD and EXPLOS 150 % dmg vs ARMOR or you could give Laser an armor pierce ability etc etc
etc etc ( i put just 2 exmp, )
and surprise surprise, with this ALL weapon find their place.

Because now your team need a Explo expert to kill Armor tankers in PC, and this add a WHOLE new world of possibility.
Not only shield logi that run from A-B-C-D but also a Hardcore defense.
This will also make dropship useful, because you can drop your Heavy armored team on a letter guarded by ARdropsuit and kill them all.

The only balance that we must do if we choose this way is to force Heavy drop suit n Heavy weap, or they become un-killable


With this the ROCK-PAPER-SCISSOR WORK

*coughAMARR SENTINELcough*

Amarr sentinel is a dual tank, the suit comes with 466 base shields.

+ one high slot and shyte recharge rate. I don't really call that tank. It has about the same base armor. Both are to low for a Sentinel imho, but I digress. 466 shield is nothing for a heavy. We constantly take fire from multiple angles/shooters. That shield is gone in no time. With only 1 high slot you can not beef up shields to ever be able to call it shield tank.

You have just nerfed Shields to death and made armor OP as hell.

@Cross
Sorry man was not meant in your response, i quote your think to integrate my post
Sorry again for been unclear, but was very very late when i made the reply



Sorry but I disagree
Shield will still Have high Mobility and fast recharge. And that is the only way to NOT make armr and shield the same think, that kill variety.
And have weapos that do 75 % vs shield like it was for armor.

From my point of view a MMOFPS, with equip and all, mean that there are some situation that you simply can't avoid death.

Let's make an example, if i engage a Heavy in cqc i MUST die (there are exception but thats another story) right now i can kill a Heavy with 0 effort.

if you have a Suit that has no weakness is like playing rock-scissor-paper and then changing the game in rock-scissor-paper-nuclear strike

I ask if you find right that Ar-tankers have to carry flux hades,choose between scrambler or AR and shield tank don't have to bother of what weapon choose because EVERYTHING kill armor?

The only way to making both tanking effective but different from each other is HARD SPEC weap DMG so a weapon cant be effective Vs shield and Vs Armor

@Cross
Sorry man was not meant in your response, i quote your think to integrate my post
Sorry again for been unclear, but was very very late when i made the reply

I never called it a shield tank, I called it a dual tank. Also Amarr and Gallente are predominantly armor tanks, I was just pointing out that the Amarr has shields to prove that no class is suited for one tanking style alone.

Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.

[FEEDBACK] Ferroscale and Reactive plates stats https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86664&find=unread
Update: We will improve on getting info regarding changes and new features out to players sooner and also monitor community feedback on the new items after they get the chance to try it in game.

Well I played with the numbers a little using the existing IWS's spread sheet this morning and this is what I came up with.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Aje8xVYW4a2VdHdhVk9wMGZrUDZLdXNuUTFuelgyaEE&output=html

(couldn't figure out how to tack it onto his)

Explosives should do 100/100 to shield and armor unless they make flux grenades work like locus grenades, same with mass drivers and flaylocks until they release the anti shield variant of these weapons.

I personally don't have a problem with the new plate stats.

However, since we're getting another lowslot that repairs armor, I think non-militia armor repair units need to be changed to a highslot and repair significantly more hp/s

reative is wayy to much pg there i mean i get it being more PG, and i like the hp number sure, but when a suit has 66 base ish pg more than 20 on 1 module is way to much
especially since amarr is armor liking and scramblers are 20 pg

it's just too much logi are like the only ones that could hope to fit one and not seriously screw wit the fit

I messed with your tool a little bit and I made these numbers.

This assumes Gallente and Amarr suits will receive buffs to their suits to mitigate speed penalties, and enhance their usage of armor plates to put them on equal footing to shield tanking.

http://postimg.org/image/7bm3wn1r5/

This assumes all suits will remain as is.

http://postimg.org/image/dtf15gean/

All the numbers you suggested are really wonky and hurt my eyes to sort through this number soup.

What do you mean another low slot? And moving anything armor related to high slots does nothing positive

Reactive plates will repair armor

Moving reps to a highslot would allow players to fill their low slots with plates, and still have decent armor regen.

Ferroscales do not bring anything to the table to be worth using with your stats, although the have no movement penalty they have a pretty high CPU/PG cost and the HP is rather low. The CPU/PG costs of reactives are insanely high, I understand your suggesting that plates aren't meant to be stacked, in your opinion, but if that's the case whats the difference between your plates and our plates since our plates can't be stacked either. The HP for reactives is also way to high, they should fall in line with the HP of shield extenders and have very low speed penalties to make it useful for medium armor suits, or front-line suits.

Overall your stats have more penalties than the plates we have now, reactives are rather OP even though they can't be stacked, and instead of balancing it just flips the switch as to why armor tanks cannot compete with shield tanks. Instead of not being able to compete in terms of speed penalties and resistances, it would be the level of weapons and equipment we CAN'T equip because our modules will be hogging all of our resources.

IMO the best balance for the armor would be

Normal plates: High HP-High speed penalty-Low CPU/PG

Ferroscale plates: Medium HP-No penalty-Highest CPU/PG costs (Not by much)

Reactive plates: Low HP-Repair half of a repairer of same tier-Medium CPU/PG costs

Armor repairers: no HP- High repair 2/4/6- CPU/PG costs between reactives and ferroscale.

Wonky is balancing Armor Plates off of only 2 of the games Racial Types to begin with. Even more so when you attempt to balance off of things that aren't in game and may never be.

You cannot balance off of assumptions and parts of a whole or you will never have balance.

I started creating these numbers by tweaking the numbers for the Standard Armor Plates for Each Tier. I achieved perfect balance for these. All the Plates offer the Same HP/Fitting, so you are only paying for more Raw HP as you progress up the Tier, and accordingly accrue more of a speed penalty. This is how Armor should be.

From there I gave the Repairers a slight buff.

Afterward I balanced the Ferroscale Plates off of the Standard Plates. The offer less Raw HP at a greater Fitting Cost just like they should.

Then I turned to the Reactive Plates. I used the Numbers from all of the above to balance these. The HP they offer falls in between the Ferroscale and Standard Plates as it should. The Reps are slightly less than the Repairers, and the speed penalty is less than that of Standard Plates.

If you notice in all 4 categories it is beneficial now to progress through the Tiers and acquire the Complex modules. Whereas currently the standard Basic Armor Plate offers better HP/Fitting. Also take note that each module type progresses evenly up the tiers just as it should. There are no sudden leaps in amount of HP or Fitting Cost etc.

So honestly I have no Idea what you mean when you say my numbers are "wonky"

Ferroscale plates are supposed to do exactly that! They have a decent amount of HP with NO speed penalty. You can't have your cake and eat it to.

Compared to all your numbers the ferroscale plates give the lowest HP per CPU/PG based on your stats.

I never said you shouldn't be able to stack Reactive Plates, you should simply be ready to invest a very large amount of SP to be able to. I do not think one should simply be able to get a proto Suit and stack as many of whatever module they wish, without speccing into any secondary or tertiary skills to make it possible. They Fitting cost is "Insanely high" because the benefits they offer warrant such a cost.

A Gallente assault suit has 79 PG at all skills level 5. Stacking 4 complex reactive plates costs 84 PG. Shields are highly beneficial and do not warrant costs such as these, even though they have low HP compared to your stats at least they can equip a weapon.

Your argument is frankly full of contradictions. In one sentence you say that the stats I suggest are to penalizing, then you turn around and say the stats make Plates OP.

The CPU/PG stats are penalizing, and reducing them would make them OP via High HP, pretty much everything is just to high. I hope that is clearer.

Just because you CAN equip something onto your suit, does not make it profitable. Likewise if you CAN'T equip something, it probably means you need to invest into optimization skills in order to be able to.

I don't expect people to be able to get an advanced suit and stack Complex Reactive Plates on it accordint to my numbers. One must invest much SP because of the benefits they offer. That means Having a very good suit with Dropsuit Core Upgrades, Electronics, and Engineering skills built up. That means speccing into your Weapon Fitting Optimization skills. Like I said they shouldn't be available to every single player. You must invest some serious SP.

I currently have about 6.4 mil SP with Armor Skills all at 5, but I don't expect to be able to use the Complex Reactives for quite some time based on these numbers. I don't mind this because it adds to the depth of character development.

Even with all stats at level 5 it is impossible to stack more than 3 of these plates and be competitive in battle, based on your PG costs, only suit that could stack plates effectively is a Gallente logi but even then they have barely any room for shields or a gun above basic.

IMO the best balance for the armor would be

Normal plates: High HP-High speed penalty-Low CPU/PG

Ferroscale plates: Medium HP-No penalty-Highest CPU/PG costs (Not by much)

Reactive plates: Low HP-Repair half of a repairer of same tier-Medium CPU/PG costs

agreed


Makes no sense for the Armor Module with NO speed penalty to have MEDIUM HP compared to other Armor Modules, or for them to have the HIGHEST Fitting Cost for offering the Least overal benefit.

No movement penalty is a very high benefit, the CPU/PG costs should also be High to compensate for the medium HP but I don't mean super high just on average higher than the other armor modules.


Makes no sense for Plates with a speed penalty (albeit lower than standard plates' penalty) to have the LOWEST HP. Also makes no sense for Armor Plates that offer a significant amount of HP+Reps with a slight speed penalty NOT to have the highest fitting cost as they offer the most overall benefit.

By low HP I mean the same as, or around the same as, shield extenders. With half the repair as a repairer stacking 4 complex reactives with 66 HP and 3 HP/s = 264 HP and 12 HP/s and a low penalty in speed, stacking 2 armor plates and 2 complex repairers would give Higher HP and more penalty, but the same HP/s. The Low CPU/PG costs is account for the lower possible CPU/PG costs that combining armor plates and repairers would have. The benefit of reactives would obviously be simpler stacking and lower speed penalty.

I would concede that the numbers for Reactives may be to high and will adjust these. I don't want to make them to squishy though.


That being said how do you feel about my proposed numbers for the other modules?

Ferroscales are fine in HP, but their CPU/PG should be increased slightly higher than armor repairers. PG of armor repairers should be buffed back to normal, and scale down the penalty of armor plates to be whole numbers because in Dust decimals round up. The HP of normal plates is very good compared to their CPU/PG costs and penalty.

Also when I said that reactives should be the same as shield plates its so that they benefit the medium suits the most, while normal plates and ferroscale would benefit heavy suits the most. Of course each suit can choose out of one another like a reactive stacked heavy or a ferro stacked medium, but the idea is to bring medium armor suits in line with the Minmatar and Caldari, and put heavies as the highest EHP by a lot.

EDIT: New stats are a bit more reasonable.

I don't understand why you would want them to benefit one class over another.

Here is a fitting tool with your revised stats implemented into it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhnLhOBhdjKOdERzT3RQX2NUWVlyTjllNHFOYl9BaUE&usp=sharing

Well I don't use assault, but I doubt I would dual tank with only 72 PG. I would probably shield tank, add a regulator or two and a utility type module. It doesn't seem viable, at least not for a Gallente.

LOL @ me!

I know nothing about Assault Suits I'm a Heavy

EDIT: Which probably explains a lot

I think we can all agree... that any buff to armor plates will affect both shield tankers and armor tanker equally. Any changes to armor past the introduction of these new plates will need to be in the forms of racial bonuses to armor tankers.

Gallente needs a racial bonus to decrease the speed penalty on plates. Somewhere around 10-15% per level.

Amarr should have a passive armor rep bonus instead of armor rep efficacy, and then their base movement speed brought up to the same level as Gallente and Caldari. This gives Amarr the flexibility to be a slower moving, but high EHP tanks. With only three low slots, they are kind of boned choosing between reps and armor plates atm.

Everyone is pushing for shield extenders to increase dropsuit profile, and I can't argue with that. If it increases hitbox though, anything more than 1-2% per extender, than shield tanking becomes pointless. Hitboxes are dramatically different in eve, and that will not translate well to dust.

Finally, we need to normalize the speed penalty on armor plates. Have all standard plates be ~6% and all reactive plates be ~3%. Higher level modules should not have more of a penalty than low level modules. Same goes for shield extenders, have a 5-15% profile increase per shield extender, regardless of level.

Caldari scouts will then need a racial bonus to decrease profile penalty on shield extenders by 10-15% as well.

Logistics should not have base armor reps, its too powerful. Logis have enough low slots in any race to fit a complex armor rep just fine, except for amarr, which will have base armor reps from their racial.

Overall... what im saying here is that the racial bonuses for all suits in this game need to be reevaluated. In a lot of cases, they are just downright bad.

I personally don't have a problem with the new plate stats.

However, since we're getting another lowslot that repairs armor, I think non-militia armor repair units need to be changed to a highslot and repair significantly more hp/s

I second this, militia reppies to high slot is accurate.

What do you mean another low slot? And moving anything armor related to high slots does nothing positive

my numbers keep them competitive
they behave as rep + plate of lower meta

it makes sense

You should try some sort of high-slot armor tanking enhancement.

It doesn't have to be complicated. HighSlot with +10% to armor HP, or 10% armor resists.

The Sentinel should also get more high slots with this addition.

CCP will need to abandon the "one size fits all approach" to dropsuit's CPU/PG output and instead adopt a system similar to how vehicles work, I think. Just not so extreme.

Otherwise the racial bonuses would have to be very good to equalize armor tanking.

This are drastic change...
If we move repp from low to high we need to rework ALL the suit slot.
The first thing is to move the new plate on hight sloth, otherwise the Shield tank gain the major benefit.

I think it's time to make the weap do very different % on damage on shield and armor. With this all weapon become finally viable and armor tank become finally usefull.
Two problem with one solution

One concern I've had with armor taking, one that i have yet to see addressed in this thread, is the effective uptime of each tanking system.

If you take a shield tanked suit, and an armor tanked suit, and apply some fixed amount of damage to them, they are both in a 'vulnerable' state and will seek cover. However, the shield tanked suit will regen far faster, bringing it out of its vulnerable state far quicker than the armor suit.

Because of the 'high buffer, low reps' pattern armor has, it just picks up another penalty of having to spend longer getting back up to full strength, or be forced into combat at less than full strength.

I'm curious to see what people think about this gap (i think it more important than any ehp or repping disparity myself). I don't see the new modules helping in this respect.

I actually don't see the new modules fixing any problems. They are directly competing with the existing modules(why?), and the only benefit i see them having is putting buffer and repair on a single module, so a saving in low slots. This helps those with restricted numbers of low slots... so um, shield tankers?

I honestly feel like we should be working on balancing the modules we have, and only add new modules when we have a clearly defined NEED to fill.

Actually there are easier ways to make it so shield tanks do not gain a huge benefit from the new armor modules. That would be making them with high CPU/PG but giving Amarr and Gallente a reduction in CPU/PG racially. Moving new plates to High slots is actually a penalty not a benefit, a higher dependency on armor means that explosive damage will hurt us even more than it does now. We need shields to have a quick buffer to that damage.

The only weapons that need their % damage changed is explosive weapons.

I don't get CCP on this subject, they say they can't but aside from the suit bonus all races have different bonuses.