Answers in bold inside the quote.

Speaking as someone who's run the Amarr suits you'll see a lot of shield tanking with them due to their low base speed and somewhat more limited PG both of which make plates harder to fit. Also the Assault role bonus to shields will trend some additional tanking that way for the Assault suit. The Logi has a racial skill to armor reps but even with that skill the Gal Logi can get a better active tank for armor (albeit at a higher ISK cost in mods fit). (Note: I run Logi so my knowledge of the Amarr Assault is primarily theory crafting and prior build context).

Cheers,
Cross

As far as I can tell, the new modules work with the armor plating skills but not the armor repair skill. The reactive plates seem unaffected as they give me a straight 1 hp rate, not 1.15.

So what's the verdict?

Ferro doesn't add competitive HP and cost more fitting-wise then plates?
Reactives cost a very high amount fitting and in trying to do two modules work do neither well enough?

it seems like those were desinged for shield tankers...lol

Armor needs more HP for 3 reasons

It repairs slowly even with a basic repper
innate reppers rep slowly
Armor is way slower than shields

I like how armor was actually buffed but no one knew sorry ccp.

But it forces us to be very Logi dependant and our HP still doesn't exceed shields. In order for there to be a balance or a benefit different than shields we need to have equal HP and slightly lower repair, or Higher HP and lower repair.

About to try it out.

If I am not mistaken, explosive damage is 130 over 70. I could be wrong however. Once again play to your strengths. That is the nature of this game. Manny a Caldari sum have lost their lives to my pro scrambler rifle and pro flaylock on my Amarr alt. it gives me much pleasure to see them die so easily.

Next up needs to be new high slot armor modules. For example...

Armor Hardener: decreases damage taken by armor by a carefully playtested non-OP percentage, with a stacking penalty (2,4,6%?)

Nanite Injector: decreases Armor Repairer cycle time by a carefully playtested non-OP percentage
(10,25,40%?)

I look at it like a progression.

Scouts are fast, they are true skirmish DPS, they cap stuff or they get into your face really fast and blow you away (Speed or Damage)
Assault are DPSers
Shield DPS are Fast, they are mobile, they take more hits then Scouts (Shield Speed Regen)
Armor DPS are Slow, they are powerful, you dont' go toe to toe with them (Damage, Armor)
Heavies are very slow, they are tanks, they sit on the objective and stay alive and keep the enemy away until help comes (Survival, Supression).

If you want profile mods, be a sniper. Every mod has its place.

The problem I see right now is that Scouts aren't scouty enough and Heavies aren't heavy enough. And that shield regen is to high and Armor movement is to low.

Its magic.

There was no strafe speed upgrade.

Where is the proof?

I think the gallente assault should get these bonouses


6% per level cpu and p g reduction for Ferro scale and reactive plate

5% per level damage mode efficiency.

Threadnought, 21 pages, no CCP post yet.. :-\

Wut? Can you provide a link? Not because I don't believe you but I want it to put it in every post I ever make.

Where to start?
I hope this is a troll post, because "favouring all armour suits leaving the shield tanks suit completely defenceless" seems incredibly stupid.
I suggest reading the thread if you're not trolling, as it answers all of your points.

Been reading on other threads. Will doubling the current armor bonuses balance things out?

Hmmm... thats a good question.

In all fairness that grenade doesn't discriminate and kills any suit dead, i dont think i have seen anyone survive one of those, my corp mates chuck em all the time.

Shields aren't as OP as most think.. I run with flux grenades ever game now, takes out Cal Logis like nothing.

I haven't done any in game testing so i guess i cant comment but ive seen that grenade blow up the ass of many a merc who had more shield than that upon explosion, im assuming there is less damage the further out in the blast radius?

Cat Merc's idea, the one that I was supporting, isn't quite like that. I do like the idea of using fitting requirements to balance things out more, but I would be very hesitant to have 'super mods' which do massive things but need loads of resources, because then you get lots of slots free, and inherently slots can be used in turn for resource expanders so you can get more on. In addition to being disciplined with your fitting practices, you can get a situation where you can fit quite a few of these modules on and that ends up unbalancing things.

The other thing is that the penalties on those plates are very harsh. If you're going to go that route, I'd say 5/10/15 or 5/7.5/10, because if it's a jump from 10% to 20% penalty for only 60 more HP, then people will be hesitant to use them, especially with the massive requirements for the complex.

With the numbers you've suggested, I think that people would stick to using enhanced plates, or maybe even stacking basics. Indeed, stacking basics would have a very powerful effect because they have barely any fitting requirements, and they give very large amounts of HP. You could quite feasibly stack 3 of them on with a pair of complex reppers on a GaLogi and end up with 617 raw armour HP, in addition to a repair rate of 17.5 - 25 HP/s, without a very big penalty. That's actually really quite powerful, and you have to remember that it's leaving lots of fitting resources free. You could then quite easily get triple complex damage mods or proto equipment in addition to a proto weapon/grenade.

I think that the movement penalty for armour plates should definitely be there, but not in such a draconian form that it encourages people to use the lower tiers exclusively. A flat rate throughout the tiers might be ideal, like 5% all the way through, or otherwise tweak the penalty so it only affects sprint speed/stamina.

I do quite like your repairer - it's very similar to the Cat Merc idea and I've become fond of it. It's less that it's a straight buff and more that it improves role definition.




As a side note, I've been thinking about fitting resources and looking the the EvE model (which isn't the greatest comparison for dust, but in terms of fitting it really is very similar). What if HP, tank, and weapon modules were the main things which consumed powergrid? You could weight the requirements for those so you could fit a solid tank with them, but then have more CPU free for utility modules.
Basically:
- HP, and tank modules (e.g. repairers and plates) more heavily weighted for powergrid. Shields would take mroe CPU and armour more PG, but they'd still be emphasising the PG requriement.
- Utility modules (e.g. kinetic catalyzers and damage modifiers) more heavily weighted for CPU.

That would encourage people fitting a solid tank for one type of HP, but then taking advantage of the various utilities available to the tank type, like speed modules for shield tankers.
The dropsuit resources could also be tweaked so that, say, Caldari dropsuits could have lots of CPU but less PG, and Gallente dropsuits could have lots of PG but less CPU. If Amarr dropsuits were to be brought firmly into the armour tanking fold, in addition to slot tweaks they could be given a hefty chunk of PG but lacking in CPU.

What do you think?

I think that the CPU/PG of reactive plates needs to be cut down. Ferroscale is not that bad as it falls about in line with shields extenders though shield extenders are still a bit better with natural regeneration. Reactive is DEFINITELY not worth it on anything other than maybe a scout that has no room for a repair module.


EDIT: Even for scouts reactive are not very good as light frames have limited PG/CPU and reactives take a ridiculous level of fitting.

*cough*fitting modules*cough*

From a dev perspective, I'd probably hate to be roped in to a thread this long..

Was playing academy yesterday and I noticed most new players are Gallente. I really hope they fix the suits soon because that might be part of the bad NPE.