I already suggested a change for Armor Plates, so here for your perusal is a revamping of all 3 varieties of plates, with the adjusted fittings for Gallente Assault based on the proposed -7% per level reduction to armor plates CPU/PG, replacing the shield recharge bonus.

Armor Plates:

Basic Armor Plates: 94 HP, 4% movement penalty, 20 CPU, 6 PG (13/4 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Enhanced Armor Plates: 118 HP, 5% penalty, 28 CPU, 9 PG (18/6 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Complex Armor Plates: 140 HP, 6% penalty, 36 CPU, 12 PG (23/8 Gallente Assault gk.0)


Ferroscale Plates:

Basic Ferroscale Plates: 42 HP, 23 CPU, 5 PG (15/3 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Enhanced Ferroscale Plates: 68 HP, 31 CPU, 8 PG (20/5 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Complex Ferroscale Plates: 93 HP, 40 CPU, 11 PG (26/7 Gallente Assault gk.0)


Reactive Plates:

Basic Reactive Plates: 34 HP, 1 HP/sec repair, 1% movement penalty, 22 CPU, 6 PG (14/4 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Enhanced Reactive Plates: 45 HP, 2 HP/sec repair, 2% movement penalty, 28 CPU, 10 PG (16/6.5 Gallente Assault gk.0)

Complex Reactive Plates: 62 HP, 3 HP/sec repair, 3% movement penalty, 39 CPU, 12 PG (25/8 Gallente Assault gk.0)


With these numbers the 3 different plates would each have distinct and effective roles:

a) Armor Plates: Basic go-to tank for armor tankers. Useful for shield tankers who expect external reps.

b) Ferroscale Plates: Complementary module for armor tankers which can drastically reduce movement penalty. Useful for shield tankers and scouts to keep their speed up.

c) Reactive Plates: Go-to module for shield tankers and scouts to provide some buffer and rep. Complimentary module for armor tankers that allows them to fine tune their fit in regards to HP, rep, and movement penalty.

I really think these numbers work and if you can find any ***** in their armor please let me know. CCP I don't need any response but I hope you're reading! I make no claim on these ideas. Feel free to use them and I hope they help your revision process!

These are good stats but the racial bonus should be for every armor suit not the Gallente assault. By making the bonus only dor them it limits armor to being remotely useful just for them. All suits need CPU/PG reductions and efficacy bonuses. Also the reactive plates are best used for the medium armor suits not shield suits, because if we could stack 4-5 reactives our movement penalty is around 12% with decent HP buffer and a decent armor repair, stacking 3 or less you feel most of the penalty with little HP as a reward.

You can't take away Gallente Logi's bonuses and Amarr Logi's work as is too if they're given more low slots. Minmatar and Caldari shouldn't get help with armor, so that leaves Amarr Assault. Fitting isn't a problem for it so it needs another bonus. I was thinking +2% per level to adjusted armor HP, or +1% per level to adjusted armor and shields HP, but maybe there's a better option.

Oh and maybe a bonus to movement penalty would be a good change for Amarr Heavy, and then Gallente Heavy could have an armor related bonus.

We can have more than 1 bonus :/ also our bonuses aren't actually racial, they apply to the racial role. A racial bonus would apply to both the assault and the Logi. The bonus could be applied to the medium frame skill since its pretty useless unless you dont want a role. The Amarr heavy needs HP not speed, their base speed is so low that any bonuses to them should be applied to the suit.

Speed is not a problem aslong as we have the HP to represent the penalty and the vulnerability we get from applying complex plates. For example if you take a Gallente and a Caldari suit and give them the same modules, the Gallente should have around 30%-40% higher HP than that suit since we are more vulnerable to weapons fire and explosives. The only way to justify for equally stacked Gallente and Caldari suits to have the Same HP is if there were an equal amount of shield and armor killers, and explosives did 100/100 and there was no speed penalty.

Also it doesnt seem possible to add more slots than what we have now without changing the fitting U.I. So more lows to the logi suits doesnt seem to be an option.

Giving Amarr Logi 1 High and 5 Low would work fine with the UI. I think Gallente Logi should be 2 / 6 but that may not work with the UI. Yeah you're right the beefier and slower heavies are, the more they fit their role. Maybe they could get a damage reduction bonus. With the above plates and a hardening bonus heavies would be a lot tougher to take down, which would be good for the game. Taking down a heavy would require teamwork. Actually with those improved plates they might need to have their base speed reduced to not be OP.

A bonus to plate fitting, with the new plates and dynamic repairer, would give Gallente Assault roughly equal HP and rep to Caldari, as shown in the example in this thread, while making armor tanking even more distinct from shield tanking. Caldari would have to spend more to fit the same armor, and Gallente (and Amarr?) would have the advantage of getting their peak reps (+60%) in the middle of a firefight as opposed to having to fall back until shields start recharging again--a perfect counterpoint to shields! Once the firefight is over a logi bro can top them up.

Yay! New dev blog!
Double Yay! Caldari Logi changes!

Oh, the caldari assault gets that bonus? Instead of hybrid reloading speed? Uh. Wut?

Thats bs didnt even do anything for the Gallente except nerf the logistics suit.

I don't understand why they felt they had to keep the bonus in there somewhere. Or why they had to use it to replace the reload speed bonus over the shield recharge speed bonus. Caldari assualts are kind of awesome now.

Just shows how much CCP worships the Caldari.

Great postings. I read the initial postings and didnt read the 29 pages after. So I have to ask was there any theorycrafting in the subsequent postings that took the shields of the armor tanker into account? If this is done then the discrepancy isn't as terrible as it looks. Although it still significantly favors shields.

Just shows how much CCP worships the Caldari.

I need to do a real read of this whole thread, but while I'm getting to that I do want to make one statement out of the gate.

Reactive plates should be moved to a High Power Slot this instantly breaks the deadlock between then and the standard plate + rep fittings question providing more diversity in options and also serves to ameliorate some degree of the shield/armor division.

Also as others in this thread have said we need some armor specific racial skills. Gallente and Amarr are armor tanking races (yes this is EVE lore, but it's also maintained in dust stats, just weakly) and should be getting racial bonuses to support that. Giving such bonuses would make armor taking balance more attainable (provide active buffs for one race and passive buffs for the other, then you have build diversity as well).

Cheers,
Cross

Tbh the caldari assault bonus is now even worse than it was before, running four complex extenders will net them like 21 extra shield more than what they currently were running, if it was 25% like the logi had it would be an issue but id rather reload faster than have 21 more shield.

The theory crafting has been focused on the shield and armor mods much more than the shield and armor suits.
The suits are mentioned but usually only in context with their fittings options.

While you are correct that the disparity within the suits (leaving aside CCPs upcoming changes) are not as huge that actually doesn't address the balance of shield and armor mods at all. There are some drastic balance problems within the two lines especially as compared to each other and that disparity is compounded by the suit discrepancies and the skills rather than being mitigated.

Ack, company just showed up, don't mean to be brusque but I have to cut this short.

Cheers,
Cross

Yes, it's a nerf, and the number is 26.4 with 4 complex, which means no damage mod, which is bad. With 2 its 13.2. Faster reload is much, much better and much more interesting.

Go on...

The easy way to consider this is via some (fictional) % numbers. Numbers below are provided for illustration purposes only and should not be construed as actual game data, they're only here to highlight trends.

Say shield suits have an average of 20% more shield based HP and further that shield HP is 25% more effective than an equal amount of armor HP. Now let's assume that racial skills provide an equal % buff effect to both shields and armor say 10% (in reality the shield buffs seem to edge out armor here but we'll leave that aside). Let's further assume that shield and armor tanking skills both net the Merc a 33% increase in effectiveness of their chosen tank.

To keep it simple we'll say that first 20% has an actual 20 HP raw value.
That becomes 25 after efficiency.
With racial skills the gap becomes 27.5 (Now wait! You said racial skills were an equal % buff and you're disparity tally just went up, what gives? Good question. The answer is that while the % buff is the same the base value which is being buffed is not equal so the net gain is higher for shields).
Now the tanking skills are included, giving us 36.575 HP advantage for our totally fictional gap.

Even this compounded widening of the gap doesn't tell us the whole story however. Due to weak internal scaling for armor mods when compared either to shield mods or to fittings costs (once other drawbacks are included) the ISK and SP values of each tanking type are not kept in balance either. There is effectively a higher cost to run an equivalent tank with armor. When that is applied to our example case from above you have the armor tanker paying more to deploy in a fit that has a lower eHP, plus a average lower movement speed (sprint and standard) thus depressing the average eHP still farther.
All the related passive skills providing % buffs are by their very nature unable to close, and in fact only magnify, any gaps in effect or value between suits and tank types (skills linked to a single race can be an exception here).
So at best skill we now have a shield tanker who is faster, has higher eHP, is spending less ISK on average for it and gaining more net utility from passive skills.

But wait, there's more! Due to the competition for slot space only the shield tanker has a serious option in regards to fitting flexibility since Upgrade mods are available only in the low slots required to fit an armor tank. The mobility mods are also tied to low slots. Further shields have tanking mods in both high and low slots while armor has mods only in lows.

In short the theorycrafting shows that we need tanking balanced at the mod level first. With regards to both internal scaling and eHP value (not to be confused with raw HP value) in shield vs armor comparisons. Once that balanced base has been established balance in other related areas can be extrapolated without becoming a crutch for weaknesses in the mods themselves.

Cheers,
Cross

Yeah exactly. The mods are what give armor and shields their value. Their imbalances need to be addressed and then dropsuits balanced to work with that. Having said that, looking at Assault, if we start with Caldari Assault as the control then Gallente would need double armor suit bonuses to match Caldari's double shield suit bonuses and something, maybe passive rep, to match Caldari's extra 5hp of shield recharge. If the value of those bonuses are balanced and the mods are balanced, and you've dealt with the problem of fitting mod, only then are the two suits balanced IMHO.

As for Minmatar Assault I think it needs a new bonus that suits its strengths better than the current shield recharge bonus, which only gives it 4.5 extra recharge at proto. If a Min Assault wants decent recharge, starting from 18, it needs a shield energizer, which is a good fit considering it has 5 high slots. I think a passive bonus to shield delay would work well.

The Amarr currently has the benefit of being able to tank either way, but when and if they fix armor they may want to gear Amarr towards armor to balance the use of armor and shields in the game, at which point an armor bonus instead of shield recharge and moving a high slot to a low slot would do the trick I think.

As you said a big problem for armor tankers is that they have sacrifice a low slot for a fitting mod if they want to fit all complex mods. The solution for this, I believe, is to replace a high slot with a low slot for Gallente Assault (2/5), Gallente Logisitcs (2/6), and Amarr Logistics (2/5). The alternative would be to enable fitting mods to go in either high or low slots.

I think the best way to go about fixing armor is to keep all slots as they are, switch all shield mods to high slots, and either add s medium slot or have some modules go both ways. On top of that give all armor suits bonuses to armor module usage 15-25% (before applying other racial bonuses) , a reduction in CPU/PG of all reactive and ferroscale plates, a reduction in the speed penalty of armor modules maxing out at 5-7%, making explosives do 90/110, and adding passive armor repairs to all suits.

Essentially what this does is make the max penalty of armor tanking about 15%, also ensures that a max tanked armor suit retains 25% more HP than an equally max tanked shield suit of the same role. The armor repair should be small, nothing higher than 7, a reduction in CPU/PG or atleast just PG, ensures that a complex suit stays effective and has more diversity. In this scenario a Gallente Assault with a passive repair of 5, with all complex tank modules vs a Caldari assault with a armor repair of 1 will have a tankHP difference of 22% (168), and a speed difference of 2%. While this does seem like the Gallente suit has the advantage keep in mind he is marginally slower, his total HP reps 6.25x slower, although constantly and a higher number of weapons do damage to his main tank. This is only a comparison at extreme numbers, and only uses two max tanked Gallente and Caldari suits.

Edit: the reason all.armor suits need a 25% bonus to armor modules is because buffing armor plates only slightly increase the gap and would require possibly doubling the HP of armor.modules to ensure armor has higher HP like it is meant, the only other option is to give all armor suits an HP buff of 150-250. When I say before other racial bonuses is that i do not want racial suits losing their bonuses that makes them useful for example the Amarr commandos bonus, which should honestly go to all Amarr suits.

Bonuses should work like ship bonuses in EVE. You have your racial tank bonus (Caldari & Minmatar - Shields, Amarr & Gallente - Armor) and then you have your bonus which is specific to that ship's role, i.e. +5% rate of fire, -10% capacitor usage, +10% drone HP and damage, +5% max velocity. So all Cal and Min medium, light, and heavy should have a different shield bonus, and all Amarr and Gallente a different armor bonus. Then each suit has a bonus for it's specific role, which could be tank, weapon, fitting, speed, or scan related.

Regulators should be kept in low slots so shield tankers can focus fully on shields if they wish, but armor tankers need a high slot module to give them that option too. And I think we need to explore how armor modules can be make armor tanking equally effective before we give huge buffs to to of the races to solve its UPness for them, because that would pigeonhole armor into two races and shields into the other, whereas balanced modules and suit stats would make one more effective on each suit but wouldn't rule out the other as a secondary option.

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