Ships & Modules

If you spend a couple of more seconds thinking about it, to pierce beyond the obvious surface of that statement, and couple it to the discussion in this thread as a whole... then it makes sense, doesn't it?

There are non-racial shield tanking ships because they don't really shield-tank, they fit a basic buffer to whatever reinforces their style. When you shield-tank an "armor ship" you usually do that to supplement other primary attributes. For example, you fit a basic shield buffer to a fast ship you use to snipe. The primary attributes for unconventional tanking are speed and range tanking in that regard. The "armor ships" are already fast(er) and have a slot-allocation that supports doing so. It has nothing to do with "shield being better than armor" and rather what the ship and it's role lends itself to do.

If you want to do mobile sniping you want turrets, you want speed, you want damage, fitting and tracking. All of that is represented in lowslots that are more valuable to your role, so you stick a peripheral tank in the mids to deal with potshots. The armor ships have speed, turrets and lowslots. In many cases they are thus better than shield ships in those "shield roles". At the very least they are better than common shield "tanking" ships in those roles which is why the Eagle or Cerberus were never considered top tier SHACs, despite being shield ships with range bonuses. Go figure. Minmatar stand out there too. Not because they "shield tank", but because they do turrets (with high alpha and flexible ammo) have speed bonuses, utility slots, fair low slots, better resist-profile and so forth.

There are also many Minmatar ships that armor tank (Phoon, Cane etc.) for the same reason. Unheard of! Right?

Saying it's a "shield thing" is such a gross misrepresentation that it's laughable. Wether it was NHACs or SHACs, Caldari were always the worst at it, trumphed by both "armor races", despite being the defacto "shield race". As always, what most complaints are raised against is the Minmatar speed-control concept, popular among smaller PvP-groups. It's a question of people wanting to fly "Minmatar style" without it's racial drawbacks and without having be Minmatar. They should train Minmatar and realize that each race have their own unique traits and tactical concepts.

The fact that EW on the whole (not just ECM) has been nerfed over and over for the past five years may say something about it's popularity to utilize in relation to speed and distance, and you are less likely to see a peripheral tank built around an EW-concept on unbonused ships. In the use of bonused ships though (Recons, again on the whole and not just ECM, are usually cross-tanked and there are many variations of both shield and armor going back and forth). At the same time, that says alot about people's misunderstanding and underestimation of EW-modules that in many situations are considered both too strong and too weak, at the same time.

Those are similar arguments used by less experienced players in their misunderstanding or lack of experience running "armor tactics" as well. I've made that example before, in where "ECM drones" are considered "overpowered" yet people whimpering about armor-platforms can't piece together the use of bay utility slots. The value of having more such drones. While the groups who actually did armor-rush concepts realized the value of drenching shield-gang Scimis and Recons in EC-600's and obliterating them. They did that with Deimos while the likes of armor-sceptics complained about Gallente and filled oceans with tears over racial balance. They also did it with drones long before Crucible while it's first today that the value of drone-sniping is beginning to sink in publicly, after PL's use of it at large scale.

Similar arguments could be made for some regular slot EW on unbonused hulls as well, such as Neuts or even specificly midslots in examples of TD, or perhaps more commonly in examples of secondary tackle. Any good BS pilot for example, know the value of a web. When PL brought "Hellcats" into the public eye, not only did they pick the core concept (the value of Tracking computers to create redundancy against both sig-tankers and reach-tankers) from CVA, but most other competent groups at smaller scales were already using similar Baddons but with full tackle to deal with BC and AHAC. You can look at such prolific groups as RnK and you'll realize they stopped flying their Tech3 AHAC concept much due to the impact of facing old and experienced PvP-groups that knew how to affect transversal with their BS and had full tackle (ie., they faced Baddons with webs that fired up MWD to void transversal, eg., "Kobayashi blap").

More tricks from the higher order of tactics forgotten by most players today, and certainly those that complain about the viability of either armor-tanks, (unbonused-) midslots or BS in general .

All this talk about making shield buffered ships suffer a speed penalty is crap. Armor buffered ships have and will always be better than shield buffered ships in terms of soaking damage and the application of such ships are more than obvious. If one wants to hold their ground in any situation and still apply decent dps, armor tanking is the way to go. Slap some plates and resist mods on there and bring a couple guardians/archon, that's the order of the day.
So why in the name of stupidity will one want armor buffered ships with better ability to soak more damage to be as fast as shield buffered ships which have noticeably lesser tank? It just doesn't add up.

Don't give me the trivial examples most of you come up with such as the mega is too slow to get in range to apply dps. Oh!! you think the mega is bad? Let me show you the raven. It has good paper dps but can't even apply it fully to a stationary BS whilst having a ****** tank. There are a **** ton of examples but I'll let it end here.

Pointing out that Armor and shield tanking both have their merits and demerits is cliche as **** but some still fail to realize that modifying one so it can be better at doing another's job is utter useless. There's a balance between the two that, although isn't perfect, still does a good job of emphasizing the differences while making them desirable in their own way.

I for one know that something will definitely be wrong, if ridiculously buffered ships with insane damage or damage projection have similar pace as shield fitted kiting set-ups. If a particular ship needs more speed then so be it don't completely change how tanking works as there's nothing worth reworking just a few tweaks here and there.

You sure it's not about not bringing things up?
Bringing up navy invuln and it's superb resistance is frowned upon, since it has a cost so it's ok.
Deadspace shield boosters messing up the balance between the different tanks? Known thing, don't mention it.
Oversized shield boosters? Think of the children! Erm, oversized armor plates.
And mentioning the ASB is heresy that results in blamming on the spot.
Bringing up Guardian/Archon as proof of armor being fine is ok.

Jokes aside, topic is about tanking differences, OP even made up something about the shields not immediately draining your cap as they take a hit not making sense, and then all sorts of stuff got mentioned.
The thread is about what it's made into I suppose.
Like the Raven's Torps apparently, based on the poster before you.

Um, do tell which shield extender is the equivalent of the 1600mm plate? I wasn't aware that there was an XL Shield Extender II module in existence?

You aren't asking for balance, you're asking for them to be the same. Balance would be where one (shields) does something (active tank) better than the other (armour), but the other one (armour) does something else (buffer tank) better than the first (shields).

There are pros and cons to both styles of tanking. There are imbalances in individual modules, but these are mostly made up for with ship bonuses and fitting restrictions. Armour plates cost a lot more power grid, but armour tanked ships also have a lot more power grid to start with due to their guns. Shield boosters use over 400% of the CPU needed by armour reppers, but shield tanked ships generally will have more CPU to compensate for this fact.

There are only 3 issues that have been bought up in this thread that I agree need changing at all.

1. Ancilliary Shield Boosters are too good. Yes, they have been nerfed, but they're still too good.
2. Deadspace armour reppers are pretty weak.
3. Slaves and crystals further compound the differences between the tanking styles. Consider swapping the bonuses? :evil:

Other than those issues, the two tanking styles seem mostly balanced to me.

Umm, that's not called balance, that's called bad balance, which we've had for years...

First off, claiming that armor is better at buffer tanks is extremely short sighted and simply not true. Secondly, arguing that active armor tanking should be worse than active shield because shield buffer is worse (which again is not true) is simply moronic... You're justifying pore balance with pore analysis of the overall tanking styles, please stop...

Either way, CCP has already stated that active armor tanking is bad and not working as intended. You can be more or less guaranteed to see changes to the modules and ship bonuses in the near future.

Which is exactly why I stated that a claim of armor being "better at buffer" is short sighted. Simply comparing raw hep values w/o addressing other facets of the ships will always end in a sub par analysis. The "acertation" that armor buffer tanks are better than shield are simply based on simplistic ehp value comparisons.

Yeah, but morons have their unique logic.

Why boost NH or Eagle when Drake is already good enough, they say. Or, alternatively, "why fix Drake when NH or Eagle are not good enough". Right...

The question why in the first place the game should contain something worse by default (active armour tanking) is purely rhetorical.

Also, I love how active shield and active armour tanking being close in DPS tanked suddenly become "the same". By that logic, my Neutron Blaster Cannon II is already literally the same with Torpedo Missile Launcher II. LMAO.

Indeed, buffer tanks are quite balanced, could be better balanced for sure but atm they're quite close to each other.
The problem comes only when you start active tanking your ship, DED Space shield boosters are completely out of whack compared with DED armor reps and to add insult to injury we're were given another active tanking focking module sucking even more cap and make us feel that bad taste in your mouth when you look idiot.

Then, how much of a problem it is to get a huge sign vs speed drawback? -it's not one, both will be using MWD's anyway and still, the buffer shield one (the one that should be slower) will still be faster than the active one (lol active armor)
Of course I'm not talking about the elite gate/station camping pvp that should not even exist as pvp form in this game, not being non consensual pvp one and encourage graveyard camping it's a little lol'ish, specially with balances around graveyard camping ships and the reason why makes so many years they're incapable to do it right.