Ships & Modules

Ships having bonuses and strengths are what makes them unique. If you had your way, the ONLY unique thing about ships would be their appearance. I would much rather have interesting choices about which ships to pick for the job at hand than one beautiful ship that does everything. Yeah, it's a bit of a burden when your skills are low and you can't fly very many different hulls effectively. But it keeps the game interesting for people who have been playing longer.

That said, your assertion isn't necessarily correct. Some armor ships do quite a bit of damage. Blaster ships have some of the highest dps and are often fit with an armor tank (see plated thorax - one of the highest dps t1 cruisers). You don't see this kind of dps with lasers because they trade some of it for other advantages, namely range. You can't just look at "how many mag stabs" to determine the worth of a ship, even in a dps role. Tracking, range, agility, and yes even tank play a role in the outcome, not to mention specific ship bonuses (again, see thorax).

As far as fleets, armor and shield are rarely mixed together. So if you want to fly dps, get in an armor fleet and fly dps. Everyone in the fleet is armor tanked - even dps. Sure, shield fleets are much more common for incursions. That's because incursion runners have hammered out the exact "optimal" fittings for just a few ships. It's one of the most exclusive activities in the game, as far as ships and fittings. They pick those few ships because they run incursions fastest. Does that mean all other ships should run incursions just as fast? No - they are good at other things.

If you are set on armor tanking, there are plenty of other things you can do, both in PVE and PvP. Wormhole PVE fleets fly predominately armor ships. Level 4s can easily be done in Amarr battleships. All kinds of combat roles are filled by armor fleets and many times armor is preferred for the extra buffer it provides. These ships are good at these things. Should they be re-balanced just so they can run an incursion site in 20 minutes instead of 25? Nope. It's not CCP that is preventing you from using them by giving them unique bonuses. It's greedy min/maxing by players, which is just a natural human response to grinding PVE.

So I would encourage you to find something else to do. There are a ton of options for armor ships. I'm actually surprised these replies have not been more hostile considering the basis of your argument. Having unique ships with unique strengths and weaknesses is a good thing. No one is going to get on board with homogenizing them all because you like the paint job on your apoc.

As a newer player myself I was in a similar situation. I found the bpc for a Vigilant and wanted to use it for PVE in High Sec since it is such a nice looking ship.

On paper this should be a armor tank/blaster boat but I did a buffer shield tank and used railguns instead. I would get wiped from the game quickly if I tried to pvp with that setup but for doing Guristas 3/10 and 4/10 DED's it worked well but a little slow.

After experimenting with an armor tank I ended up with a shield extender and kinetic resist modules in the mids and mag stabs in the lows. I completely ignored the bonus to webs. I had my kinetic resist up to 85 and dps around 300 and could hit things from over 70km using Iridium rounds.

Now I run a passive shield tank Ishtar so go figure. You have Shields, Armor and Structure, I like not going past the first one.

There are millions of ways to fit things, play around and see what works best for you doing the things you want to do.

I don't know of any T1 shield ships that can sustain 700-900 dps without sacrificing thier own dps either.

Both armor and shield ships are completely viable at the moment.

I feel armor is superior presently but have crosstraining into shields very high up in my list of things to do.

Shield tanks have a significant drawback in that enemies can more easily scan you down with combat scanner probes and more quickly acquire a target lock upon you.

Cross tanking (i.e Armor Base/Shield-Shield Gal/Armor-Cal, for example,) is a delicate procedure. It can be done, but it requires lots of planning, and lots of research into how far you can push your idea.

In my time in Eve, I've learned a couple of things

* Traditionally, Armor is for PVP. Your Med slots are used for tackle, prop, disruption, etc.

*Shields are better than Armor for PVE. Your Med slots are used for tank, while the lows are used for DPS.

*You'll reach a stage where you can break the meta. (i.e. Missile Legion, Armor Nightmare.) It takes time to get there, but allows you to have more flexibility.


(Note. This post is primarily for newer players/ or forum members who jumped in at the last second and haven't bothered the read the wealth of info beforehand. Criticism is encouraged.)