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Shield tanking vs Armor tanking (fixs?)
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Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#161 - 2012-12-31 04:18:18 UTC
And armour reppers are effectively better then their equivalent shield boosters (ignoring ASBs) due to armour tanks higher base resists and higher buffer.

Heck, I spend all day in armour boats, go ahead and buff them. Just don't come whining to the forums in a month's time when no one flies shield anymore because armour is better in every way.
Mund Richard
#162 - 2012-12-31 08:22:41 UTC
Paikis wrote:
And armour reppers are effectively better then their equivalent shield boosters (ignoring ASBs) due to armour tanks higher base resists and higher buffer.
And yet somehow for PvE I always end up with a more efficient shield tank on ships with more-or-less equal slot numbers.
Not to mention the gank.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#163 - 2012-12-31 08:54:45 UTC
Mund Richard wrote:
Paikis wrote:
And armour reppers are effectively better then their equivalent shield boosters (ignoring ASBs) due to armour tanks higher base resists and higher buffer.
And yet somehow for PvE I always end up with a more efficient shield tank on ships with more-or-less equal slot numbers.
Not to mention the gank.


Since when were any fucks given about PvE tanks? You need enough to not explode and then you pile on damage.

Having said that, given equal slots, and armour tank will have more buffer, probably better resists, and acceptable repair rates (ASBs not included)
Mund Richard
#164 - 2012-12-31 09:05:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Paikis wrote:
Having said that, given equal slots, and armour tank will have more buffer, probably better resists, and acceptable repair rates (ASBs not included)
Prbobably better resists?
After 2 invulns compared to 2 EAMN, shields is ahead.
Adding a DC levels out the field more-or-less due to shield tankers having less hull and getting less for their primary tank.
Armor can have more buffer with plates, shield can oversize reppers.

In fact, I tend to think of ASB-s as the shield equivalent of plates for solo/small scale, if there is no logi on field, and then the buffer situation is suddenly the other way around even before a SBA.

And once you start throwing immense ISK at it, shield has way better resists, and more efficient reppers.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#165 - 2012-12-31 09:10:39 UTC
We're talking about PvP again? Make up your mind please.
Mund Richard
#166 - 2012-12-31 09:12:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Paikis wrote:
We're talking about PvP again? Make up your mind please.

edit:
Aaah, you were talking about PvE there?

After the first line I dismissed the possibility, and went back to PvP.

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.
Valleria Darkmoon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#167 - 2012-12-31 09:56:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Valleria Darkmoon
Mr Kingston wrote:
Quote:

Increased signature radius means:
- You are targeted faster, meaning you are being shot/jammed/tackled faster.
- Missiles and larger weapon systems will hit you harder.
- You are easier to track.

Reduced speed and agility means:
- You cannot run away as easily.
- You are easier to track
- You take longer to align, meaning there is a longer window where you can be tackled/jammed/shot at.


The goal is not to flame, but this is where i disagree heavily.

Reduced speed also means:
-Missiles and larger weapons systems will hit you harder.
-You are easier to track.
-You can no longer dictate range, which has serious effects on your dps and tackling abilities that cant be calced on paper.


-Edit: sry for dbl posts, following as I play.


The inability to dictate range IMO is the biggest drawback of armor tanking and a large part of the reason Amarr ships are not used often below battleships. Lasers are extremely sensitive to range with pulses having good optimal but poor falloff, what you end up with is decent range for your best damage but since basically everything in the world is faster than you it is too easy for them to get either under your guns or force you to fight in deep falloff and if you swap to scorch and they find the fight not going well they can often get away since you can't web at that range.

This combines with Amarr's general lack of mids (4 mids is a rarity sub-battleship) and the fact that Amarr are very cap intensive to begin with to keep them out of space. In order to maximize the effectiveness of lasers at close range you need a web but your cap intensive fit becomes a lot safer if you fit a cap booster. Given that MWD and point are pretty mandatory for pvp what you're left with is the choice between fitting a web to control range or fitting a cap booster to ensure you don't just cap out and die sitting there wishing you could move. Amarr would greatly benefit from not taking double speed penalties on their tank.

In short as it stands now Amarr is almost always slowest on field and with slot layouts and game mechanics the following happens:

-You generally have 3 mids.
-MWD is a given, now you have 2.
-Taking a scram/point is pretty much mandatory now you have 1.
-You can now fit a web which will give you some range control ability as well as the ability to hold ships at optimal
OR
-You can fit a cap booster, you're Amarr and so dry cap = 0 damage and you're cap intensive so without this you're lucky to have a fit last 2 mins on cap.

Removing double speed penalties from plates as well as rigs would help a lot with the range control issues and possibly allow some Amarr ships to compete and ships like the Harbinger that do not have to deal with the above issue so much might even become somewhat common.

Reality has an almost infinite capacity to resist oversimplification.
Jerick Ludhowe
Internet Tuff Guys
#168 - 2012-12-31 14:18:06 UTC
Mund Richard wrote:
Just a worthless comment:
These are two separate topics though, one saying active tank % hull bonus needs a boost to properly out-perform the passive, the other about how it doesn't help at all make the majority of ships' (ones lacking such bonus) local armor tank better (which they are probably in need of).


If you're going to be looking at the overall balance of tanking modules and types in this game I see no reason to not address the balance issue between resistance and active bonuses at the same time. I'm in no way against a potential buff to the rep output of the modules themselves however as stated, w/o an increase to the active bonus, ships with resistance bonuses will be just as superior as they are today. Maybe resistance bonuses need a nerf to 4% per level?

The overall goal should be to make active armor tanking more appealing and changes to the modules themselves are the only way you're going to achieve this on ships w/o active bonuses. As I touched upon, a decrease to the fitting requirements should be the first step with other changes to specifically medium cap boosters focused on enabling a pilot to run 2 MARII or equivalent with a single booster. Currently a single t2 booster with 800s is not able to keep up with 2 reppers, factor in guns that use cap and prop mod usage and you're often unable to even take advantage of your extremely slot heavy tank. If it's determined that buff's to the reppers cycle time or rep amount is needed, then I'm all for it. I personally just hate over buffing and I'd hate to see that happen here with active armor tanks.
Jerick Ludhowe
Internet Tuff Guys
#169 - 2012-12-31 14:24:46 UTC
Paikis wrote:

Having said that, given equal slots, and armour tank will have more buffer, probably better resists, and acceptable repair rates (ASBs not included)


Acceptable repair rate? I suppose the term "acceptable" makes this statement simply personal. As far as slot numbers and power of tank compared to active armor and shield... It's a no contest winner in favor of shield tanks, and has been for many many years. Armor generally does have slightly higher resistances and higher overall buffer when comparatively buffer fit... Active tanks though? come on paikis...
Fon Revedhort
Monks of War
#170 - 2012-12-31 14:31:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Fon Revedhort
Valleria Darkmoon wrote:

Removing double speed penalties from plates as well as rigs would help a lot with the range control issues and possibly allow some Amarr ships to compete and ships like the Harbinger that do not have to deal with the above issue so much might even become somewhat common.

No way! Introduce mobility penalties for passive shield tanking instead.

Why spoil things when you can improve them? Everyone sane should agree that having different tanking types being differentiated by different things (pardon my wording) is a very good game concept. Active tank? - suffer huge cap issues. Passive tank? - deal with reduced mobility. How is that bad?

"Being supporters of free speech and free and open [CSM] elections... we removed Fon Revedhort from eligibility". CCP, April 2013.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#171 - 2012-12-31 15:18:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Paikis
Jerick Ludhowe wrote:
Paikis wrote:

Having said that, given equal slots, and armour tank will have more buffer, probably better resists, and acceptable repair rates (ASBs not included)


Acceptable repair rate? I suppose the term "acceptable" makes this statement simply personal. As far as slot numbers and power of tank compared to active armor and shield... It's a no contest winner in favor of shield tanks, and has been for many many years. Armor generally does have slightly higher resistances and higher overall buffer when comparatively buffer fit... Active tanks though? come on paikis...


Armour's active tank relies on having good resists to work. When you factor those in, and compare between even sizes, armour reppers are more efficient.
Gitanmaxx
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#172 - 2012-12-31 15:28:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Gitanmaxx
I would like to add that's it's a bit silly when people say "the benefit of armor tanking is it frees up mid slots."

First of all that's a moot point because shield tanking frees up low slots just as much, which is where your damage mods go. So one is not better than the other in that aspect. Secondly shield tank ships have more mids and armor tanking ships have more lows so this further becomes a wash.

Overall shield tanking is better in every other regard. The most telling aspect of this is that people frequently try to fit a minimum shield tank on a ship designed to armor tank, yet you never see someone try to armor tank a shield bias ship.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#173 - 2012-12-31 15:37:38 UTC
Gitanmaxx wrote:
yet you never see someone try to armor tank a shield bias ship.


Scorpions, Widows, Falcons and ECM-fit Tengus would like to have a word with you. As would the old Kestrel.
Kiteo Hatto
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#174 - 2012-12-31 15:41:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Kiteo Hatto
Shields are disgustingly OP, got a vargur and paladin, they both tank great and do sweet dps but the shield tanking is just sooooooooooooo much easier. Look at these stats . Oh and it gets worse(cap wise) if you are not using an x-type repper, they eat like...450GJ instead.

Granted im using an amp with the shield but still......

Shields have over armor:
-less fitting requirement by like....a double
-much quicker activation cycle (more than 2x faster)
-less cap usage(Gist has ~200GJ or something, like..seriously?!)
-instant "boost" effect


To properly fit my paldin i needed a 5%PG implant and it's bloody tight (I already have AWU V).

Now, my guns use CAP and PG and my tank uses PG..... your missiles boats should use more CPU for tanking, eh.

These 2 ships do the same job but why am i needing more SP/Expensive modules to even out armor tanking with shield tank.....

Im actually training for a tengu right now, going to jump the EZ mode bandwagon.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#175 - 2012-12-31 15:53:01 UTC
Kiteo Hatto wrote:
Shields are disgustingly OP, got a vargur and paladin, they both tank great and do sweet dps but the shield tanking is just sooooooooooooo much easier. Look at these stats .

Granted im using an amp with the shield but still......

Shields have over armor:
-less fitting requirement by like....a double
-much quicker activation cycle (more than 2x faster)
-less cap usage(Gist has ~200GJ or something, like..seriously?!)
-instant "boost" effect


Now to properly fit my paldin i needed a 5%PG implant and it's bloody tight (I already have AWU V).

These 2 ships do the same job but why am i needing more SP/Expensive modules to even out armor tanking with shield tank.....


You're comparing an XL booster with a boost amp to a large armour repper, so your point is completely invalid anyway, but lets take a look...

Less fitting requirements? Only on PG. You'll find the Shield Booster requires almost 4 times as much CPU. You'll also find that armour tanked ships generally have a lot of surplus power grid, while shield ships have extra CPU, I wonder why that could be?
Quicker cycle time? Sure.
Less cap used? You're not too good at maths are you? That booster uses 92 cap per second, the repper uses only 35 cap/second. Almost 3 times as much cap, for only double the boost/sec and thats with a boost amp as well.
Instant boost? Yup. But so what? Unless you're exploding before the first rep lands, this means nothing.

I notice you underlined the heat damage as well... lets run some numbers here...
4.59 heat damage per 11.25 seconds is 0.408 heat damage per second.
1.87 heat damage per 4 seconds is 0.4675 heat damage.
So the armour repper is actually better for heat damage.
Songbird
#176 - 2012-12-31 15:56:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Songbird
To equalize armor tanking there should be a "shunt" module. It should move all power that an armor tanking ship uses , for shields it doesn't need, into a system of choice, be it propulsion, capacitor, weapon or armor repair while at the same time halving the armor tanker signature: examples

prop shunt t1:
Energy used to maintain shield is shunted to the ship's propulsion system increasing base speed by 10%, but in doing so rending the shield inoperative. Due to reduced emissions from the ship the effective signature is reduced by 15%.

The skill for prop shunting would increase the base speed by further 2% per level and reduce signature by 2% per level.

Module is semi balanced since it cuts almost 1/3 of your ehp , but at the same time an armor tank doesn't care about shield anyway , thus giving clear advantage to the active armor tanker. Basically when you equip the module you'll have only armor and hull( a lot like a sleeper ship)
Kiteo Hatto
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#177 - 2012-12-31 16:13:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Kiteo Hatto
Paikis wrote:
Kiteo Hatto wrote:
Shields are disgustingly OP, got a vargur and paladin, they both tank great and do sweet dps but the shield tanking is just sooooooooooooo much easier. Look at these stats .

Granted im using an amp with the shield but still......

Shields have over armor:
-less fitting requirement by like....a double
-much quicker activation cycle (more than 2x faster)
-less cap usage(Gist has ~200GJ or something, like..seriously?!)
-instant "boost" effect


Now to properly fit my paldin i needed a 5%PG implant and it's bloody tight (I already have AWU V).

These 2 ships do the same job but why am i needing more SP/Expensive modules to even out armor tanking with shield tank.....


You're comparing an XL booster with a boost amp to a large armour repper, so your point is completely invalid anyway, but lets take a look...

Less fitting requirements? Only on PG. You'll find the Shield Booster requires almost 4 times as much CPU. You'll also find that armour tanked ships generally have a lot of surplus power grid, while shield ships have extra CPU, I wonder why that could be?
Quicker cycle time? Sure.
Less cap used? You're not too good at maths are you? That booster uses 92 cap per second, the repper uses only 35 cap/second. Almost 3 times as much cap, for only double the boost/sec and thats with a boost amp as well.
Instant boost? Yup. But so what? Unless you're exploding before the first rep lands, this means nothing.

I notice you underlined the heat damage as well... lets run some numbers here...
4.59 heat damage per 11.25 seconds is 0.408 heat damage per second.
1.87 heat damage per 4 seconds is 0.4675 heat damage.
So the armour repper is actually better for heat damage.



The point is that I CAN boost twice as much HP back with shield tank than with armor in the same amount of time. Ofcourse it costs you twice as much CAP, BUT your turrets/missiles don't use CAP ANYWAY. You are getting more bang for your cap with shields(because of 4s vs 11s).

You really mean it that you think its balanced that an EXTRA Large booster uses 5x LESS PG and only like....150 more CPU than a LARGE repper ?
And im looking at activation cost not the GJ/s.

Also, that heat damage is negligible so I'll give you that. However, we are talking ~150 more CPU vs ~2.3k PG(thats a crapload of PG)
Inkarr Hashur
Skyline Federation
#178 - 2012-12-31 16:54:01 UTC
Songbird wrote:
To equalize armor tanking there should be a "shunt" module. It should move all power that an armor tanking ship uses , for shields it doesn't need, into a system of choice, be it propulsion, capacitor, weapon or armor repair while at the same time halving the armor tanker signature: examples

prop shunt t1:
Energy used to maintain shield is shunted to the ship's propulsion system increasing base speed by 10%, but in doing so rending the shield inoperative. Due to reduced emissions from the ship the effective signature is reduced by 15%.

The skill for prop shunting would increase the base speed by further 2% per level and reduce signature by 2% per level.

Module is semi balanced since it cuts almost 1/3 of your ehp , but at the same time an armor tank doesn't care about shield anyway , thus giving clear advantage to the active armor tanker. Basically when you equip the module you'll have only armor and hull( a lot like a sleeper ship)


This is a neat idea. I never linked my shield much anyway. It was always just an annoying delay until I could see how well I could tank incoming damage with my armor.
Gitanmaxx
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#179 - 2012-12-31 22:54:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Gitanmaxx
Paikis wrote:
Gitanmaxx wrote:
yet you never see someone try to armor tank a shield bias ship.


Scorpions, Widows, Falcons and ECM-fit Tengus would like to have a word with you. As would the old Kestrel.



oh, two ships that once in a while armor tank with results sub-par to shield tanking them, one extremely rare.....and an old ship.

sounds like you've made a very valid point. Roll
Mund Richard
#180 - 2013-01-01 16:36:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Mund Richard
Paikis wrote:
Gitanmaxx wrote:
yet you never see someone try to armor tank a shield bias ship.
Scorpions, Widows, Falcons and ECM-fit Tengus would like to have a word with you. As would the old Kestrel.
And THAT is why I always say combat ships.

All these are ECM ships (well, almost), and are armor tanked to allow ECM.
By that logic, I could troll you saying that "and DPS ships tank shields to allow damage booster mods".

And in fact they can. In a fleet, you need only one guy to tackle a ship, not 10.
Jerick Ludhowe wrote:
Mund Richard wrote:
Just a worthless comment:
These are two separate topics though, one saying active tank % hull bonus needs a boost to properly out-perform the passive, the other about how it doesn't help at all make the majority of ships' (ones lacking such bonus) local armor tank better (which they are probably in need of).
If you're going to be looking at the overall balance of tanking modules and types in this game I see no reason to not address the balance issue between resistance and active bonuses at the same time. I'm in no way against a potential buff to the rep output of the modules themselves however as stated, w/o an increase to the active bonus, ships with resistance bonuses will be just as superior as they are today. Maybe resistance bonuses need a nerf to 4% per level?
In fact I also said that a few pages back, and no one disagreed with it, just like the times before it popped up - after guys made the math and showed it - hence I made a self-admittedly meh post, that the convo isn't about that *again*.

On the other hand, I don't recall suggesting a reduction in resistance %, so that one is nice and fresh!

"We want PvE activities to require active participation and mirror PvP more closely." Stacking penalty for NPC EWAR then? Lock range under 9km from over 100 in a BS is not fun. Nor is two NPC web drones making me crawl 10m/s. PvP SW-900 x5: 75m/s.