So the people I run with and myself have been having an ongoing conversation over multiple nights while we're queing. What the hell is armor penetration REALLY doing? It may seem simple (armor penetration means your shots go through the armor), but we'd all love to know stats. There are a couple REALLY intelligent math peoples, and I'd love for them to be able to work out numbers to explain to those of us who failed math spectacularly... multiple times. Anyways, here's the breakdown of the question.

1. Armor is for damage reduction, right? So how much damage reduction am I losing between lightweight and reinforced armor?

2. How much stock armor does a SF / Bomber / GS have? (I don't think it explicitly states)

3. Not all ships have armor - does armor penetration do nothing to them then (seems like an obvious yes, but trust and verify)

4. Does armor have any additional effects that aren't outlined clearly, like engine consumption rates or something?

Just looking for answers - I know implementing a new game / patches requires most of your attention, but we as players (at least the ones I talk to) aren't exactly certain as to what's going on. We've tried to develop formulas for how the damage in the game works, but we really need the information to be available as to how much of an impact armor plays to optimize builds / strategies. If a dev could clarify on this, it'd be a big help

Armor pen ignores all damage reduction effect.

Bombers have 10% DR, Strikes have 5%, Scouts have nil.

Not sure about Gunships.

Target has no damage reduction? It does nothing.

Armor pen ignores all damage reduction effect.

 

Bombers have 10% DR, Strikes have 5%, Scouts have nil.

 

Not sure about Gunships.

 

Target has no damage reduction? It does nothing.

Thanks for the answers Imperius! BTW, fun flying against ya yesterday. Do you know how much armor is sacrificed by adjusting which one you use, or are they just inherent values that'll remain applied regardless of how your ship is built (seems like evasion builds should sacrifice armor, but what do I know).

Thanks for the answers Imperius! BTW, fun flying against ya yesterday. Do you know how much armor is sacrificed by adjusting which one you use, or are they just inherent values that'll remain applied regardless of how your ship is built (seems like evasion builds should sacrifice armor, but what do I know).

I'm not sure I understand you clearly. What do you mean by sacrificed ?

If you're talking about the amount of DR it would give if taken, it's 20% if I recall correctly.

Armor (damage reduction) comes from five sources: inherent (10% for bombers, 5% for strikes and gunships, 0% for scouts), deflection armor (up to 20%), crew (9%), and the Charged Plating and Nullify abilities (60% and 30%). These all stack additively; a bomber with mastered deflection armor and the appropriate crew member has 39% damage reduction.

Incidentally, evasion works identically, with the exception of Distortion Field and Running Interference in place of Charged Plating and Nullify.

Hull damage is reduced by damage reduction. Shield damage is not. For example, if the above bomber lost all its shields and would to take a T3 BLC to the face for 700 damage, he would only take 427 damage after damage reduction. If his shields were up, he would take the full 700 damage.

Armor penetration (inherent on certain weapons, available as upgrades to others) means the target's damage reduction is reduced to 0 against that weapon. If the BLCs in the above example were upgraded to t4 armor penetration, the bomber would take the full 700 damage regardless of his shields.

Armor (damage reduction) comes from five sources: inherent (10% for bombers, 5% for strikes and gunships, 0% for scouts), deflection armor (up to 20%), crew (9%), and the Charged Plating and Nullify abilities (60% and 30%). These all stack additively; a bomber with mastered deflection armor and the appropriate crew member has 39% damage reduction.

 

Incidentally, evasion works identically, with the exception of Distortion Field and Running Interference in place of Charged Plating and Nullify.

 

Hull damage is reduced by damage reduction. Shield damage is not. For example, if the above bomber lost all its shields and would to take a T3 BLC to the face for 700 damage, he would only take 427 damage after damage reduction. If his shields were up, he would take the full 700 damage.

 

Armor penetration (inherent on certain weapons, available as upgrades to others) means the target's damage reduction is reduced to 0 against that weapon. If the BLCs in the above example were upgraded to t4 armor penetration, the bomber would take the full 700 damage regardless of his shields.

So charged plating and lightweight armor both reduce damage the same amount (before upgrades)?

I'm not sure I understand you clearly. What do you mean by sacrificed ?

If you're talking about the amount of DR it would give if taken, it's 20% if I recall correctly.

Armond got it - how much damage reduction would you lose if you were running a strike build with evasion instead of charged plating

So charged plating and lightweight armor both reduce damage the same amount (before upgrades)?

Charged plating and lightweight armor have nothing to do with each other. Charged plating reduces hull damage you take by 60% while the cooldown is up (and since the component comes with inherent shield bleedthrough, you'll always be taking hull damage when something hits you). Lightweight armor is a chance for you to not get hit when you would otherwise get hit.

If you wanted to run a Pike/Quell build with charged plating, you could get up to 34% passive armor, and bump that up to 94% with charged plating up. Once you got charged plating to t2, 20% of all shield damage you took would go through to hull (as though every weapon used against you had 20% shield piercing).

Assuming you were never hit by a weapon with armor penetration or shield piercing, you would take 13.2% less damage with Charged Plating down, and 18.8% with it up. Obviously, you would take less damage from weapons with more shield penetration, and more damage from weapons with armor penetration. You'd want to time charged plating to go up when you're going to get hit by weapons with shield piercing, such as slugs, seismics, and concs.

If you built for evasion instead, the most you could get would be 14% (9% from armor, 5% from crew). That's not 14% less damage taken (except over a very long time frame against an unrealistic combination of weapons) -- that's a 14% chance for an individual shot to miss. It will do nothing against lock-on weapons and is unlikely to save you from death by slug when your hull is moderately low but your shields are full. Further, because evasion is stronger the more of it you have, you won't get the kind of durability you're used to seeing on scouts (that baseline 10% is big). On the other hand, it will prevent damage to your shields.

Charged plating and lightweight armor have nothing to do with each other. Charged plating reduces hull damage you take by 60% while the cooldown is up (and since the component comes with inherent shield bleedthrough, you'll always be taking hull damage when something hits you). Lightweight armor is a chance for you to not get hit when you would otherwise get hit.

 

If you wanted to run a Pike/Quell build with charged plating, you could get up to 34% passive armor, and bump that up to 94% with charged plating up. Once you got charged plating to t2, 20% of all shield damage you took would go through to hull (as though every weapon used against you had 20% shield piercing).

 

Assuming you were never hit by a weapon with armor penetration or shield piercing, you would take 13.2% less damage with Charged Plating down, and 18.8% with it up. Obviously, you would take less damage from weapons with more shield penetration, and more damage from weapons with armor penetration. You'd want to time charged plating to go up when you're going to get hit by weapons with shield piercing, such as slugs, seismics, and concs.

 

If you built for evasion instead, the most you could get would be 14% (9% from armor, 5% from crew). That's not 14% less damage taken (except over a very long time frame against an unrealistic combination of weapons) -- that's a 14% chance for an individual shot to miss. It will do nothing against lock-on weapons and is unlikely to save you from death by slug when your hull is moderately low but your shields are full. Further, because evasion is stronger the more of it you have, you won't get the kind of durability you're used to seeing on scouts (that baseline 10% is big). On the other hand, it will prevent damage to your shields.

Thanks dude - definitely come into TS with us again and explain what you just wrote to everybody please - I'm sure they'd be happy to hear about something that actually makes sense

Thanks dude - definitely come into TS with us again and explain what you just wrote to everybody please - I'm sure they'd be happy to hear about something that actually makes sense

Schedules are hard and I have an essay to write. When do you usually fly?

If you built for evasion instead, the most you could get would be 14% (9% from armor, 5% from crew). That's not 14% less damage taken (except over a very long time frame against an unrealistic combination of weapons) -- that's a 14% chance for an individual shot to miss. It will do nothing against lock-on weapons and is unlikely to save you from death by slug when your hull is moderately low but your shields are full. Further, because evasion is stronger the more of it you have, you won't get the kind of durability you're used to seeing on scouts (that baseline 10% is big). On the other hand, it will prevent damage to your shields.

But do not forget that most weapons that are not missiles are inherently inaccurate and tend to worsen with tracking penalties.

As the result, it's like if anyone had a much higher base evasion, and every point of extra evasion tend to have much more impressive results that stat sheets imply.

But do not forget that most weapons that are not missiles are inherently inaccurate and tend to worsen with tracking penalties.

 

As the result, it's like if anyone had a much higher base evasion, and every point of extra evasion tend to have much more impressive results that stat sheets imply.

That's build-neutral, though. If a shot truly misses because of the tracking penalties, it'll miss regardless of whether you build for armor or for evasion. If a shot doesn't miss because of tracking penalties but rather misses because of evasion, that's a point for the evasion build and should be recorded as such.

Imagine a table with two columns and one hundred rows. On the left are the numbers 01-100, and on the right are "hit", "miss from accuracy/tracking penalties", "miss from evasion", and "critical hit". By default, everything in the right column is filled with "hit"; tracking penalties, low accuracy, evasion, and crit chance bump off hits. When you fire a shot, the game rolls a 100 sided die (they exist) and uses the result on the table. There's never going to be a point where "miss due to accuracy" is going to apply to an evasion build but not an armor build.

There is an argument for stacking evasion so more slots on the table are filled with misses, since misses deal zero damage. And that's a valid strategy -- most scouts stack evasion for that reason. On the other hand, most weapons are either short range -- meaning 90%+ base accuracy with tracking penalties of 1% per degree or less -- or long range -- meaning little dropoff at range (85% at worst) and little in the way of tracking penalties by the nature of ranged combat. Everyone who knows what they're doing also takes Pinpointing, which further mitigates low accuracy. To top it off, skilled pilots will make sure their target is as close to the center of their screen as possible, further mitigating the disadvantages of tracking penalties.

And, of course, there's BLCs, which are rather important in the current meta. At 2 km with Pinpointing, BLCs have 103% accuracy and -0.8% accuracy per degree of tracking (call it 3% for easy math)... but they also completely ignore armor on most builds, so your 14%ish chance to not be hit is better than the alternative of always being hit with your armor doing nothing.

A fully upgraded slug with pinpointing will have just over 107% hit chance at 10 km. Tracking penalties are fierce, but again, in long range combat your enemy needs to move a lot to make you alter your aim by one degree. It doesn't hurt that the gunship will slowly turn in the direction the railgun is aiming, which further reduces tracking penalties. At that point, 14% evasion turns into only a 7% chance to not be hit. But, again, slugs completely ignore armor, so that 7% chance is better than nothing.

Is lightweight armor better than deflection armor? I dunno. Clearly, against slugs, HLCs, and BLCs, Lightweight wins out. On the other hand, mines and missiles are equally big players in a lot of matches, and lightweight armor does nothing against them whereas deflection armor applies to most of them.

And then, of course, there's the question of reinforced armor, but it's very hard to tell if +20% hull strength would realistically turn a two-shot into a three-shot, especially if repair drones are lying around.

So a short summary of the conventional wisdom on damage reduction and armor piercing below.

If you stack DR, you can do neat tricks like boost through multiple bombers worth of mines and just feel a slight tickling sensation.

Damage reduction has several drawbacks that make it a fairly rare choice though.

1. 
    
   
2. It does nothing to prevent shield damage. If you're dying to burst damage, this doesn't really matter. If you have moderate more or less steady shield damage with regen opportunities such that the shield portion of your effective health is greater than your max shield pool (after cooldowns) then the performance of DR falls off. How big this factor is depends greatly on the play environment that you experience in GSF, it can be trivial or it can be huge.
    
    
   
3. Armor penetration is binary. Either the weapon does nothing against damage reduction, or it completely negates damage reduction. In theory DR should be best in situations where you're going from full shields and full hull to dead from burst damage. In practice the bursty weapons have armor piercing either native or as the most commonly taken upgrades, making DR completely worthless in the situation where it should in theory perform best. Evasion and Shields are countered by Accuracy and Shield piercing, but only partially. Personally, I suspect this ability to be completely circumvented by very common bursty weapons is the main reason why DR is not favored by most people.
    
    
   
4. Shield bleedthrough. People really dislike this, but I'm not sure it's a really big deal. If you're taking minor steady damage, then shields or evasion are going to be superior choices for survival in any case. It can also be easily countered if you have reliable hull repair available to you. So annoying perhaps, but if the DR is being used in appropriate situations, it doesn't really have a significant negative effect on the value of DR.
    
    
   
5. Anticipation. Like evasion DR is something that works best when stacked to absurd levels and relies on using active abilities with cooldowns to do so. So if you can't predict the incoming damage, you're not going to find it nearly as useful as if you could predict it. In one sense DR is fairly noob friendly in that an inexperienced player in a ship with few upgrades will very often die in one burst of fire, which is where DR should be at it's best. The problem is that knowing when that burst is likely to arrive and hitting a DR active ability just in time requires a lot of experience. In theory seeing your shields disappear is a warning, but for a new pilot the delay between noticing that and hitting the cooldown is often going to be more time than the attacker needs to finish them off. In this respect evasion has a decided advantage, in that ships that have moderate (15-33%) passive evasion still reap significant benefits, whereas with DR failing to have the full stacked effect is a serious problem.
   

So where does that leave DR as a defensive stat?

Baseline ship DR is free and you can't alter it so don't worry about it. It doesn't have a big enough effect to be worth changing ship class over.

Stacking DR can work in special situations. In minelayer vs minelayer and strike vs minefield situations it can be extremely useful assuming that the mines are seismic and interdiction mines and gunships and emp aren't doing the job. It does sort of require believing that gunships and type 2 scouts are a plague and successfully avoiding them like the plague. Perhaps reasonable for a minelayer, but hard work on a strike in most cases.

If you're not stacking DR, then you probably don't want to take the armor component for it, you'll underperform the other options.

There might be a case for taking the crew active if you're a skilled pilot. You'll be more vulnerable to many weapons compared to taking running interference, but it will be the same as if you had taken an offensive copilot ability, so certainly not an excessive loss of general survivability. Clever use when appropriate though, might make dealing with mines much more survivable, and if you know that you're getting hit by weapons like quads, light lasers, or rapid fires it would allow you to greatly reduce hull damage from them after your shields went down. A very niche use, but in that niche you might give people a nasty surprise by not dying when you should.

Sort of sums up DR in it's current state. Potentially very good in its niche, but it's niche is a very small one and requires a lot of skill to exploit.

The straightforward, simple fix to the issues surrounding armor pen is obvious: take all the weapons with 100% armor penetration and change them to have only 50% armor penetration. Those weapons will still be superior choices against turrets but DR will not be widely useless like it is now.

One other option, that could be taken alone or combined with the above, is to remove armor penetration from BLC.

The straightforward, simple fix to the issues surrounding armor pen is obvious: take all the weapons with 100% armor penetration and change them to have only 50% armor penetration. Those weapons will still be superior choices against turrets but DR will not be widely useless like it is now.

 

One other option, that could be taken alone or combined with the above, is to remove armor penetration from BLC.

I'd also like it if it didn't only apply to hull damage, since hull damage is so much harder to recover from and so much more dangerous to take.

That is a far more drastic fix that both changes an actual game mechanic (rather than a visible statistic) and might require further pervasive balance changes.

Bioware has shown a willingness to do things like "across the board, reduce shield piercing" or "across the board, reduce evasion". They've shown a willingness to make mechanical tweaks to individual components when those components were seriously overpowered (ion railgun). They do not yet have a precedent for making across-the-board mechanical changes.

I think that the "reduce armor pen to 50%" and "remove armor pen from BLC" suggestions are the sort of change Bioware might actually make, which is why I've been arguing for them.

The tradeoff appears to be:

Hull:

> If you have Damage Reduction hull, you take less hull damage from most sources (including all mines). The fact that mines have this as a partial counter is very important. It also works against some missiles, reducing the damage from the ubiquitous clusters and some concussions. Important things that still hit you through this include the other missiles (thermite, proton, rocket pod, even EMP), the common burst laser cannon, and heavy lasers. This is your best hull against all bombers by a linear mile, and is also your only call if you are running charged plating.

>If you have health hull, you can take more damage from all sources, but the advantage goes away unless you are receiving heals. This is your best hull against surviving a gunship hit and can give you the power to survive against hull blasting mines, but at the end of the day you will need heals to cycle into this hull. It also "works" against all manner of missile. It's a kind of niche choice.

> If you have the evasion hull, you have an advantage in dogfighting situations, and it can even evade railgun shots. Unlike the other hull choices, it allows you to have more breathing room in all situations, as the evasion percent can actually result in a shot that would have hit the other hulls instead missing you- meaning that it boosts your effective health versus these attacks by the most, as it alone essentially multiplies your effective shields. The disadvantages are that it is entirely without merit against mines and missiles, and the option to really capitalize on it (distortion field) is really only present on certain ships.

Because these things stack additively, their effects are much more than additive. As an example, if you have 0% evasion and add 25%, you have increased your survival by 33%. If you took 1000 damage to kill before, it will on average take 1333 to killy ou now. If you add another 25%, now you have increased your survival by 100% from base and by 50% from the previous upgrade. This means that each point of evasion is worth more than the point before. The same is true of damage reduction.

When it comes to crewmembers, max health isn't a choice. You can essentially buff shields (ok), buff shield restore (poor), buff damage reduction (ok) and buff evasion (normally the best). Essentially, go with whatever gives you the benefits you are already going for, but strongly consider evasion regardless- any missed shot is important.

When it comes to systems and shields, these things really determine what you are up to. If you take distortion field, you have a whole lot of evasion, which stacks very well with other evasion sources. If you take charged plating, then you need to have all the damage reduction sources (and yes, this means it's entirely worthless on a Starguard). If you have big shields, then your best bet can often be evasion. If you have big hulls, and especially if you have shields, then your best bet could be damage reduction or health. But really it depends on what damage is being dealt to you. If your game is running into flashfires with BLC, then damage reduction is of lower value to you. If you are humping a node, then perhaps damage reduction can be better because of the mines.

I think it's overly generous that BLC ignores all armor. I think that gunships definitely need a full armor ignore shot, but it's odd that this is the same shot that also has inherent and talented shield piercing- I would expect slug to have one or the other, and plasma to have the missing one (this would also reward a ship for having plasma and slug to some degree). Proton needs to be exactly what it is, as does thermite. Concussion has a fair tradeoff for its armor ignore, but it could have been given something entirely different in that spot. I'm not enamored of rocket pods, burst lasers, and heavy lasers having armor ignore with no tradeoff. I would think that an armor ignore laser would exist, but would not necessarily be as good as the rest of the laser pack.

Really it would probably help to get some good pilots to give damage reduction a test run, and see how far they can push it's performance in general play, and not just in the niches where it's clearly a good choice.

Based on times I've look at theorycrafting parts of GSF, I think they must have some sort of math model for GSF balance and for the most part it works pretty well. Otherwise there would have been a lot more balance problems than there have been so far. That sort of implies that the devs think, or at least at some point thought, that damage reduction even with its drawbacks is competitive with other defensive stats.

So if we're going to make a convincing argument for change, it would probably help to really figure out if the main problem with DR is just that the tooltips LOOK unappealing, and therefore we're reluctant to try it or if it really underperforms. Ideally we'll be able to base that on personal experience and also figure out math wise WHY it's underperforming. For things like ion rail drains, distortion field as an offensive cooldown, evasion vs shields value, there were threads were that sort of joint practical and theoretical argument was made. Ultimately it comes down to the dev team's best judgement, but with a long list of things for the devs to work on, if we want existing parts of GSF changed really solid arguments are probably helpful.

I think it's overly generous that BLC ignores all armor. I think that gunships definitely need a full armor ignore shot, but it's odd that this is the same shot that also has inherent and talented shield piercing- I would expect slug to have one or the other, and plasma to have the missing one (this would also reward a ship for having plasma and slug to some degree). Proton needs to be exactly what it is, as does thermite. Concussion has a fair tradeoff for its armor ignore, but it could have been given something entirely different in that spot. I'm not enamored of rocket pods, burst lasers, and heavy lasers having armor ignore with no tradeoff. I would think that an armor ignore laser would exist, but would not necessarily be as good as the rest of the laser pack.

1. Agree re: BLC. It really shouldn't penetrate any armor IMO - scouts already have very strong reasons to pick it.
   
2. Don't agree that gunships need a 100% armor pen. 50% would be fine. Against a full-armor bomber's passive DR this would reduce slug damage by about 20% - this will not break the game.
   
3. I would be fine with proton retaining 100%, but the overall game balance won't be crippled if it doesn't.
   
4. Conc would probably now default to the other T5 choice, sure, but there are a lot of components with unbalanced T4 or T5 choices and it doesn't break the game.
   

I don't claim that an across-the-board change here is the most ideal change that can possibly be made. It is, however, something we may be able to sell to Bioware. The meta surrounding armor is very bad for the game.

So if we're going to make a convincing argument for change, it would probably help to really figure out if the main problem with DR is just that the tooltips LOOK unappealing, and therefore we're reluctant to try it or if it really underperforms.

I disagree. I can tell you with certainty that as long as BLC and slug have 100% armor pen, DR is just not viable against good players.

I'm not enamored of rocket pods, burst lasers, and heavy lasers having armor ignore with no tradeoff. I would think that an armor ignore laser would exist, but would not necessarily be as good as the rest of the laser pack.

While the 3% crit and -5% tracking penalties for HLCs are an insignificant sacrifice, the tradeoff BLCs make for armor penetration is attrition damage, which is sometimes the only way to take out an exceptionally skilled opponent.

That said, with the introduction of mechanics such as damage overcharge and mines that ignore shields entirely, this tradeoff is also pretty close to insignificant.

On the other hand, armor penetration is almost universally useful on a weapon that's already almost universally useful.

I don't think there's any aspect of BLCs that reeks of poor design, but I do think they're overtuned, and removing armor penetration would go a ways towards fixing that.

My only concern, from there, is that scouts would have even fewer ways to answer bombers. This change would mean that a scout's best (maybe only) answer to a bomber is to simply ignore him completely, and I disagree that that's good game design. I'm of the opinion that everyone should have a reasonable chance to take out an equally skilled pilot regardless of what either party is flying, and that upgrades should make you better against some builds and worse against others.

I don't think there's any aspect of BLCs that reeks of poor design

The fact that it is the ideal scout weapon in essentially every circumstance reeks of terrible design.

My only concern, from there, is that scouts would have even fewer ways to answer bombers.

Quads are a reasonable alternative because of the extra range (almost 6km). The current edge case of charged plating would probably need rebalancing, but charged plating would need rebalancing in any universe where 100% armor pen weapons aren't ubiquitous.

I just checked the numbers, and at mid range against a target with 39% DR quads do about 83% of the hull damage that BLC's with armor pen do currently. At max range, that number is 88%. Both of these figures are before accounting for interpolation of damage and accuracy; i.e. I'm comparing 3450m to 3300m and 5750m to 4400m.

Account for interpolation and calculating on an even basis at 4400m would probably narrow that gap a lot and bring them close to equal.

While the 3% crit and -5% tracking penalties for HLCs are an insignificant sacrifice

It's like 10% damage on that laser to lose that. It's a VERY powerful tradeoff, but one everyone is willing to make.

the tradeoff BLCs make for armor penetration is attrition damage, which is sometimes the only way to take out an exceptionally skilled opponent.

Whatever, most lasers don't even get that. That it has such a nonsense tier to begin with is silly. Also no scout takes that anyway so it doesn't matter. If attrition damage is getting you your kill, your target can be healed to full by a drone or probes whenever anyway.

I don't think there's any aspect of BLCs that reeks of poor design, but I do think they're overtuned, and removing armor penetration would go a ways towards fixing that.

Like, there's a big delta between "yo dawg we deleted all the armor pen on scouts" and "skill laser cannon". A nerf to it while keeping it- or having it added to something else that has a lot of weaknesses, such as rapids- would do a lot to change that up.

I mean, charged plating is basically a damned starman versus anything that isn't BLC or HLC. You can listen real close and hear the music play when you press it, and it's up all the time*

*it has a small downtime, be LOS during that.

It's like 10% damage on that laser to lose that. It's a VERY powerful tradeoff, but one everyone is willing to make.

 

 

 

Whatever, most lasers don't even get that. That it has such a nonsense tier to begin with is silly. Also no scout takes that anyway so it doesn't matter. If attrition damage is getting you your kill, your target can be healed to full by a drone or probes whenever anyway.

 

 

 

Like, there's a big delta between "yo dawg we deleted all the armor pen on scouts" and "skill laser cannon". A nerf to it while keeping it- or having it added to something else that has a lot of weaknesses, such as rapids- would do a lot to change that up.

 

 

I mean, charged plating is basically a damned starman versus anything that isn't BLC or HLC. You can listen real close and hear the music play when you press it, and it's up all the time*

 

 

 

*it has a small downtime, be LOS during that.

Edit: I honestly think things are mostly well balanced, I think burst lasers need some fine tuning. ion Missiles need an energy drain buff, EMP missiles..... need something, and the only thing I really see as an issue these days is mobility of strike fighters. Scouts easily out do them by a significant amount and gunships have nearly the same mobility. They are slower, but the gap between Strikes and Gunships is no where near as large as between Scouts and strike or Gunships and Bombers.

In the current meta, slug railgun is the number one reason I would not use charged plating on a strike fighter. BLC are not a huge issue, because they have no shield piercing (or rather, they have to choose between armor piercing and a small amount of shield piercing), so they still have to get through your shield to get a kill, at least if you're at full hull at the start of the engagement. If you're already low on hull, the bleedthrough will kill you, but that is a risk you should be willing to accept when using charged plating.

On the other hand, charged plating is EXTREMELY vulnerable to weapons that have both armor piercing and shield piercing. Not only does the active shield ability offer no protection against those weapons, but they also bypass the shields to deal massive amounts of damage directly to the hull, due to shield piercing being additive to the charged plating bleedthrough.

Aside from proton torpedoes, which are a niche weapon and affect all ships equally, there are only 2 weapons in the game that have a large amount of shield piercing (28%) and also have armor piercing: slug railgun and rocket pods. Rocket pods are mostly dangerous to stationary targets and I don't really have a problem with them having both. Obviously, a strike with charged plating needs to avoid jousting against a scout using rocket pods, but evasive flying by the strike can make it difficult for the scout to land a lot of hits with the pods. Slug railgun, on the other hand, is absolutely devastating to any ship with charged plating.

Against a weapon with 28% shield piercing, the amount of shields the ship has becomes irrelevant because 48% of the damage goes directly to the hull (28% shield pierce + 20% bleedthrough). Any component that increases the size of the shields, or shield regen, or anything like that, becomes useless, because slugs (or pods) will kill the ship right through his shields. To make things worse, every gunship in the game has access to slugs and no choice is required to get both shield piercing and armor piercing: both are obtained automatically in the process of upgrading slug railguns to T3.

As long as slug railguns have both shield piercing and 100% armor piercing, charged plating will not be a viable component on strike fighters. It will remain a very niche component used by some minelayers specializing in taking/defending nodes against other minelayers, at the cost of making themselves vulnerable to other ships.

The fact that it is the ideal scout weapon in essentially every circumstance reeks of terrible design.

No, it reeks of overtuning. What I'm saying is that the basic concept behind BLCs is not flawed, simply the implementation.

Quads are a reasonable alternative because of the extra range (almost 6km).

yeah but I hate quads :<

It's like 10% damage on that laser to lose that. It's a VERY powerful tradeoff, but one everyone is willing to make.

How do you figure? 3% crit is 4.5% damage, -5% tracking penalty is +0.1% accuracy per degree... on a weapon you should be using from maximum range with minimal tracking penalty. That's tiny.

Whatever, most lasers don't even get that. That it has such a nonsense tier to begin with is silly. Also no scout takes that anyway so it doesn't matter. If attrition damage is getting you your kill, your target can be healed to full by a drone or probes whenever anyway.

You, uh, haven't flown scout-to-scout against many very good pilots, have you? In a game where one pilot -- one single pilot -- is holding nodes by virtue of the fact that he's on it and people can't get him off it, attrition damage is literally the only way to free up the node. Yes, the introduction of mines and hull repair makes this less likely, but it's still worth considering, and I've had a number of matches where I've wished I'd geared up my Skybolt with a different build than what it has now.

As I said, though, it's very niche. It's just not irrelevant as you seem to think it is.

I mean, charged plating is basically a damned starman versus anything that isn't BLC or HLC. You can listen real close and hear the music play when you press it, and it's up all the time*

20% of all damage taken is reduced by up to 99% (I must have mathed wrong somewhere when I said 96% or whatever -- 10% inherent, 20% armor, 9% crew, 60% cd). -20% damage is not starman material. And, of course, 39% is up all the time, so you're looking at 7.8% constant damage reduction.

The irony here is that charged plating is hampered by its t1 upgrade; the more damage that goes through to hull, the less total damage you take.

Also, you forgot about slugs and pods.

No, it reeks of overtuning. What I'm saying is that the basic concept behind BLCs is not flawed, simply the implementation.

 

 

 

yeah but I hate quads :<

 

 

 

How do you figure? 3% crit is 4.5% damage, -5% tracking penalty is +0.1% accuracy per degree... on a weapon you should be using from maximum range with minimal tracking penalty. That's tiny.

 

 

 

You, uh, haven't flown scout-to-scout against many very good pilots, have you? In a game where one pilot -- one single pilot -- is holding nodes by virtue of the fact that he's on it and people can't get him off it, attrition damage is literally the only way to free up the node. Yes, the introduction of mines and hull repair makes this less likely, but it's still worth considering, and I've had a number of matches where I've wished I'd geared up my Skybolt with a different build than what it has now.

 

As I said, though, it's very niche. It's just not irrelevant as you seem to think it is.

 

 

 

20% of all damage taken is reduced by up to 99% (I must have mathed wrong somewhere when I said 96% or whatever -- 10% inherent, 20% armor, 9% crew, 60% cd). -20% damage is not starman material. And, of course, 39% is up all the time, so you're looking at 7.8% constant damage reduction.

 

The irony here is that charged plating is hampered by its t1 upgrade; the more damage that goes through to hull, the less total damage you take.

 

Also, you forgot about slugs and pods.

The shields regen, so it doesnt matter if you lose the shield. If you lose all your shields its 99% damage reduction on ALL damage taken. You lose your shields big whoop your not dieing from non-armor peircing weapons any time soon why Charge plating is up.