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[Dri]

8/15/20/40 OP for 100/200/300/400 armor PLUS this hullmod has a negative modifier tacked onto it that lowers maneuverability by 20%! How old are these values?

I even favor slow, high armor ships and yet I don't touch this hullmod due to its price tag being at the very highest end and the downside that comes with it. For raw survivability Reinforced Bulkheads is the clear winner in almost every scenario (would you take a whopping 10,000 more hull on your Onslaught or a piddly 400 armor that'll be cracked by a single Reaper regardless?), costs less OP AND it doesn't have a downside. Either reduce the OP cost, remove the downside or have it grant more armor.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Don't forget that X amount of armor is not equal to X amount of hull. Armor scales up like crazy!
Though it would be nice of the OP or the malice was removed

[Wyvern]

In the current live game, heavy armor on a Dominator is an excellent option - assuming you're using dual flak, reaper salvos basically won't land, and linear additions to armor have essentially multiplicative effect.  This works particularly well for the XIV variant, as it has more ordnance points to work with - and a higher base armor, pushing the overall benefit from extra armor even higher.

However, with the upcoming loss of maneuverability bonuses from skills, the -20% maneuverability malus from heavy armor will be a rather serious drawback, especially stacked on top of the XIV's penalties; I suspect I won't be able to justify using the hull mod at that point...

...except on Afflictor class hulls.

[Thaago]

With the way armor works, real armor strength is roughly quadratic. So adding 400 armor to an Onslaught's 1750 is just about a 50% increase in the armor toughness (measured in number of hits needed to strip the armor). For an Eagle's 1000, the 300 extra is roughly 70% more armor (again, in number of hits needed to drop it).

Reapers are indeed going to crack it. Reapers crack anything less than 4944 armor in a single shot. They are ridiculously overkill. Don't get hit by Reapers!

A Harpoon will crack up to 927 armor in 1 shot. The formula has a cool form: (Damage including HE bonus)/2*(sqrt(5)-1)

[TaLaR]

My play style is thoroughly based on mobility and shields. If I'm taking massive armor damage, it means I already failed at piloting (or got into wrong fight). I prefer stacking speed and maneuverability boosts to make avoiding this kind of situation easier instead (even in case of Onslaught).
So I never use Heavy Armor.

[Megas]

Heavy armor is good, but not getting in the first place (due to superior shot range and speed and/or dual flak) is better.

In my case, I never use that hullmod because I never put points in the skill that unlocks it.

[Thaago]

I use it sometimes. It helps a lot on Enforcers because they can shield flicker to catch HE from any angle and shoot down missiles with flak.

It doesn't help at all against kiting ships though - I am soooo looking forward to the next version taking a nerf-shotgun to augmented engines. I always use every mobility system I can, and I'm absolutely sick of how overpowered they all are. I wouldn't mind if augmented engines, unstable injector, and every officer skill that influenced speed went away completely.

[edit]Ninja'd

[Dri]

Indeed. The -20% maneuverability coupled with the loss of Skills helping to offset that is going to be harsh—especially when the ideal ships to use the hullmod on are ALREADY rather slow and lack maneuverability! Reinforced Bulkheads will also be gaining an added bonus in the new patch that prevents ships from breaking apart and ensures they are always recoverable—clearly a superior defensive hullmod.

Heavy Armor hullmod needs some love. Clearly very few people use it even now and that'll only get worse when the new patch hits.

[Schwartz]

I use it on all phase ships, as well as Enforcers and Dominators together with Shield Bypass (SS+). I don't trust the AI to handle shields efficiently on those ships, so giving Enforcers 2 Flaks or putting Vulcans in all the small Dominator slots usually works out better. As well as having officers with evasive action. Gotta justify officer diversity somehow, and putting armor officers on a mastery epoch ship with bad shields feels doubly wrong.

I think Heavy Armor is good enough, but something like Shield Bypass needs to make it into the base game for armor builds to shine.

[TJJ]

I sometimes use Heavy Armour on Enforcer/Onslaught for maximum survivability when brawling , but it is a little overpriced.

On many hulls you get more armour for your OP from Armoured Weapon Mounts, which is a little odd, as AWM's 10% armour boost seems like it's supposed to be the 2ndary benefit (it's usually the only reason I take it!)

I suppose the flat increase given by Heavy Armour makes it more suitable for use on ordinarily unarmoured ships.... but armouring unarmoured ships?
That's a very odd play style, and completely at odds with the mechanics of armour.

If there were more mechanisms for punishing over-specialisation in Armour/Shields, the game would encourage a more balanced shield/armour distribution, and make armouring high-tech ships more attractive.

Over-specialisation in armour is sort of punished by EMP.... but EMP fails because:
A) EMP weapons are all over priced, and under powered.
B) Resistant Flux Conduits is way too good; it hard counters EMP, while simultaneously offering an excellent flux dissipation/OP.
Resistant Flux Conduits is another hull mod that has a 2ndary effect that's superior to the primary.

As for countering over-specialisation in shields? IMO this is something we're sorely lacking.

We do have many kinetic weapons with projectile velocities so high that you often can't drop your shields in time..... that's sort of a counter....
though I question the rationale behind weapons that remove player skill(reaction times) from the equation.

Then there's the Afflictor's Quantum Disruptor... not my most favourite of ship system; short range, extremely fast projectile, the lack of means to directly respond to it reduces player agency
Combined with the current phase cloak (another mechanic I'm not particularly fond of), and we have degenerate gameplay that's neither fun to deliver, nor receive attacks from.

[DatonKallandor]

Armor gets better the more of it you have and it's going to be more valuable in the next version because a percentage of the armor will be undestroyable and applied to every hit no matter what.

[Dark.Revenant]

If anything, with the skill revamp, Heavy Armor should just have the OP cost reduced, having the same maneuvering downside as before.

[Dri]

I feel like the maneuvering penalty is just thematic nonsense. If you're gonna go that route then why doesn't Reinforced Bulkheads, which adds thicker metal throughout the entire ship, have a penalty? C'mon, is that really necessary?

[SafariJohn]

Don't forget armor is going to be more powerful in 0.8 since it will continue to apply its damage reduction even after it's been completely stripped.

[Dri]

Is that built around the base armor value of the hull or does that also scale with any hullmods that boost armor? Either way it is still only 5% and while that is better than a kick in the pants, it isn't much.