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[Delta7]

A simple suggestion: I've noticed a much better balance between tech levels (while retaining the distinct playstyles focused on either survivability and group tactics or mobility and kiting) when raising the effectiveness of armor modifiers in the settings file. High tech ships are still more powerful than low tech ones, but they now require a higher degree of skill to unlock their full potential as they cannot slug it out and expect to win consistently with the more heavily armored classic domain designs.

Basically, the expensive and high tech aurora is still more than a match for the old, battle tested dominator, but the dominator is no longer outclassed in every respect, and is still a viable choice for players wanting a less micromanagement heavy style of gameplay. It's armor makes it more forgiving of mistakes, and the skill floor is lower, but the skill ceiling and the ship's maximum potential is lower than the endgame, faster, and more lightly armored counterparts.

While this would somewhat tip the balance of large and small vessels in favor of the larger craft, I do not see this as a bad thing. The small ships would still have their own uses and distinct roles, but now serve more to support and supplement the larger ships in the fleet, and would, if anything, increase the epicness of long drawn out battles between fleets of different sizes. Torpedo runs with a destroyer or an antimatter blaster strike with a phase frigate would matter more now than they ever would before, and further helps to distinguish between heavy brawling/ escort frigates with high durability and endurance, and fast strike/ interceptor frigates with more focus on mobility and skirmishing.

"maxArmorDamageReduction":0.90,
   "minArmorFraction":0.50,

I changed these values from 0.85 and 0.05 (vanilla) respectively, and have also found that it increases the reliance on hard hitting, alpha strike based high explosive weapons for dealing with armored targets. With these changes, a cruiser optimally geared for hunting down destroyers is going to struggle to damage the larger, more imposing battleships whose armor will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the cruiser's rapid fire, energy/ kinetic based weaponry. It also renders the strategic raising and lowering of shields on flux and armor heavy ships depending on the current threat a viable tactic again, giving classic domain designs such as the enforcer, dominator, legion and onslaught another potential strategy. Armor tanking is a fun playstyle that can supplement other strategies, but is never optimal compared to kiting/ flux war shield tanking with more advanced, faster ships armed with long range energy weapons.

Simply put: make armor great again.

[Dark.Revenant]

No.

[Histidine]

Is this proposal premised entirely on Dominator vs. Aurora as solo ships (or worse, Dominator vs. Aurora 1v1)?

The statement "armor would be balanced following a large general buff" implies that ships like Lasher, Enforcer and Onslaught are currently considered underpowered, which is clearly not the case.

Also: If I encountered something in a game that when literally completely destroyed still works half as good as when it was intact, I'd suspect the the dev(s) were trying to be funny, or were consuming mind-altering substances.

[FooF]

Absolutely not.

I'd run some numbers to emphasize why but it's not worth it. Suffice to say that such a change would make all frag damage useless and even high damage/shot weapons tame. You're not talking about "improving armor" you're talking about making high-armored ships 10x longer to destroy.

Feel free to adjust the settings yourself but this is not a reasonable suggestion for the base game.

[Megas]

High tech ships are still more powerful than low tech ones, but they now require a higher degree of skill to unlock their full potential as they cannot slug it out and expect to win consistently with the more heavily armored classic domain designs.

Just... no.

Frigates, sure.

Destroyers, no.  Drover flagship, which is midline, beats them all.  Among gunships, they are more-or-less balanced with each other.  Enforcers are probably better in fleet action than solo, though.

Cruisers, they, the gunships, seem... balanced.  If there is one cruiser that might be stronger than the rest, it is Heron, which is midline (although admittedly, Heron could easily pass off as high-tech if it was merely palette-swapped from beige/yellow to blue).

Capitals.  Okay, Paragon and maybe Astral is a bit better than the rest, but not by much.  On the other hand, Odyssey is underpowered even among other battlecruisers (i.e., Conquest and Legion).  Plus, the other battlecruisers are powerful enough to compete with battleships, although some might need anti-Paragon loadout to fight it.  (e.g., Gauss Cannons for Conquest).

Armor with skills can be powerful enough that you want or need HE to break armor to kill fast enough.  Time-to-kill is important when there is a global death clock in combat.

[Sy]

Simply put: make armor great again.

i agree with the others that armor values are fine as they are (and if they weren't, your suggested values would be way too far in the other direction). keep in mind that armor allows soaking damage in a way that does not build any flux at all, which is a pretty big deal, because 'winning the flux war' is such a large part of what makes one ship triumph over another. good shield efficiency and good flux stats of course also help with this, but still don't come close to negating all flux from enemy pressure for a decent duration. additionally, the ships with the best shields are also the ones that rely on more flux-hungry energy weapons, while the ships with the toughest armor are the ones with access to damage type specialized weapons that can make their loadouts more flux-efficient.

worth noting that underestimating the value of armor and/or overestimating the value of good shields in comparison is not an uncommon mistake, particularly for someone who might not yet have much experience with the game. i know i definitely underestimated low-tech ships in general, for quite a while. and i've seen others make the same mistake before.

Aurora, specifically, might also just be a bit too good in general.

[Megas]

Also, the best defense is not getting shot at in the first place, which ballistic reliant ships are better at (and unarmed carrier flagships min-maxed on fighters are best at).

[Linnis]

Yes high tech ships win in 1v1 but when things get rough, or in large fleet battles armor based ships are vastly superior.

In endgame armour based ships are the way to go. Honestly, stuff like medusa and below randomly die while enforcer are solid fire-power addition.

[TaLaR]

In endgame armour based ships are the way to go. Honestly, stuff like medusa and below randomly die while enforcer are solid fire-power addition.

AI is just not good at piloting finesse-based ships, especially with tricky systems like phase skimmer.
It's best to give most foolproof ships to AI, with classic example being Eagle (easy to use system, easy weapon layout (long range, forward facing) + solid stats). Enforcer is not quite there, because burn drive leaves opportunity for grievous mistakes, which AI will inevitable make at some point.

[Delta7]

With my changes to armor values, it does NOT mean that all ships take ten times longer to kill. What it does do is improve the damage resistance of large ships against small caliber weapons. It is now very difficult to melt through thick armor with a few pulse lasers, however, a heavy blaster can punch a hole in even heavy armor with multiple hits. Also, even light weaponry can do moderate damage to a heavily armored capital ship once it's armor has been compromised by high alpha weapons, however, the improved minimum damage resistance means that a damaged ship still has a hope of escaping because it's hitpoints are a bit tankier as a result of its now compromised armor being stronger.

As for specific examples, the enforcer feels a bit bulkier and more imposing without feeling overpowered. I imagine it as being a destroyer leader (a historical subclass of destroyer notable for their increased size and armerment, and emphasis on ship to ship combat, having heavier armor and main armerment.) In direct and close range combat, which the enforcer is now even better suited for, it would easily beat out a sunder, however, mobility and flux stats are still quite relevant in my version of the game, and prevent the enforcer from being entirely superior to ships such as the hammerhead and medusa. Also, a sunder could still punch holes in the enforcer from a distance with any number of long ranged fire support weapons, as long as it had an allied frigate to keep the enforcer occupied.

An interesting thing about the buffed armor stats is that you'll find yourself adapting your tactics specifically to fight capital ships... A fleet of carriers without any bombers is not as viable, since machine guns, IR pulse lasers and other fighter/ interceptor weapons struggle to seriously damage a capital ship with fully intact armor. Missiles and torpedoes, argued by some players as being a waste of OP in the vanilla game (an argument I do not necessarily agree with) are now strategic assets to be expended against heavily armored targets of opportunity and have the capability to turn the tide of battle and end a stalemate if utilized effectively.

As skeptical as you may be about this change, if you ever feel like trying something new, give this a go. It might remind you of some of those sifi shows where the battles are decided by the brave bomber pilots making their desperate attack runs on hulking enemy warships, or by the huge cannons and heavy missiles of massive capital ships, where the smaller, faster but more fragile ships play a crucial supporting role as they dogfight with fighter squadrons, shoot down missiles and launch their own ordinance at larger targets. Lighter weapons are still relevant here, but you won't want to try to kill any battleships in a tiny frigate armed with machine guns and an autocannon without support. Even if you don't kill an enemy capital with your frigate torpedo run, it can still feel like it's own little victory if you manage to connect with a couple of strike weapons against a large warship as you bring yourself one step closer to winning the battle by wounding a massive beast. It really gives you a sense of scale that you don't get otherwise.

[TJJ]

I did a similar experiment a while ago (though at the time it was more to test out code injection).

I agree that making high damage explosives more relevant is a good thing, I also think increasing time to kill (for all ships) is an improvement too.
Greater differentiation between high and low tech feels good too.

[Megas]

I agree that making high damage explosives more relevant is a good thing, I also think increasing time to kill (for all ships) is an improvement too.

With death clocks (peak performance) and cowardly-and-turtling AI, not to mention possible defensive skills, no.  I do not want every ship to be a damage sponge.  And if ships become too hard to kill, it might be time to build ships for maximum combat endurance - i.e., stall until the other side runs out of CR first, and that is a boring way to play (but one I would use if it became optimal way to win).

If anything, I would like the fast-and-furious gameplay of 0.6.5 and 0.7.x (though for all ships and not officers only, in case of 0.7.x), if ship and weapon replacement becomes easy enough.  0.7.x was bad because ships and weapons were generally too rare and hard to replace, and only officers mattered in combat.  0.8.x made it a bit easier to replace ships, but not weapons.

HE is already relevant.  All kinetic loadouts are not as effective as they used to be.

[Delta7]

It is down to personal preference, but I very much enjoy the game with improved armor effectiveness. High alpha and high explosive weapons become nearly essential this way, and each large battle feels like an epic struggle between forces. It does noticeably increase the time to kill for large ships with armor, but the biggest difference is that low alpha weapons like IR pulse lasers, light machine guns and, to a lesser extent, even the light assault gun really do need to be supplemented by a powerful HE or energy weapon in either alpha strike capability, or sheer DPM in order to deal with large ships. It further distingishes strike frigates from escort frigates, escort destroyers with swarmer missiles from strike destroyers with anti ship missiles and torpedoes... their roles are much more distinct, and one is no longer interchangeable for the other the same way they kind of are in the vanilla game. Missiles are no longer a secondary weapon, but rather a strategic asset.

[Ranakastrasz]

One thing i tried was giving all ships health and armor regen. Paused after you take damage, and scales down to zero regen as CR drops.

Makes non-shielded or lightly shielded ships feel easier to take risks with. Shields still outperformed a lot.

[NightKev]

With my changes to armor values, it does NOT mean that all ships take ten times longer to kill.

If you increase the damage resistance of a ship 10x (5% -> 50%), then by definition it must take 10x longer to kill I would think.