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[Sooner535]

I love ships like the imperium, it feels super cool to tank hits with armor however it cannot be used as a sole defense like shields can. I think I may have thought up an idea to fix that. So here is armor as I understand it:

Armor is finite and it gives damage mitigation to increase its overall HP, as you damage armor it lowers the amount of armor mitigation until it’s broken and bye bye ship.

Now let’s say for simplicity sake that 500 armor gives a 50% damage mitigation, so if you get hit by a 200 hit shot it’s now 100, you’re down to 400 armor and 40% damage mitigation (yes I know the math isn’t right, it’s fine). As you get hit more and more armor nose dives into the floor and is just gone. Now what is my idea?

Give armor 2 “health bars”

So let’s say you have 500 armor with 50% mitigation again and you keep taking hits, normally once you hit near 0 you lose almost all mitigation and damage goes to hull after armor. What if instead that when that armor hit 0 it went back to 500 but in a broken state? In the broken state it gets half the damage mitigation (because you know, it’s broken). Now when you take damage with broken armor there is a percentage chance that the armor will block the shot, let some of it through, or just not block anything. Why is this a thing? Well think of it as you made a hole in a armor plate, there’s no guarantee that you will hit that exact spot again, so you may just hit more armor, or the projectile may hit some of the armor, or it could just hit the same spot again.

Some extra rules that will help:
In the first “hp bar” of armor, damage mitigation cannot drop below half of the total armors mitigation (makes sense, why would broken armor magically make it tougher right?).

The chance to ignore armor in the second “HP bar” should be based on total armor left (since you know, you’re hitting and blowing holes in more armor as you go, increasing your chances of getting those nice squishy hull shots).


Anyways that’s my idea on armor, I’m not a super experienced player but I can say it seems like the hegemony has almost no chance against shields and EMP weapons (which is the bane of armor tanking, ever seen an onslaught spin around? EMP those engines). It seems to me poor low tech could use a bit of help, and it’s not imho a giant buff, though it is a moderate one admittedly, anyways, thoughts?

[Goumindong]

As a low tech player consider the hull mod that gives you EMP resistance and increases venting rate. Plus “not getting overwhelmed by high EMP carrying ships” of course. To achieve the second consider adding monitors, brawlers, and centurions (fit for point defense, even the brawler) to your fleet in that order of priority. They will run interference for your larger ships.

As it stands “more armor” isn’t really going to fix your issue.

Edit: more general tips coming

Armor focused ships in general have an ability to tank damage limited to a ship or their same size and not one larger. The problem you’re likely having is that you’re relatively small vs relatively even or better equipped opponents. You can’t tank them because your fleet isn’t equipped to and because you’re not experienced enough to selectively shield tank the HE shots.

Many of the best ships in the game are Hegemony. The onslaught is widely regarded as the best capital warship(and with good reason, it is), while the Hammerhead is considered the best destroyer (it is not, assuming top of the line equipment that goes to the Sunder). There are no good high tech cruisers (the Apogee and Aurora are OK but the Eagle, Falcon, and Dominator are mainstays. ), and the defensive frigates for the hegemony are far better than their high tech equivalents

[Sooner535]

See the problem with armor is not it’s ability to tank a single fights worth of damage, it’s the inability to stay in the fight. Armor can run out extremely quickly (even cruiser level armor can be stripped extremely quickly due to missile barrages). The problem lies in the fact that armor runs out and it can do so extremely fast (meanwhile while shields can get fluxed out quickly, they regenerate eventually). Let’s take an extreme example of 2k armor with 90% damage reduction, right now 4-8 well placed Missiles will kill that armor quickly because unlike high tech ships, all that armor slows you down ALOT. If a low tech ship ever gets a enemy with Missiles behind them it’s kiss your butt goodbye, meanwhile aurora and other high tech vessels are almost impossible to flank if you play them right thanks to their maneuverability and speed. Now keep in mind that on that 2k armor ship that the second armor bar gives only 45% damage mitigation and has a 50% chance of being ignored, I would not consider that much of an improvement, however it could give you a few extra hits before you go splat. Hegemony ships are strong in player hands and are considered the best because we realize that their big weakness is flanking, same with high techs weakness being attacked by multiple targets. But, the AI with a hegemony ship is a lot easier to kill then a Aurora, (either that or I’m just amazing at fighting low tech with ships that are kitted to fight mid tech). Armored ships are basically a giant kill me sign because once they start getting hit it escalates quickly, and there’s little a 5000 ton ship can do to get out of it, meanwhile auroras have the nice advantage of movement and maneuverability to help them get out. There’s a reason derelicts (the ones without the shields right?) are easy to kill while remnants can be considered a challenge.

[Goumindong]

4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.

Low tech, high armor ships that can tank the kinetic missiles and then shield pop the HE missiles without shielding tanking the kinetic do better against barrages (they also tend to have flack and so get hit by fewer missiles)

High tech ships do not have enough armor to risk letting the Sabots through, so they eat the reapers anyway

[TaLaR]

It does not really matter what abstraction, like "second layer" you use - could just increase armor value and minimal armor to get exactly same effect (beside not making armor system unnecessarily hard to understand). Though it's not really needed.

As for armor being weaker than shields - depends on what you do with it. If you waste armor getting hit for nothing in return (like AI often does) - sure, armor is not particularly strong. If you trade it for flux advantage in situation where you are also in position to exploit that advantage (enemy can't retreat fast enough to avoid damage) - armor can be quite good.

And it's not like landing a big missile barrage is that easy (for AI anyway) - it takes significant amount of missiles or something like minimal distance Reapers to get through Onslaught's PD (the one with 2k armor).

Also, armor is not even primary layer of Onslaught's protection. Primary layer is overwhelming firepower at superior range that can only by surpassed/matched by Paragon/Stations/Gauss Conquest. If enemies end up overloaded before they can approach close enough to attack, they can't do much to your armor.

There is also big difference between armor only ships (pirate and derelict) that can't do anything at all about HE and low tech that just need to be more selective about what they block and what they armor tank.

[TaLaR]

4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.

A well piloted player ship using phase skimmer or phase cloak could avoid any such barrage. Hyperion wouldn't be even bothered by it.

I guess phase cloak part may even apply to AI control. AI is nowhere near good enough with skimmer and manages to fail even with Hyperion (How? How does it manage to be so bad at piloting it... Just mindlessly spamming teleport would already make it much more dangerous, through sheer unpredictability if nothing else)

[Goumindong]

4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.

A well piloted player ship using phase skimmer or phase cloak could avoid any such barrage. Hyperion wouldn't be even bothered by it.

I guess phase cloak part may even apply to AI control. AI is nowhere near good enough with skimmer and manages to fail even with Hyperion (How? How does it manage to be so bad at piloting it... Just mindlessly spamming teleport would already make it much more dangerous, through sheer unpredictability if nothing else)

Yea OK sure you can avoid fire in phase frigates and destroyers and cruisers. But phase frigates and destroyers and cruisers are the weakest part of high or low tech fleets. They’re great in small engagements sure, but not every engagement has to be idea for low tech ships.

[Sooner535]

I would go so far as to say there is never a position I had been in where a 1v1 with the same sized ship with me being high tech and then being low paid off for them. Armor just gets stripped more and more, while shields can soak up technically infinite damage. Maybe I just need to work on how I use low tech ships, I’m just simply pointing out that you can use shields with minimal to no armor and be fine usually, while the other way around is a pretty big death sentence. High tech is faster, can run more weapons, usually has range, and has more options, low tech is a floating bulls eye, I cannot think of a single low tech faction I have trouble beating, all the factions I’m terrible against (Templar, approlight, TT, and DME) are high tech factions that can hide behind shields and can skim around like nothing. If high tech is supposed to be better in most ways to low tech then that’s fine, if their supposed to be balanced I think it’s slightly off (though then again, what games balance isn’t slightly off?)

[Blothorn]

I think high-tech should rarely have range--high-tech tends not to have large (relative to ship size, e.g. mediums on a frigate) ballistic or hybrid mounts, and ballistics normally have longer range than non-beam energy. This is important to balance--combining a speed advantage and hard-flux range advantage would allow kiting. But vanilla and well-balanced mods do not give that option.

Granted, having no shields at all is a critical vulnerability--without excellent PD you get toasted by MRMs, and even with excellent PD you are vulnerable to beams. But I cannot think of a serious low-tech combat ship with no shields, just improvised combat freighters.

To me, the difference is that as a player I expect to win battles, and so "difficulty" usually means not "how hard is it for me to win" but "how quickly/easily can I kill everything". In my hands, at least, low-tech is very powerful against an aggressive opponent but is often frustrating as faster opponents often just kite. I find it harder to keep the upper hand with ships in the high-tech style (fast, energy or DME's short-ranged ballistics) but less frustrating because I control pace.

[Goumindong]

The high tech factions yes. They tend to have the strongest mixed fleets. But not the high tech ships. Its the fact that low tech factions field the *** low tech ships rather than having a strong fleet doctrine that really saves the high tech fleets. That and the fact that they tend to just be bigger in terms of total RC. And you are not limited to fielding (D) Combat Freighters and Shuttles

And in a 1v1, yea, sure, the high tech ship may win. But the game isn't a series of 10 1v1's right after each other where you slam 20 RC ships into 30RC ships until the victor is decided. Its a fleet combat game and you start with at least two combat capable ships right from the get go.

The strongest high tech ship is the Astral, and its not really a "high tech ship" its a carrier. The next strongest carrier is the Heron, not a high tech ship. The next strongest carrier is the Drover. Again not high tech. The Astral is only good in a strike role, because the other carriers bring more ordinance per RC and the Astral cannot utilize recall effectively on interceptors.

The strongest warship is the Onslaught(not high tech), followed by the Odyssey or Paragon(depending on skills), followed by the conquest(not high tech), and then the Eagle and Falcon(not high tech), or maybe the Dominator (not high tech), then either the Gryphon or the Sunder, then the Hammerhead then Enforcer(of which only one is high tech and the Sunder requires both ITU and Advanced Optics AND access to tachyon beams or High Intensity Lasers to be particularly effective). This list might change depending on how you value your RC, but its not going to put weaker and more expensive ships like the Paragon on top.

The best frigate is the Monitor(not high tech) and then the Omen, then the Brawler(the regular Brawler not the TT version) and then probably the Kite(a). And the Brawler might be better than the Omen.

A few of the phase ships are particularly effective in the hands of a player, but not so much so in the hands of AI against a properly partitioned fleet. They're too expensive and they run out of CR too fast. For every Shade you bring you could have brought a Hammerhead. For 5 more supply of a Doom you could bring an Onslaught. For every Harbinger phase destroyer you could bring a Heron.

Tell me, would you rather have a fleet of 4 Paragons or 5 Onslaughts? The paragons wouldn't even have time to raise their shields before they would be flux locked and dead. Would you rather have 4 Medusa's or 6 Hammerheads? The Hammerheads would fill the air with so much lead the Medusas would only be able to phase skip into more lead.

"High tech" weapons are generally weaker than low tech weapons all things equal. They're better in specific circumstances but you have to have a very distinct purpose to everything. The only 1000 range energy weapons are beams and beams cannot generate hard flux. The next longest range is 700 which only come in a large size*... they're 200 range below the Large Kinetic Ballistics, 300 below the Medium Kinetic Ballistics, and 100 below to even with the Small Kinetic Ballistics. Flack Cannons do not have an equivalent high tech weapon and flack cannons are civilization. Energy weapon has only one HE option.In the long range high tech weapon category until you get to large size you've got Graviton Beams, Tactical Lasers, and Ion Beams. Graviton beams are great, especially if you have a lot of them... for killing shields. Tactical lasers are ***. And Ion Beams are great, if expensive, if you can EMP lock something and if you can generate the hard flux needed to arc through the shields in the first place, otherwise you're just paying 150 flux per second to the enemy. The only really particularly good long range energy weapons are the HIL and the Tachyon lance... which require large fittings... which require a Sunder, Odyssey, Paragon, or Apogee.

*The exception being the Thermal Pulse Cannon but well, that only comes on the Onslaught

[TaLaR]

The strongest warship is the Onslaught(not high tech)

The best frigate is the Monitor(not high tech) and then the Omen, then the Brawler(the regular Brawler not the TT version) and then probably the Kite(a). And the Brawler might be better than the Omen.

Are we talking about which ships are ok to let AI pilot or player piloting? Seems to be neither.

Paragon is stronger in raw stats than Onslaught and will usually win if you just auto-pilot vs AI. But less fun to pilot and it's harder to protect other ships in your fleet while using one (since it's so slow). It can't dictate combat pace like Onslaught.

Frigates seem to be ordered by AI-usability, though Tempest should be near top of the list then. For player piloting uncontested best is Afflictor. Nothing can kill a Paragon/Onslaught as fast as an Afflictor, even other Capitals. Followed by Shade (it's strictly worse, but still a phase frigate) and Hyperion (nowhere near as fast at killing stuff, but Teleport is still ridiculously strong ability and base stats are good).

Phase DE and especially Cruiser seems to be a dead end to me - point of phase ships as I use them is to bypass enemy shields by precise fast maneuvers in 3x speed. Both are just not fast enough to do it. They also have somewhat shorter duration they can spend in phase, so are highly threatened by smaller phase ships.

Tell me, would you rather have a fleet of 4 Paragons or 5 Onslaughts? The paragons wouldn't even have time to raise their shields before they would be flux locked and dead. Would you rather have 4 Medusa's or 6 Hammerheads? The Hammerheads would fill the air with so much lead the Medusas would only be able to phase skip into more lead.

Paragons (well equipped ones, which for this case means 4x tach lances, Tac lasers in small, HVD in universals, Optics hullmod each) would probably win quite easily if you just auto-pilot. In fact, Onslaughts will get outranged and will have serious issues even approaching.  Also AI is quite good at using fortress shield to prevent getting bursted (one of very few systems it is good at using). Onslaughts are also *more expensive* to maintain in campaign - 40 vs 50 supply matters way less than 15 vs 10 fuel consumption.
Medusas are just not suitable for AI piloting (AI is quite bad at using skimmer and that kind of finesse in general). Both Enforcer and Hammerhead are more suitable for that even in 1 to 1 ratio.

[Sooner535]

I stand by my statement that most, if not all, low tech ships are easily killed by 1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes. With Omni shields or fast high tech ships it’s much harder to get behind them and do the same thing, heck the last hurrah mission was easy because of those same reasons, just run circles around the onslaught until it gets dizzy. I again cannot name a single ship that is low tech that I have trouble fighting, they all fall to the exact same thing, their slow, bulky, and less useful. What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly, (that terminator drone though). I believe though that if the majority thinks armor is in a good place then so be it, I will continue to just play the same old high tech super shielded ships that seem nigh near unkillable.

[TaLaR]

I stand by my statement that most, if not all, low tech ships are easily killed by 1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes. With Omni shields or fast high tech ships it’s much harder to get behind them and do the same thing, heck the last hurrah mission was easy because of those same reasons, just run circles around the onslaught until it gets dizzy. I again cannot name a single ship that is low tech that I have trouble fighting, they all fall to the exact same thing, their slow, bulky, and less useful. What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly, (that terminator drone though). I believe though that if the majority thinks armor is in a good place then so be it, I will continue to just play the same old high tech super shielded ships that seem nigh near unkillable.

The only low-techs I personally pilot are Lasher (SO Melee Lasher is cheap, easily available and has ridiculous flux-free dps. Very cost efficient and fast for remnant/pirate/low-tier stuff cleanup) and Onslaught (for obvious reasons). In DE tier Medusa is too fun to pilot to pass on, and Cruisers I tend to completely skip straight for Capitals - they generally don't do enough to justify fleet speed drop (and either way I'd prefer Eagle/Aurora or even Falcon. Dominator has more raw power, but it has nothing to counter Capitals).

Though using "1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes" as comparison point is quite invalid - once you get into that advantaged position, of course you win (unless enemy can phase cloak/skim/teleport). Question is how to get there. Also torpedoes are a very much limited resource.

"What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly" - even if you use 100% flux on weapons and land 100% shots on hull/armor (unrealistic assumptions), both your total damage output till CR runs out and dps are way lower than what Onslaught can do.

[Midnight Kitsune]

High tech ships are more powerful in the player hands while low tech ships work great in fleets, especially larger ones. Also, two of the factions you listed, Templars and Appolight, are both boss factions so I'm wondering what other mods you have installed. You might try Interstellar Imperium to see if they statify your needs for more powerful low tech ships

[Goumindong]

Paragons (well equipped ones, which for this case means 4x tach lances, Tac lasers in small, HVD in universals, Optics hullmod each) would probably win quite easily if you just auto-pilot. In fact, Onslaughts will get outranged and will have serious issues even approaching

What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable.  So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.

As for the frigates no, the list is there because it doesn’t matter a hot minute how good the ship is in a 1v1 fight it matters what the ship does in a fleet. And Monitors allow your fleet to get closer safer to the others and slaughter them with concentrated fire.

(As an example an afflictor will be volleyed by a properly set up Onslaught as soon as it unphases behind t)