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[CopperCoyote]

The effectiveness of powergrid modulation is substantially better if you're using faction mods like shadowyards or coalition. Most of the ships in those factions become much more fearsome with powergrid modulation. (i know coalition has that neat shield debuffing mod that greatly buffs armor, but getting it is hard) If you've got an officer in one of their ships I'd ague it is one of the best skills because they have good flux pools and dissipation already and they rely on said stats even more than average that most of their ships go from fair or good to much more powerful than vanilla ships could improve with the same officer.

Anecdote time:

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In one play through I managed to get 4 Charybdis and they were doing ok, but frequently taking hull damage. Easy to do because the armor is very light (for a cruiser). I had a "lackluster" choice between powergrid modulation and i think countermeasures. I opted for PGM (obviously, it's what the story is about) and then forgot about it. A bit later i was attacking a planet with a station (Nexerelin) and it had an obscene amount of kinetic weapons. I was quite concerned i'd have to retreat but figured "meh i saved first" and pressed the attack. I had outfitted all 4 very similarly with nearly identical flux stats, but only one of the officers had PGM. That one was able to tank most of the barrage as the arm of the station with the most kinetic weapons swung past, but the others couldn't. It was the only one that didn't have any hull damage after the fight. It made me rethink the power of the skill. Now admittedly the active vent boost is lackluster because the AI very cautiously uses active vent, but levels 1 and 3 are awesome for ships with good baseline flux stats.

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[Thaago]

I'm a big fan of advanced countermeasures 1 for the early game - its practically mandatory for frigates once the player has gotten the hang of taking kinetic rounds on armor.

AC 2 is pretty much useless.

AC 3 is very powerful because both missile strikes and fighters rely on the defending ship dealing enough DPS to either a) stop a barrage of missiles/torpedoes clustered together or b) kill fighters fast enough to drag down the replacement rate and drive them off. 50% bonus damage is pretty darn significant and makes any ship with ballistic PD (all hail flak!) missile immune.

Regarding Impact Mitigation vs Evasive Action: I'd take both if relying on armor.

[Nawyria]

Also, evasive action is not the best armor boosting skill. Impact mitigation is pretty clearly better. I tested the number of shots it would take a 100 and 400 damage per shot weapon to strip various amounts of armor for the two skills:

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Clearly IM outperforms EA (always takes the same or more shots to strip armor with IM). As the damage per shot increases the difference become marginal, so the choice doesn't really matter vs torpedos and hellebores, but against pulse lasers and stuff like that, IM is much better, and the benefit scales with armor amount so large ships see more difference between IM and EA.  I'm pretty  sure the increased benefit with armor amount is due to the level 2 IM skill. The general difference is due to 20% armor reduction mostly, and the +150 also contributes to that.

My assumptions making this were:
50% of current armor for armor mitigation, applied to the armor damage calculation formula
20% reduction in armor damage is applied after armor calculation (so the amount the amount of armor lost on each shot is reduced by 20%, not a 20% reduction in damage to armor)

EA also has the maneuverability bonus which is nice, but it's not clearly better, and I wouldn't take it over some other skills.

If that's true, then I stand corrected. Do you know what the exact armor damage formula is? I'd love to play around with this a bit.

I'm a big fan of advanced countermeasures 1 for the early game - its practically mandatory for frigates once the player has gotten the hang of taking kinetic rounds on armor.

I could see AC1 for a player-captained ship. But if I recall correctly, the AI isn't particularly good at deciding whether or not to take Kinetic damage on armour. Would you still recommend it for Ai ships?

[intrinsic_parity]

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.0

This is an armor guide that got made a few months ago. It should have everything you need to know.

[Thaago]

...

I could see AC1 for a player-captained ship. But if I recall correctly, the AI isn't particularly good at deciding whether or not to take Kinetic damage on armour. Would you still recommend it for Ai ships?

Not always as the AI is still poor about taking shots on armor, but I consider AC3 to be pretty powerful even in AI hands, depending on the ship. When I'm running a no-fighter or few-fighter fleet I consider it a must have because I won't have friendly interceptors flying cover. Low tech ships in particular become basically immune to fighters with that skill. If you have an officer with it you can make a good 'zone defense' build out of an Eagle with LRPD's, Phase Lances, and Advanced Optics - it takes a lot of fighters to get through that much pinpoint firepower.

The next version allowing improved PD AI to ignore flares will change gameplay somewhat; I'm hesitant to speculate on how that changes AC3 without playing.

[lethargie]

More damage to fighter and missiles utility mostly depend on the ships you are using. Ships with low shield coverage benefit a lot more, fighter hitting your unprotected side can be a real pain. Also, if you stack enough long range firepower that is decently accurate you can obliterate whole wings. Pair well with the zone scorcher from scy for example.

[FooF]

@ Intrinsic Parity

Interesting data on the IM vs EA. I hadn't run a test like that when I wrote the guide but it's useful to know. I figured the two were about on par with one another and if I had to pick one, I'd go with EA because 50% just seems like so much but the numbers don't lie. AFAIK, you're assumptions are correct when calculating.

The Level 2 IM skill is vastly underrated when you have high enough armor to bury a weapon's damage to the minimum. It's really a 33% increase in effective armor HP against minimum damage. Pulse Lasers might not get floored for very long but any small or even medium kinetic weapons will stay buried for a huge amount of time. Then, you knock off another 20% for IM Level 3 and those minimum damage numbers get tiny.

Having played with the numbers a bit, IM is clearly superior to EA3 in most respects and vastly superior in others. EA3, in fact, doesn't seem all that great in a lot of scenarios I put it through, giving nowhere near the 50% increase in effectiveness you'd expect. Due to the "snowball" nature of stripping armor, the +50% tends to keep things buried at minimum but once the actual value gets low enough, it's doesn't matter how much you prop it up on paper. Or, the extra 50% on paper doesn't amount to much against high damage/shot attacks, perhaps giving you a cushion of 1-2 shots. Combining the two is pretty significant, though, nearly doubling the effectiveness of armor against a 200 dmg/shot weapon at 1000 armor.

[intrinsic_parity]

Yeah the non-linearity of armor makes it often counter-intuitive, stacked bonuses are much larger than the sum of the two bonuses. You're definitely right that the benefit of +50% is mostly lost to the maximum damage reduction. I guess one way to think about it is that for a certain damage-per-shot, there is an amount of armor that results in the max damage reduction, and any extra armor for damage reduction calculation only does nothing as long as the current armor is above that value. Additional real armor would extend the time in the maximum damage reduction phase but not decrease actual damage done. Also for high damage-per-shot, armor buffs matter a lot less.

[Nawyria]

... and any extra armor for damage reduction calculation only does nothing as long as the current armor is above that value...

That actually makes a lot of sense. If DR from Armour was not capped to 85% (or 90% with Impact Mitigation), I imagine we'd get a lot more mileage out of Evasive Maneuvers. As it stands, we actually end up 'wasting' a lot of the +50% armour bonus for DR purposes, which makes IM champion.

[Thaago]

Well... Its not wasted because it extends the region where you take minimum damage. Really, if you are relying on armor you should absolutely 100% take both skills. Not to mention that EA 1 and 2 are rock solid benefit wise.

[FooF]

Well... Its not wasted because it extends the region where you take minimum damage. Really, if you are relying on armor you should absolutely 100% take both skills. Not to mention that EA 1 and 2 are rock solid benefit wise.

True, but in some of the calculations I ran, even though the minimum damage "region" is greater, the overall impact of the bonus armor is not particularly significant. Against a Pulse Laser vs 1000 armor, for example, the minimum damage threshold is sustained for an additional 13 shots but the total number of shots to defeat armor is a difference of only 5 vs a non-EM3 ship (52 vs 57 shots).

Meanwhile, IM1/2 requires an additional 10 shots to defeat armor vs base and IM1/2/3 requires an additional 40. The decreased minimum damage on top of the 20% reduction pays huge dividends. (If you throw EM3 on top of all that it takes an additional 60 shots vs. baseline).

Obviously, as damage/shot goes up or armor goes down, the gap isn't nearly as significant but against low-ish damage/shot weapons, IM is far superior.

[Thaago]

Well it should be, shouldn't it? We're comparing a skill that is purely about strengthening armor to one that also gives +50% maneuverability and -50% weapon/engine damage taken. Combine with Flux Conduits and most of the EMP support weapons simply fail to work unless they are seriously massed. Just because IM is superior at damage mitigation doesn't mean you shouldn't also take EA3 on top. For example, a Dominator eating a Harpoon/Hellbore the damage goes from 571 to 461 with EA3.

I'm not surprised at all that IM1/2/3 all together give such impressive results; against low per shot attacks IM 2/3 changes the damage from 15% base to 8% base.

[intrinsic_parity]

This entire discussion began because EA was framed as the best defensive skill, and it was shown that IM provides more benefit with armor. A lot of times, you won't have enough skill points to take two level 3 defensive skills, so picking between them is relevant. Obviously, taking all the skills is better than not taking all the skills, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't evaluate their values individually.

[Megas]

Generally, if I want defense, I tend to get Defensive Systems 2 for harder shields, although due to lack of skill points, it is one of two or three skills that get put on the chopping block... or rather, I get decision paralysis and leave points unspent.

However, since the topic title was for officers, I suppose their ships get whatever I want on them and not think much about it, since if I bore of them, they get fired and new ones get hired.

[intrinsic_parity]

I tend to do the same, I think shields being unlimited damage mitigation makes them generally better defensive assets, and I almost always pilot high tech ships, so it's an easy choice for me.