So I've started a low tech run in RC14, and the larger armor tankers feel a lot squisher than they did in 0.9.1a. Now this may be intentional, but officered Onslaughts are noticeably weaker to small and medium weapons fire.
The loss of synergizing armor tanking skills seems to have hurt a number of armor tanking ship in the transition from 0.9.1a to 0.9.5a. Enforcer probably doesn't notice as much since it received a fairly large armor bump.
In 0.9.1a, skill wise the options were:
+150 armor damage for calculation purposes (reduced to +50 as elite)
Maximum mitigation raised from 85% to 90% (removed - so armor at best is multiplied by 6.67 instead of 10, an effective reduction of 33% at the top end, or against kinetics overall)
-20% armor taken (increased to -25%, or 1.2 more armor converts to 1.33 more armor, a 10.8% net improvement)
+50% armor for calculation purposes (removed - so period of maximum 6.67 reduction is reduced)
-50% kinetic damage (removed)
Heavy armor hull mod for a capital improved from 400 to 500 armor. A heavy armor fully skilled Onslaught (2150 armor, 100% CR) likely was taking minimum damage from most kinetics for the entire time (i.e. 100 damage or less). Which meant, 119,444 kinetic damage to break through to hull in one spot. Now a heavy armored Onslaught (2250 armor, 100% CR) tanks 44,466, or about a factor of 3 less.
It's less dramatic for energy and high explosive admittedly. A pulse laser's 100 damage used to remain around 7.2 until around 330 armor was left. An Onslaught's armor would have absorbed ~27,600 worth of pulse laser damage. Now, minimum pulse laser would be 10.1, and starts to rise at around 330 armor as well. So it absorbs about ~20,500 worth of pulse laser damage.
So against the moderate damage category (around 100 damage per shot), if armor had an efficiency like shields, it went from 0.75 to 1.0 for energy, and 0.3 to 1.0 against kinetics.
Now, because of the residual armor mechanic, these skills have a large effect on hull damage as well. Assuming all shots land in the same spot (a bad assumption, but it's what I've got), and ignoring shields, it took approximately 915 unskilled pulse laser shots to kill an Onslaught in 0.9.1a. In 0.9.5a RC14, it takes about 552, roughly only 60% as much. If you assume spread out shots, the ratio becomes even worse, as the armor holds up longer in 0.9.1a.
On the other hand, in 0.9.1a, it took 6 unskilled reapers (4000 HE damage each) to kill , and it 0.9.5a, it still takes 6 unskilled reapers to kill, so the high end of high explosive damage is pretty much not a noticeable down grade.
Shield tanking, on the other hand, has gotten stronger in the transition.
For skills we had:
-20% shield damage taken (same)
10% of hard flux dissipation (improved to 15%)
-25% high explosive damage (improved to -30% as elite)
+20% max capacitors (improved to flat +10)
+20% max vents (improved to flat +10)
+10% flux capacity (improved to +20% for 240 DP, same at 480 DP)
+10% flux dissipation (improved to +20% for 240 DP, same at 480 DP)
At this point, hardened shields and shield modulation are likely much better investments on high armor AI controlled ships than Impact mitigation and heavy armor - which was kinda true back in 0.9.1a as well due to the nature of the flux war and AI. Although, in the presence of small ships and no HE missiles, at least I saw my AI Onslaughts vent while under fire. They seem less willing now. I will note, if you want maximum damage absorption, you obviously take both, because they do improve things, but you should prioritize the shields first.
If people wanted to buff high armor ships specifically, as opposed to generically help all ships minimum armor, effectively a hull tanking mechanism, the 0.85 to 0.9 maximum reduction was a good option. It's a further 33% buff at the high end, that falls off at the low end (since there isn't enough armor to reach a 0.9 reduction level).
I should go check to see if the AI battles mod has been updated. I'm willing to bet shield modulation + hardened shield Enforcers and Onslaughts would beat impact mitigation + heavy armor versions in a head to head match up, all else being equal.
