Armour.... is reactive and mirrored worth bothering with (PvE)

[[VR] Mad Mike]

My understanding is, over all these are side grades from miltiary grade but with a buff and a nerf for heat / projectile weapons.

Now whilst i can see why one may be better than the other at PvP depending on what the fashionable meta is at the time, in PvE where the ai seem to take a mixed loadout, so presumably over time it balances out, is it worth considering these?

thans

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I've recently taken to not taking any armour. Lol

The AI is so lobotomised now that it's basically not needed.
In hours and hours of PvE, in my Multipurpose Python, and FDL, I've gotten as low as 87% hull. Crashes not included. Lol
Although one        nearly shot the engines out of my FDL yesterday. But armour doesn't fix that anyway.

I take the agility and FSD range over hull strength.
But that's my opinion.

(I'm combat rank Deadly BTW)

 

[StiTch]

No is your simple answer.

In pretty much any walk of ED, the enemies you come up against will use a balanced mix of weaponry, which you neatly pointed out at the end of your post. As the Mirrored/Reactive armours infer a resistance decrease to one side that's equal to the resistance boost you're gaining on the other side, you're basically increasing your rebuy substantially to take equal damage.

This kind of resistance change is useful in two situations: You know you're taking on a specific enemy with bias towards one weapon type, or using RNGineers you're looking to boost hull resistance so much you're going to run into the gnarly edge of diminishing returns. In the latter instance you COULD use reactive armour to help balance the resistance out, but frankly the majority of resistance optimisation should go on your shields and not your hull, and it's a very expensive route to take for it.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

No is your simple answer.

In pretty much any walk of ED, the enemies you come up against will use a balanced mix of weaponry. As the Mirrored/Reactive armours infer a resistance decrease to one side that's equal to the resistance boost you're gaining on the other side, you're basically increasing your rebuy substantially to take equal damage.

This kind of resistance change is useful in two situations: You know you're taking on a specific enemy with bias towards one weapon type, or you're looking to boost hull resistance so much you're going to run into the gnarly edge of diminishing returns. In the latter instance you COULD use reactive armour to help balance the resistance out, but frankly the majority of resistance optimisation should go on your shields and not your hull, and it's a very expensive route to take for it.

thanks guys.

truth is i rarely ever use any armour, and when i do it is just the 1st "improved one". I am just mucking around trying out a few different builds.. change is as good as a rest etc.

as i understand it, i am miles below my "optimal" mass for my thrusters, so, as long as i am understanding it correctly (i may not be!) it wont affect my handling too much.

As for lobotomised AI...... i guess it depends how good you are!... but i have found high intensity and haz res have been pretty bum clenching of late (in a good way) thanks to me having some eng items in my hold.

before i always found res to be so easy thanks to the idiotic pirates scanning me, then turning their back on me allowing me to take them out at my leisure.

less so now i have "stuff" on me they want.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

To be honest, you don't really want to be relying on armour for PvE. Once your shields are down, it's usually time to get out there; unless your opponent is very close to death and you know you can win.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

You also have to think financially about armour.

Firstly, in increases your rebuy by quite a lot.
Armour on a Python is around 50,000,000cr. That's +2.5mil cr to your rebuy. Which is likely already 6.5mil.
So you have to ask, is this armour going to save me from around 8 rebuys?

If yes, then it's worth it.
If no, then don't bother and spend the 50,000,000cr on something else.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

To be honest, you don't really want to be relying on armour for PvE. Once your shields are down, it's usually time to get out there; unless your opponent is very close to death and you know you can win.

sure, and i wont be, however i have had a few near misses when running away lately, and so my thinking is armour will cover me a bit better when doing a brave sir robin.

(an FDL and a brace of vultures messed me up big time last night, and that was with a friend also trying to take their fire off me. Had i have been on my own it would have been curtains!) (I am currently trying to learn flying in the FGS ready to put a fighter slot in there)

as another thought... does swanky armour do much to your every day repair costs?

 

[StiTch]

thanks guys.

truth is i rarely ever use any armour, and when i do it is just the 1st "improved one". I am just mucking around trying out a few different builds.. change is as good as a rest etc.

as i understand it, i am miles below my "optimal" mass for my thrusters, so, as long as i am understanding it correctly (i may not be!) it wont affect my handling too much.

The agility gain you get caps at half your optimum thruster mass. So dropping mass will give you increased speed and agility until you are at half the optimum thruster mass, and dropping further below this gives you no boost. When you are exactly at the optimum thruster mass, you get the "reference" ship speed and handling - so for example, the Vulture's stats on the wiki, coriolis etc. state a "speed" of 210 m/s. This is the speed you get at optimum thruster mass, and what the devs call the base flight model.

At half optimum thruster mass, the Vulture hits 244 m/s. It's clearly not double the speed/handling but significant, which does mean that as you have pointed out changes under the optimum mass don't have as drastic an impact as you first think.

For balancing, larger ships tend to be able to fit MGC bulkheads and not really give a crap. Even though you are correct in what I mentioned above, smaller ships typically want to avoid MGC bulkheads as they're usually quite over half the optimum mass even with conservative outfitting. The mass from MGC bulkheads will affect their handling, but give very little hull HP boost. A few HRPs (low class where possible) will give much better results.

It's also worth noting that because the default lightweight bulkheads have no additional mass, you can RNGineer these using the reinforced mod for more HP/Resistances, and not gain a single bit of mass. So if you want more hull bulkiness without the associated mass increase, a high grade mod to lightweight bulkheads is a really good compromise.

 

[Certacito]

I was going to drop 162MCr or the 15% discounted version, on Military Grade armour for the Corvette, but when I got to the station to buy it, I had a reality check. When was the last time an NPC dropped my Vettes shields and at that point I thought, why do I need it?! The mirrored and reactive armour are even more expensive and as others have already said, even out to little more than a shed load more weight, less manoeuvring and jump range. If I got to the point I was out of SCB and was in danger of losing my shields, its wake out time for me. In short mate, I don't think (<--purely my opinion) that they are worth it and I wouldn't bother

 

[StiTch]

To be honest, you don't really want to be relying on armour for PvE. Once your shields are down, it's usually time to get out there; unless your opponent is very close to death and you know you can win.

Little bit drastic depending on ship and loadout. I have a modded iClipper with 'conda level hull HP, and if my shields go down frankly the only thing I worry about it not face tanking the enemy directly so my canopy doesn't get shot out.

as another thought... does swanky armour do much to your every day repair costs?

Oh yes.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

sure, and i wont be, however i have had a few near misses when running away lately, and so my thinking is armour will cover me a bit better when doing a brave sir robin.

(an FDL and a brace of vultures messed me up big time last night, and that was with a friend also trying to take their fire off me. Had i have been on my own it would have been curtains!) (I am currently trying to learn flying in the FGS ready to put a fighter slot in there)

as another thought... does swanky armour do much to your every day repair costs?

Yeah, had a few close scrapes in the past myself, including a recent interdiction by another Commander. My modified reinforced armour bought me a precious few seconds while I charged the FSD.

 

[Starbreaker]

On smaller ships like the Vulture I would consider Reactive and mod it with thermal resist to even out the resistances across the board and in addition using a class 1 heavy duty HRP. Adds 250k to my rebuy over military. On my Python I used reinforced over military since it would add 1.2 mill to my rebuy and I can get pretty close with reinforced modded with grade 5 heavy duty.

 

[StiTch]

On smaller ships like the Vulture I would consider Reactive and mod it with thermal resist to even out the resistances across the board and in addition using a class 1 heavy duty HRP. Adds 250k to my rebuy over military. On my Python I used reinforced over military since it would add 1.2 mill to my rebuy and I can get pretty close with reinforced modded with grade 5 heavy duty.

So you pay vastly increased money to add kinetic resistance and decrease thermal resistance in equal levels, then add a mod to decrease the kinetic resistance and increase the thermal, and consequently not have a mod that gives you a hefty HP boost and extra resistances to all areas?

 

[Siranui]

My understanding is, over all these are side grades from miltiary grade but with a buff and a nerf for heat / projectile weapons.

Now whilst i can see why one may be better than the other at PvP depending on what the fashionable meta is at the time, in PvE where the ai seem to take a mixed loadout, so presumably over time it balances out, is it worth considering these?

thans

Not in my view.

Partially because their effectiveness depends on a roll of the dice as regards if your foe is packing thermal or kinetics. If I'm upgrading hull, I hedge bets and go reinforced/military, Although I barely ever even bother with that any more.

Why? Mainly because the AI is pretty weak and shields and boosters currently so strong. I struggle to remember the last time my shields were penetrated in a combat ship. Why weigh oneself down - penalising agility and jump range - for a benefit one never reaps?

I'm also wary of the extra confidence they might give. I don't currently have a hull tanking ship, so when my shields go I should be getting out of Dodge, instead of hanging round with a false confidence because of a bufffed hull.

I do however bung engineered hulls on everything. Just because it's effectively a free buff.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

cool, lots of interesting reading here, esp about how optimal mass works

thanks

 

[Certacito]

^^ Absolutely, I was impressed with that information as well.

 

[Siranui]

cool, lots of interesting reading here, esp about how optimal mass works

thanks

I may revise my opinion if alien ships only use one form of energy type in their weapon systems. At which point putting the relevant hull on an alien-hunting ship because a good plan.

 

[ROSS-128]

An interesting little catch is that reactive can be more viable on some ships than others, due to armor hardness.

Because lasers generally don't have much armor piercing, ships with 60+ armor take significantly reduced hull damage from any laser short of class 4. Their armor hardness generally offsets reactive's vulnerability to thermal enough that the only thermal weapons you actually have to worry about are rails, PAs, and class 4s.

A lightweight armor mod can help by shaving some of the weight off and increasing your thermal resistance, which helps to make its downsides less pronounced.

Overall though, heavy duty HRPs are a much lighter and cheaper source of HP and resistances, and shield HP reigns supreme over hull HP due to how module damage currently works. So right now the only reason to equip any armor at all is that you've finished the rest of your loadout with weight and credits to spare.

 

[CMDR-AD]

On my thinner shielded ships, I use Military Grade Armor. Ships like Cobra Mk3, Viper Mk4, Keelback.

If my shields are going to drop, I am already leaving. But bad things still happen. Accidentally clipping some wreckage parts in a POI, or an asteroid in a ring... stuff that'll easy zonk the last bit of shielding and do hull damage. Been there, done that, escaped with 25% hull remaining. So I carry the armor as insurance.

And speaking of insurance, I never consider the added rebuy. My aim is never to die in the first place, which is why I'm buying the armor.

I've never bought into the reactive or mirrored yet, though. I've tried to pay attention to what weapons I'm shot with, and it seems very evenly mixed between kinetic and thermal. So I never was convinced that one way or the other was better.

 

[StiTch]

An interesting little catch is that reactive can be more viable on some ships than others, due to armor hardness.

Because lasers generally don't have much armor piercing, ships with 60+ armor take significantly reduced hull damage from any laser short of class 4. Their armor hardness generally offsets reactive's vulnerability to thermal enough that the only thermal weapons you actually have to worry about are rails, PAs, and class 4s.

A lightweight armor mod can help by shaving some of the weight off and increasing your thermal resistance, which helps to make its downsides less pronounced.

Overall though, heavy duty HRPs are a much lighter and cheaper source of HP and resistances, and shield HP reigns supreme over hull HP due to how module damage currently works. So right now the only reason to equip any armor at all is that you've finished the rest of your loadout with weight and credits to spare.

Some very good information here chaps.

Only thing I would look at...lightweight armour mods feel a bit like one of the instances mods picked a few values and didn't cross check them against anything for reference.

Lightweight armour mod reduces hull HP and mass. On a "min/maxed" G5 roll, 7% less hull HP and 35% less mass from the bulkheads.

On lightweight bulkheads, the heavy duty mod adds zero mass but a max of 68% more hull HP.

The ratios mean on a maxed heavy duty roll, you're getting substantially over the HP that reinforced alloys give, but with zero added mass. Even on MGC bulkheads, the drop to HP from the lightweight mod will bring the hull HP boost nearer to the max boost from a heavy duty mod, but you're dealing with a minimum 65% extra mass from the MGC bulkheads.

Not say that lightweight mods don't have a place for armour...they just don't seem well thought out.