How would you engineer my Viper Mk IV's armour for CZ?

[Deleted member 110222]

Which bulkheads would you use, and what combination of engineering would you use across the bulkheads and HRP?

Anything to gain from lightweight, or is that a bad move? Armour confuses me lol.

 

[Chris Simon]

Which bulkheads would you use, and what combination of engineering would you use across the bulkheads and HRP?

Anything to gain from lightweight, or is that a bad move? Armour confuses me lol.

I use lightweight on MK.IV. She's sluggish enough already. The beautiful thing about lightweight bulkheads is that you can reinforce them basically "for free". Reinforcements add a lot of weight, normally, but 2.5x0 is still 0.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I use lightweight on MK.IV. She's sluggish enough already. The beautiful thing about lightweight bulkheads is that you can reinforce them basically "for free". Reinforcements add a lot of weight, normally, but 2.5x0 is still 0.

Sorry, I could have been a bit clearer. I meant the lightweight modification on military/reactive.

 

[Vardaugas]

Considering how heavy the Viper already is, those 9t for a reactive plating isn't going to make much of a difference. And together with two size2 heavy duty hull enforcements, you will get a very solid hull on a small ship with little loss in agility and speed.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Considering how heavy the Viper already is, those 9t for a reactive plating isn't going to make much of a difference. And together with two size2 heavy duty hull enforcements, you will get a very solid hull on a small ship with little loss in agility and speed.

How would you engineer reactive plating, if that's what you are suggesting?

 

[Vardaugas]

How would you engineer reactive plating, if that's what you are suggesting?

Thermal resistant to even out the resistances of the hull with deep plating to maximize the hull boost. The hull reinforcement I'd go with heavy duty and layered plating, resulting in 33% resistance across the board on almost 1200 raw hull. Should keep you afloat for a while.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Thermal resistant to even out the resistances of the hull with deep plating to maximize the hull boost. The hull reinforcement I'd go with heavy duty and layered plating, resulting in 33% resistance across the board on almost 1200 raw hull. Should keep you afloat for a while.

Most informative. Thank you.

 

[Frenotx]

I'm a fan of reactive armour with the heavy duty mod, coupled with a HRP with the thermal resist mod. If you have several HRPs, put thermal resist on the smallest one, and heavy duty on the rest.

The Viper IV's shield is fairly small, so you don't want to skimp on the armour. You'll have to count on that armour and your evasion skills to keep you alive when your shield is rebuilding.

The reason I suggest this arrangement is to get the most armour possible. Heavy duty adds a lot of percent-based health, so you want it on your biggest health items- the hull, and your larger HRPs. Since you miss out on the hull boost with thermal resist, throw that on the smallest individual contributor- the smallest HRP- to keep the opportunity cost down. This of course is just my approach, and not necessarily "the best" approach.

 

[Darkslayer]

I'm a fan of reactive armour with the heavy duty mod, coupled with a HRP with the thermal resist mod. If you have several HRPs, put thermal resist on the smallest one, and heavy duty on the rest.

The Viper IV's shield is fairly small, so you don't want to skimp on the armour. You'll have to count on that armour and your evasion skills to keep you alive when your shield is rebuilding.

The reason I suggest this arrangement is to get the most armour possible. Heavy duty adds a lot of percent-based health, so you want it on your biggest health items- the hull, and your larger HRPs. Since you miss out on the hull boost with thermal resist, throw that on the smallest individual contributor- the smallest HRP- to keep the opportunity cost down. This of course is just my approach, and not necessarily "the best" approach.

Very interesting. I may try this myself.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Reactive thermal, hd x 2

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Reactive thermal, hd x 2

Done, and the resistances are fantastic. I have not even applied experimentals yet.

I like this...

 

[SkyB]

Reactiv with thermal mod + heavy duty for that slow brick

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Done, and the resistances are fantastic. I have not even applied experimentals yet.

I like this...

For lighter weight builds, try this, if you have the slots to spare.

Reactive, lightweight
HD HRP x 2
Thermal HRP x 1

Remember, keep one of your larger slots for an MRP

BTW, Viper IV works well with a 4A shield/4A SCB/Heatsink combo

 

[Ziljan]

I'm a fan of reactive armour with the heavy duty mod, coupled with a HRP with the thermal resist mod. If you have several HRPs, put thermal resist on the smallest one, and heavy duty on the rest.

The Viper IV's shield is fairly small, so you don't want to skimp on the armour. You'll have to count on that armour and your evasion skills to keep you alive when your shield is rebuilding.

The reason I suggest this arrangement is to get the most armour possible. Heavy duty adds a lot of percent-based health, so you want it on your biggest health items- the hull, and your larger HRPs. Since you miss out on the hull boost with thermal resist, throw that on the smallest individual contributor- the smallest HRP- to keep the opportunity cost down. This of course is just my approach, and not necessarily "the best" approach.

I was never really clear on which was better, but running a test on coriolis gives the opposite result:

Following this recipe you get this for a thermal mod on your bulkheads https://eddp.co/u/PN9EWvFK

and this for a thermal mod on your smallest HRPs https://eddp.co/u/CV7dPfQ3

Looks like a Thermal mod on the Reactive bulkheads is the way to go for both absolute hull and resist hull, by a pretty big margin too. Coriolis could be wrong though, wouldn't be the first time!

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Shields went down, and this thing just took a beating, but shrugged it off like nothing.

Very happy with the results. This was all in CZ.

 

[Frenotx]

I was never really clear on which was better, but running a test on coriolis gives the opposite result:

Following this recipe you get this for a thermal mod on your bulkheads https://eddp.co/u/PN9EWvFK
https://i.imgur.com/1AG947b.png

and this for a thermal mod on your smallest HRPs https://eddp.co/u/CV7dPfQ3
https://i.imgur.com/LFGeD9L.png

Looks like a Thermal mod on the Reactive bulkheads is the way to go for both absolute hull and resist hull, by a pretty big margin too. Coriolis could be wrong though, wouldn't be the first time!

I suppose it depends on the ratio of how much hull comes from the bulkheads vs. the MRPs, but it appears you're right; for the viper IV, that's the way to go. Cool. I need to update my armour to the new system anyway... guess I'll be doing to redesign work too!

On second thought, I'm going to temporarily recant my "you're right." I was planning out the changes to my build and ran into some oddities (indicating my original approach was better). I'm going to look over everything more carefully tomorrow, and make my judgment then.

Took my viper IV over to Selene Jean. For my build (one class 1 HRP, and one class 3 HRP), my original setup is definitely the superior setup- Heavy duty on the bulkheads and larger HRP(s), and thermal resist on the smallest HRP. I copied the numbers over to coriolis directly from the engineer: thermal on the smallest HRP vs. thermal on the on the bulkheads. Not sure if it was differences in the build you used for your test or if your numbers are wrong, but as I copied these over directly from the in-game engineer, I trust them more.

The numbers are as follows (absolute / explosive / kinetic / thermal). Note that these are without any experimental effects, since I figured they'd affect both builds comparably:
Thermal on the smallest HRP: 1519 / 2180 / 2325 / 1903
Thermal on the bulkheads: 1161 / 1819 / 1949 / 1949

As you can see, the numbers are pretty strongly in favor of the thermal resist being on the smallest HRP, and heavy duty on the rest. The thermal bulkheads gives you a small amount more effective health against thermal, but at the expense of a significant amount of the others. The absolute health being so much lower on the thermal bulkheads leaves you more open to plasma, too. Again, ymmv with different builds, but on a Viper IV with only two HRPs, the choice is clear.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

First class thread right here.

My Viper is going to the shop tonight!

 

[Bortas]

I'm a fan of reactive armour with the heavy duty mod, coupled with a HRP with the thermal resist mod. If you have several HRPs, put thermal resist on the smallest one, and heavy duty on the rest.

This. Putting thermal resistance directly on the armor costs too much hull hp (well, usually... not on small ships like the Viper it seems). Putting it on the smalles HRP is much more effective and gives you more flexibility for adjusting it later... Need more kinetic resistance for a certain task? Just swap out the HRP instead of re-engineering the entire armor.