Lightweight armour working as intended? Engineering inconsistencies...

Miko

M
Seen numerous reports of engineering armour being bugged. Since this isn't a bug report, but more of an enquiry, I post this here.

Why on earth would anyone choose lightweight armour over heavy duty when the basic armour in a ship cannot be reduced in mass at all by lightweight engineering and the heavy duty does not increase the mass but offers actual gains?!!!

Enlighten me how his works as intended?
 

Unknown Zombie

Unknown Zombie
Miko said:
Seen numerous reports of engineering armour being bugged. Since this isn't a bug report, but more of an enquiry, I post this here.

Why on earth would anyone choose lightweight armour over heavy duty when the basic armour in a ship cannot be reduced in mass at all by lightweight engineering and the heavy duty does not increase the mass but offers actual gains?!!!

Enlighten me how his works as intended?
Click to expand...
Because default ship hull armor is crap whether you engineer it or not. The engineering is best applied to upgraded hull armor.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Recently I happened to have a look at the Sidey I went to Sag A in, only to find that I'd applied (and G5'd, no less) the "light weight" mod' to it's light-alloy hull, presumably in a bid to maximise it's jump-range.

Ah, the niavety of youth. :eek:

But, yeah.
I've never understood why they didn't give the lightweight alloy hull some mass, just so it could take advantage of a "light weight" mod' rather than just making the "heavy duty" mod' a no-brainer.
 

CMDR Carbo

CMDR Carbo
Miko said:
Seen numerous reports of engineering armour being bugged. Since this isn't a bug report, but more of an enquiry, I post this here.

Why on earth would anyone choose lightweight armour over heavy duty when the basic armour in a ship cannot be reduced in mass at all by lightweight engineering and the heavy duty does not increase the mass but offers actual gains?!!!

Enlighten me how his works as intended?
Click to expand...

This is only the case for the default lightweight alloys and is intended AFAIK.

Basically since there is no armor (it has no weight) you can't make it lighter, but you can add some resistances or some minimal armor increase.

Lightweight engineering should work with upgrade armor, like military, refractive etc.
 

Miko

M
It's about being completely illogical. So heavy duty increases it at zero increase in mass but lightweight has zero reduction effect whatsoever?
 

V'larr

V'larr
It really is a blueprint that makes no sense.

If you want less weight, you take the lightweight bulkheads. Going with a heavy bulkhead set and then slapping lightweight on it instead of heavy duty completely defeats the purpose of deciding to add weight for more armor in the first place, it's just plain *silly*.

Just another thing about Engineers that really was not thought out enough.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Lightweight mod has the best resistances.

All of my tiny ships have lightweight+angled plating lightweight alloys, because 95% of their hull comes from HRPs and the resistance bonus is way better than the 20 extra armor points from heavy duty lightweight, or the extra mass of the heavier bulkheads on ~60 ton ships.
 

Urbanski101

Urbanski101
I don't use additional armour on any ship I own....they're heavy, slow you down, reduce agility, reduce jump range...pah!

I like shields...once they go down (and usually a bit before that point) I'm waking out.

So the heavy duty blueprint for the stock armour is great...means I get an extra few seconds to escape if needed.

I've never liked hull tanking (in any game), doesn't make any sense to me and there is zero margin for error, shields all the way.
 

Cmdr Ultra

Cmdr Ultra
In all your fast ships you engineer the Lightweight armour with the Heavy Duty mod. You gain strength with no downside.
 

jonny taco

J
Un1k0rn said:
Does it really matter? LW is trash.
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LW has higher resistances and slashes the mass by around 30 tons for medium sized ships. Ultimately I think it comes down to the ship and the number of hull packages you have but imo LW is not at all trash. Several of my ships have more EHP on a couple damage types with LW compared to heavy duty.
 
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Stigbob

Stigbob
Urbanski101 said:
I don't use additional armour on any ship I own....they're heavy, slow you down, reduce agility, reduce jump range...pah!

I like shields...once they go down (and usually a bit before that point) I'm waking out.

So the heavy duty blueprint for the stock armour is great...means I get an extra few seconds to escape if needed.

I've never liked hull tanking (in any game), doesn't make any sense to me and there is zero margin for error, shields all the way.
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This, hull damage is a mugs game.

Give yourself a bit of a survivability boost by engineering the lightweight armor but keep the speed and ability to move you get from basic armor. It also cuts your rebuy and setup cost considerably even in A-rated ships.
 

V'larr

V'larr
Morbad said:
Lightweight mod has the best resistances.

All of my tiny ships have lightweight+angled plating lightweight alloys, because 95% of their hull comes from HRPs and the resistance bonus is way better than the 20 extra armor points from heavy duty lightweight, or the extra mass of the heavier bulkheads on ~60 ton ships.
Click to expand...

Resistances aren't everything though.

Play with engineering on edshipyard, you'll find - as I did - it's surprisingly better in most cases to just stack heavy duty/deep plating, because you get nearly the same effective health for whatever damage type whilst boosting your base hitpoints to deal with absolute damage as well.

Sure, resistances do *help* to an extent, but it's still true that you'll get better mileage going one way or the other with lightweight bulkheads or heavier bulkheads and putting Heavy Duty modding on in either case.
 

Morbad

Morbad
V'larr said:
Resistances aren't everything though.
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They are when the raw armor integrity gained is virtually non-existent. My Eagle has ~1300 hull. ~6% better resists is much better than ~2% more integrity, especially since the ship is essentially immune to non-focused/LR plasma or ramming attacks. Resists also protect modules more than raw hull (which can only reduce breach chance).

Ships that gain proportionally more hull from bulkheads often are better off with heavy duty bulkheads, unless the mass increase would be prohibitive, but even with without taking mass into account, the smallest ships often benefit more from lightweight.
 
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RamirezKurita

R
It's working as intended, it's just that the intention itself of armour that weighs 0 tonnes is pretty dumb. I do think it would be far better if they were to shift some of the hull mass of the ships onto the armour to give more choices in outfitting.
 

V'larr

V'larr
Morbad said:
They are when the raw armor integrity gained is virtually non-existent. My Eagle has ~1300 hull. ~6% better resists is much better than ~2% more integrity, especially since the ship is essentially immune to non-focused/LR plasma or ramming attacks. Resists also protect modules more than raw hull (which can only reduce breach chance).

Ships that gain proportionally more hull from bulkheads often are better off with heavy duty bulkheads, unless the mass increase would be prohibitive, but even with without taking mass into account, the smallest ships often benefit more from lightweight.
Click to expand...

For comparison's sake, I'll prove what I mean:
My take on things, with an all-heavy duty + deep plating loadout (using the Reactive Composite bulkheads for best overall resistances):
http://edshipyard.com/new/#/L=CL0H4C0S0,FBG0FBG0,,9opG5H50upD4v7iAkPcEkPcIkPcA4Y0ALk0AbM0Ans0B320BIg0BX_0,,13qG5H50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD12GG5H50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD10iG5H50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD10iG5H50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD

What I presume to be your shield-less resistance-focused Eagle build (has to be, to reach 1300 health, right?), using Reflective Plating, lightweight mod on the bulkheads and heavy duty on the HRPs:
http://www.edshipyard.com/new/#/L=CL0H4C0S0,FBG0FBG0,,9opG9I52yPc6kPcAqpDEqpDIqpDA4Y0ALk0AbM0Ans0B320BIg0BX_0,,13qG5I50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD12GG5I50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD10iG5I50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD10iG5I50wPc4zmfAqpDEqpDIqpD

If you compare the total effective health values, yours only ends up with ~80 more effective health against Thermal, while giving up the following: ~240 health against absolute & caustic damage as well as ~250-270 health against explosive & kinetic damage.

This is what I meant by "resistance only means so much". (And I was a bit dismayed when I first noticed this, playing in edshipyard, as I've set all my ships up currently with Reactive bulkheads + Thermal resistance; in all cases with my ships I'd be better off with Heavy Duty, overall....)
 
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smiths121

S
Well /i would not say it is illogical - pointless yes (unless you have the materils for it and ar opening up the engineer).

Logic says if I times 0 by something I still have 0, whether I times it by an integer of a fraction. To be honest making it have a different behaviour for standatd ship hull would seem illogical to me cos of, well, maths. However not allowing it to be apploed to standard hull would make sense to me.

Simon
 
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