Change Armor Rigs to Affect Inertia not Speed

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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Most armor rigs (excluding nano pumps and accelerators) apply a speed reduction as the rig penalty. Armor ships are normally already slower than shield ships from a baseline (unless comparing fastest armor to slowest shield), then you add in plates, trimarks or resistance rigs and it penalizes armor speed even more by just using the preferred tanking method of the ship.

In most cases, a single plate does not massively affect speed. Even the most hated nanoboi’s will put 800 plates on kitey ships and lose only a negligible amount of speed. The main speed debuff for armor is in the rigs.

Why does this matter?

To create better diversity between armor/shield engagements where 1 isn’t more preferred due to raw mobility and the other can be kited indefinitely just for using its main tank. I think in the current meta, involving HACs, an easy example to make is between the zealot and eagle. The eagle is arguably one of the slowest shield cruisers in the game, yet once you put plate/rigs on the zealot (or sac), the eagle is faster than it. So the eagle can project farther and can just kite away from the zealot, meaning the zealot is really not viable in this fight. I know the zealot has more issues than this, but its just an example.

Eagle speed w/ MWD = 1582

Zealot speed w/ MWD = 1676

Zealot speed w/ MWD (1600 plate/trimarks) = 1356

Zealot speed w/ MWD (1600 plate only) = 1493

By changing the rigs, the Eagle is still faster, but instead of a 200m/s+ difference, its less than 100m/s. This could be tweaked by buffing zealot speed or nerfing eagle speed pretty easily to make them more competitive.

This same comparison occurs to things like harb vs ferox

Ferox speed w/ MWD = 1073

Harbinger speed w/ MWD = 1229

Harb speed w/ MWD (plate/trimaks) = 1013 m/s (would actually be even slower with 3rd trimark, but heavy beam fit only uses 2 trimarks+1 ACR).

Harb speed w/ MWD (plate only) = 1114 m/s

With plate speed penalty only, the harb is now faster than the Ferox and can actually get into range with heavy beams and not get slowly kited to death.

These similarities occur through pretty much the entire EVE ship line. There are exceptions of course, but they are limited.

Hull Tanking

While we’re here, since armor would lose the speed penalty, apply the speed penalty to hull tanking bulkheads (low slot mods, not the rigs). This way the max bulkhead hull tank ships become slow bricks to match their equally absurd and cheap EHP values.

Closing

The agility penalty would still provide a reasonable drawback to fitting trimarks/resist rigs, but doesn’t nerf an armor ship’s ability to catch up to a shield ship completely. It would mean the armor ship can’t react as quickly to sudden changes (warp-ins or bombs), but still be competitive in speed. It also means if the shield ship is more active and purposely burns perpendicular to the armor ship, it can still shake off an armor ship.

This changes the dynamic to shield vs armor and can affect how they engage each other. Where armor you want to try to move around on them to keep them working with their low agility, but if they need to reposition or burn out, they can still achieve reasonable speed to do so.

3 Likes
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My one issue with this is that both shield rigs and armor rigs have penalties that make you easier to hit. For shield rigs, your signature radius gets larger and for armor rigs you get slower. I feel like it would upset the balance of things if this was changed. Now, an armor ship could fit armor rigs without having to worry about getting tracked better.

2 Likes
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The difference in speed before/after is 100-300m/s roughly for cruisers. Less for battleships and more for frigates. Its not enough to significantly affect the tracking calculation.

The thing to keep in mind is that by affecting agility, it on its own will reduce speed in tight orbits or high speed orbits, because for the ship to maintain orbit, needs to inherently lower its speed due to poorer agility. This compensates the tracking changes in situations where the tracking would be most affected (tight orbits). In long range engagements, then the changes won’t have much if any affect on the tracking formula as the changes are minor. Also, armor ships still get a speed penalty through plates, just not the rigs this way.

The main benefit to this change is it allows armor ships to catch up or get away when in a straight line, which is the situation where they are most at risk and less favored in fleet fights and other applications (solo/small gang) currently.

Also, there are other inherent disadvantages to armor, such as your lows competing for dps and tank. Whereas shield can go heavier into dps and still retain tank.

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I get most of my fights in frigates in FW so this is where all my thoughts are coming from. If a frigate can go even 100-300m/s faster than it could before with an afterburner and armor rigs, it can now mitigate more damage when scramkiting. I’m not trying to say that your idea is necessarily bad, it just seems like you are trying to balance ships based on the nullsec meta forgetting that there is an EVE outside of 0.0.

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Not sure how I feel about the idea, so I’m not going to say one way or the other on that. However, I’m pretty sure Stitch has a kill or 2 outside of null.

1 Like
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I’ve seen several of Stitch’s vids, and seen him in action. This is part of my confusion as to why his examples for this change are based solely on the idea of large fleets, which are most commonly seen in null.

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Most frigates in FW don’t use trimarks, they use bulkheads. This is because trimarks are too punishing in FW where AB speed is king. I flew in FW for 5 years, so i’m pretty familiar with the meta. You are going to see far more bulkheaded comets than trimark comets. Same with tristans, tormentors, arty thrashers and anything else that is “supposed” to armor tank, because the armor penalties make you slower than your targets and people will immediately ignore them in favor of hull tanking to retain speed.

The exceptions are things that already have superior range control, such as dragoons and potentially hookbills/kestrels.

Using the 400mm kestrel as an example. With 400mm and 3 trimarks, its speed is 843 m/s. With this change, it speed goes to 955 m/s. So less than 100m/s change, because in this situation, the bulk of its speed loss is in the plate. Its still slower than most AB frigs, but not as slow.

Hookbill with 400mm plate and 3 trimarks is 943 m/s with current armor penalties. Without the rig penalties is 1068 m/s. About 120 m/s change, but still slower than most frigates. It does get to retain the dual web utility, but that still applies on the faster shield fit too.

In my opinion, this change could diversify FW meta a bit more, because as i mentioned, no one wants to trimark their frigates because they’re going to lose the range control competition. If trimarks didn’t nerf your speed, then people might be willing to use armor tanks more than hull tanks again.

2 Likes
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After reading that I think you’re right. Except with the Comet which I think is supposed to be hull tank because it gets more EHP with triple hull rigs than with triple armor.

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Thats cause comet is borderline OP and has been for years, i hated fighting comets unless i was in 280 thrasher. Comet has the same hull HP as destroyers, 2 sets of drones and is fast. But yeah, i agree, with the comet’s current stats, it’d be foolish not to bulkhead it. Before the hull tank buffs (rigs) though, the comet was often armor tanked (which might explain its higher base speed since it was assumed you had to plate/trimark it).

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That’d actually make a whole lot of sense. You should run with that for your CSM platform. I’d vote for you if you want to see the Comet nerfed.

1 Like
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Step 1 to fix FW: Nerf Comet

Ha, but then all comet fanbois would rally against me.

If only it were that simple…lol. In all seriousness though, FW needs a ton of love.

Before i derail my own thread though, circling back to the original point. I don’t think changing trimarks would significantly affect the FW landscape and could infact add some diversity. I’m sure there is probably some special case ship that i’m missing or that could hugely benefit, but i think that is a more “treat the ship” kind of problem, rather than it affecting the rig changes.

Also, to answer your original question/confusion as to why i’m addressing more of a nullsec issue, its because i talk with a lot of people from all playstyles and the armor rig issue is a common thing that plagues nullsec fleet compositions in the same way that trimarks are essentially ignored in FW, it leaves you as a sitting duck with no way to control range.

I also think it opens up some more fitting creativity in solo/small gang since you slot in an armor resist rig on a kitey ship and not be heavily penalized for it.

1 Like
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Here’s some questions:

  • What effect do you think the agility penalty will have on armor ships’/fleets’ ability to chose when and when not to engage?
  • What effect do you think it would have on roaming?
  • Personally, I think that armor tanking in many PvE activities would come out ahead with the deal, but no so much so that it would break things. But what do you think? What effect do you think this change would have on PvE?
  • The align time nerf would hurt armor tanked industrials by increasing travel times. Do you think they should get a buff to align time in order to compensate?
  • Are you planning on keeping the cargo capacity and agility penalties on reinforced bulkeads in addition to the speed penalty? I think not doing so would be a big buff to freighters. They would still have to choose between tank and cargo cap, but the downside of using bulkheads would be greatly diminished.
2 Likes
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It will open armor comps to more quick reactions by the opposing fleet, such as bombers or warp-ins. It may open them up to combat probes more (longer time to warp off/reposition), But these are better than just not being able to realistically use the fleet because it gets kited out by shield ships that are faster and have more projection (a recipe for certain death). It still means armor ships have drawbacks but they aren’t as severe and planning ahead by the FC instead of trying to fly by the seat of their pants would be important.

Very little if any. Roamers aren’t normally fitting armor buffer rigs/resists on their ships. They’ll have a rep or two. However, it would open up some kitey armor ships to fill a resist hole with a resist rig, which they couldn’t before, at the loss of some agility (single rig at rigging 5 is -5% agility). Potentially making the last rig on a nomen better suited for more tank, instead of a 3rd locus that is heavily stacking penalized for example, or stick with armor pump if they so choose.

I don’t feel it would really affect PVE, its pretty rare that PVE ships use resistances or trimarks on their rigs. Because of the state of missions/anoms, you just tank for single target damage and swap out modules depending on the site/mission. Having to swap out rigs would negate some of your isk making potential since they get destroyed. In the off chance it makes certain specific armor tanked PVE ships a little stronger, i don’t really have an issue with that and i think its relatively minor in the scheme of things.

That’s a good point, but i can’t say it out-weighs the advantages it brings to a lot of other ship lines across the board.

Looking at DST’s i see the Occator and Impel both get a velocity bonus, what if that got swapped to an inertia bonus. So you’d have the 25% inertia bonus (instead of velocity) to counteract any rig changes. Same thing for the prorator and viator.

Even if you used double armor rigs and a plate, you should still see a net positive inertia change to those haulers.

For T1 haulers, idk if it really matters that much to rebalance them for this since they’re quite cheap and the gallente industrials are very popular already.

Alternatively, add the gallente armor plate mass bonus that the Eris has (but idk if that’ll have as much of a positive impact as just a raw inertia bonus)

Ultimately, if it were to go through, it would be up to CCP. For the standard lowslot bulkhead though, i feel like it should keep the existing cargohold nerf and agility nerf and then tack on the speed nerf. For freighters, a speed nerf is really a non-issue anyway.

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The same can be said for Astrogation RIGs, these decrease Armour HP.

If you change armour rig penalties to be agility instead of speed then astro rig would have to effect something else.

To be honest the speed penalty is easier to deal with, the penalty has better results and what would happen to agility. With max rig skill you’re looking at a few % when rounding is applied.
But agility with the same percentages being already using 2 decimal points would have a higher negative effect and even more so with lower skilled players.

These things should be taken into account.

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I’ll pass these on.

3 Likes
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No, I don’t think so. I love flying kiting ships and I never saw much of a drawback on some small armor hp penalty for fitting astrometric rigs.

It balances out by you flying faster and / or more agile at the cost of some tank or in case of bulkheads or shield ships, a meager decline of 3-5% ehp if that.

Those rigs can stay as is.

I do agree on the armor rigs and bulkheads.

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