Current armor, weight wise, has not changed for at least 1.07. My issue with this is how the tanks can hold less but weapons weigh less it balances out. I also know the weight vs weapons issue, but one armor set ruins this. Composite armor. Every other armor, is 15 weight per piece (Besides useless reactive) while composite is 10 wpp. (weight per piece) My suggestion is to lower and raise the weight of armor biased on how often they are used & price. Composite armor, is always what you want for mid/heavy tanking, just because it weights that much less. If weight is changed, some other armor besides composite will be used on the big tanks. (And reactive may be of some use. 20 wpp is insane)
composite also costs twice as much per every plate. I like the idea of having a specific armor for a specific time in the game, it makes research schemes more complex. This is a Rambo vs teamwork issue, where someone can buy 1 compo heavy tank, the other team can buy 2 abs medium tanks. I'd also like to note that in the future I will be balancing this on price rather than weight, to make the differences less bland and give way for more diverse strategies; from resource managment to squad management etc etc
Comp already costs a lot to offset the weight, but all that leads to is a fleet of superexpensive tanks consisting of the one guy able to ninjabuy it while the rest of the team sits around the VF with hot chocolate waiting for the res to come back so the next ninja can nick a comp-tank. on a heavy, you can only have around 2-3 plates of reactive on each side and still have room for a couple guns. Those plates should be much more effective to make up for the lack of total armor. They are good on APCs though, all they need is 2 MGs and full reactive, though full composite and an extra CG is nicer.
yeah, our team was doing great on slaughtered with the pretty cheap regen armour... then we got reactive and the whole hot chocolate thing started up.
Don't forget that composite has 80 raw healthpoints plus the damage modifier of 0,85 which makes it the ultimate armor with its very low weight.
Thats why composite is used. It's this light uber armor that pwns almost all armors. If we were to make composite heavier, no one would use composite anymore.
I'd like to see weapons weight a lot more, especially the heavier weapons, ideally a pair of UMLs or 5mls should weight about 150 or so less than twin railguns, and twin railguns should weigh enough to give a significant armor advantage to a tank carrying one railgun. You should be able to pack 3 or 4 additional plates of reactive onto a tank with 1 railgun, and 3 or 4 more if you change that railgun to a medium cannon like HE or plasma. This would mean that there is an excuse for packing smaller weapons and acting as a 'tank' in the RPG sense, soaking up damage and staying alive. You should be able to fit your tanks as you can now, but more weapons cost a lot more weight and therefore less armor, but on the flipside, fewer weapons allow for much more armor. To do this you'd need to increase all weapon weights, as well as make the larger weapons much heavier than smaller ones, in addition to that, you increase the tank carrying capacity in order to facilitate carrying weapons and armor.
because it's the most expensive. that's the point of it- it costs lots because it's pretty good. absorbant is about 3x cheaper but isn't as good. not all armours are equal in ability but all equally balanced because of cost. or am i barking up completely the wrong tree... :p
Think of it in this sort of fashion, we'll consider composite as titanium Compare steel with titanium, titanium is an alloy of varius metals, that has the strength of steel, but the weight of aluminum, but at a high cost.
No, titanium is an element, steel is an alloy of various metals. Titanium is also considerably stronger than steel, and is twice as heavy as aluminium.
As far as I know Steel only have iron and coal in it... Stainless steel, however, is a mixture of all kinds of metals. I can't remember what there has been used but that is the mixture of metals.
hmm )= my science teacher was wrong then...blech. on any note, the comparison is more or less the same, titanium is stronger, lighter, but more expensive then steel, at least here in Oregon.
You have metal wholesalers in Oregon? I like how it's balanced by weight now. Other than reactive not being worth it, I think things are pretty good.
As it is now composite is superior to every other armor. I just took a look at the numbers and for example with absorbant vs railgun (which is where absorbant should be most effective since its the fastest projectile in empires) composite still gives more effective hp(it takes 2.64 times more damage from the shot but has 2.83 times more hp with the weight factored in). The only advantage (for absorbant) here would be the ability to wield effectively more total armor than possible with composite at the cost of weight. If anyone wants to do a bit more math on the subject: I've attached a summary of the armor stats.
it is superior, but also MORE EXPENSIVE. any commander that says it's the only armour worth researching is an idiot. the game revolves around tanks, and having your whole team in tanks is a lot more important that having 3 tanks with composite on. whats more, with composite, you can bankrupt the team, which will spell death for any team unless they're against total noobs. or you've been playing only on res multiplied servers. Empires is REALLY fun when there is only one research path, isn't it.
If you have to make every res count you go with regenerative armor. But that is about the only other viable armor around.(And - suprise surprise - it's the armor with the 2nd highest hp-to-weight-ratio). I just miss the diversity wich should be possible with all those armor types around, but for obvious reasons those are the only types of armor I encounter in games (unless the commander doesn't know the research tree or is experimenting). Sad but true imho
Actually with some thought as to how you drive, reflective is by far the most survivable armour in the game.
I'm afraid there aren't many standard res servers that also coincidentally hold 48 players and are played frequently. But seriously, composite is way too strong even with the cost factored in. The other armors need some buffing. ESPECIALLY reactive. In my opinion reactive should have the most HP-weight ratio of any armor, which would be balanced by the fact that you can't fit much of it on, it gets raped by cannons, and it costs a lot (albeit not as much as composite). That way it's worth researching again.
