New Armor - Compound Plate

In today's Forsaken Mission, they released a new item: Compound Plate.

This is a bit of a surprise, as I was expecting there to be one more week of the old prizes (Sawfish, Agility, Assault Disrupter) before we saw anything new.  But since we've got it... I'll crunch the numbers and give you some quick thoughts: 

Type	Level	Lab	Armor Points	Weight	AP / ton	Shipyard 2 AP / ton	Build Time w officer (h)	AP / hr	Resistance
Depleted Uranium	4	10	2156	479	4.50	5.30	21.60	99.8
Drac D2-E, T, N	2	n/a	750	167	4.49	4.49	4.32	173.6
Drac D3-E, T, N	3	n/a	1250	278	4.50	4.50	8.64	144.7
Drac D3-U	3	n/a	1250	278	4.50	4.50	11.70	106.8
Drac D4-E, T, N	4	n/a	1750	389	4.50	4.50	25.92	67.5
Drac D4-U	4	n/a	1750	389	4.50	4.50	36.90	47.4
Plate1 X, M, C	1	n/a	750	150	5.00	5.88	4.32	173.6	B-2 / P-6 / X-8
Plate2 X, M, C	2	n/a	1250	250	5.00	5.88	8.64	144.7	B-4 / P-10 / X-16
Plate3 X, M, C	3	n/a	1750	350	5.00	5.88	25.92	67.5	B-6 / P-14 / X-22
Comp Plate 2	1	n/a	1255	251	5.00	5.88	TBD	#VALUE!	B-2 & P-4 & X-4
Comp Plate 3	2	n/a	1770	354	5.00	5.88	TBD	#VALUE!	B-2 & P-4 & X-6
Comp Plate 4	3	n/a	2285	457	5.00	5.88	TBD	#VALUE!	B-4 & P-6 & X-8

I'm only comparing these armor types - The Drac E and U are the same but have different build times. You can go back to my earlier article:  Optimizing Your Armor - Build Time & Weight to see the whole table.

A couple things popped out at me quickly:

• The Compound Plate has the same Armor Points per ton as the previous Plate.
• Compound Plate 2 is approximately equivalent to Plate 2, Compound 3 is approximately equivalent to Plate 3, and Compound Plate 4 is in a class of its own - with even more armor points than the previous champ - DU4.
• No Radioactive Resistance here... keep waiting.
• With Compound Plate on Tier 2 of the mission, this is a way for lower level players who might not be able to reach Tier 3 to have access to heavier armor.

The next thing I wanted to look at is - how good are the bonuses?  

I compared 3 Compound Plate armors to the 3 equivalent (one tier up) Forsaken Plate. 

Tier 1: 

3 pieces of Compound 2 give Ballistic -6, Penetrative -12, Explosive -12

3 pieces of Plate 2 give Ballistic -4, Penetrative -10, Explosive -16

Compound 2 is better for Ballistic and Penetrative, worse on Explosive.

Tier 2: 

3 pieces of Compound 3 give Ballistic -6, Penetrative -12, Explosive -18

3 pieces of Plate 3 give Ballistic -6, Penetrative -14, Explosive -22

Compound 3 is even on Ballistic, worse on Penetrative and Explosive.

Tier 3 is tough to compare, since the Compound Armor 4 has more armor points than any other armor piece.

The other consideration is build time.  I'll have to wait until someone wins the armor and share the numbers, but the Draconian Compound Armor (U) had drastically higher build times than the other armor types.  I would expect the Forsaken Compound Armor to have a similar increase in build time over single purpose forsaken plate.

So, when would I recommend using the compound armor?

First of all, If you want the extra armor points, Compound Armor 4 is the new king.  Just be ready for long build times and long repair times.   

I've never liked Forsaken Plate for penetrative damage reduction - there aren't any missiles that have the high salvo characteristics that make Plate very effective compared to Drac M armor or Drac E armor.  With the compound armor, you are 'paying' for the penetrative protection.  On my Tier 1 example, 3 compound pieces did better than 3 mixed plate pieces, but I'd rather fit 2 Ballistic Plate and 1 Explosive Plate for better protection against those two damage types, and not worry much about missiles (I usually bring a phalanx or two to any situation where I expect missile fire).

So - I'm not too excited about these new Compound Armors - I might plug in the numbers to consider them in future builds, but I certainly don't think refits are in order.  So the only places where I would recommend them are:

• If you need as much protection as possible in a ship with few armor slots, use Compound 4.
• Lower level players who don't have D3 or D4 armor may appreciate the access to larger pieces of Compound Plate on Tiers 1 & 2.

Keep waiting for something anti-radioactive, and enjoy your rep points from the Forsaken Missions!

Optimizing Your Armor - Survival Time (part 1)

Monday Morning Analysis is a bit late today... posting issue SORRY!

As I said in last week's Monday Morning Analysis, there are techniques you can use to optimize your armor build time.  

In summary, 

• Use more smaller pieces of prize (Drac & Plate) armor
• Use fewer larger pieces of research armor
• Make your larger armor pieces the ones that build faster (like E, not V)

One more rule was pointed out in discussion on the Battle Vortex Facebook Page:

• When mixing Drac and Forsaken Plate, make the larger pieces Forsaken Plate.

But a quickly built fleet isn't much fun if it ends up on the bottom a lot.  So the other thing to look at is how well your armor will work.  Some ship build sites, like BP Outpost shipyard, will calculate 'equivalent armor points', which is:

Equivalent armor points = Armor points / (1 - resistance)

So if you have 1000 armor points, and 75% ballistic resistance, you have 4000 equivalent armor points against ballistic damage - because you could take 4000 points of ballistic damage before sinking.

After Kixeye introduced Forsaken Plate, equivalent armor points are more difficult to calculate, because the effectiveness of the damage reduction that Forsaken Plate provides depends on what weapon is being used.  For example, ballistic damage reduction is more effective against an assault cannon than a javelin.  This is because the reduction is taken per hit.  When an individual hit does less damage, the fixed reduction is a higher percentage of the total.

I've made a few assumptions in this article: 

• With % resist and plate, the damage is reduced by the %, then the plate subtraction is performed.  This is based on Kixeye advice available on the forum.
• Shots in a salvo are 0.1 seconds apart.  This is a commonly used rule of thumb.  I have seen evidence published on the Kixeye forums that the actual time is longer, perhaps 0.2 seconds, and perhaps variable based on the weapon type.
• When estimating damage from splash weapons, the formula Splash / (3/8 * Spread) is used as a number equivalent to accuracy.  This was told to me by a traveller passing through the sector I was in, and could be total bullcrap.  He seemed knowledgeable though, and I've seen that same formula pop up in a few other places.  This definitely depends on the ship sitting still - trying to avoid splash damage is generally a good idea, but it messes up these sorts of calculations.
• When estimating damage from accuracy weapons, the hit chance is applied based on attacker's accuracy, then defender's evade is applied against possible hits.  Accuracy over 100% makes no difference, and neither does evade below zero.  I'm not totally convinced on this one, especially negative evade... my siege missiles seem much more accurate than 50% against salvage fleets.
• The minimum damage from a hit after plate armor subtractions are applied is 1 point per damage type.  This is probably too low.

The metric I have developed to compare ship builds is called "survival time".  Essentially it is: 

Survival time = Armor Points of ship / DPS of attacking weapon

The survival time is calculated independently for each weapon, and can be used to see how well different build variations compare against different weapons.  It can also be used to compare how well different weapons would do against a sample ship build.  If building a ship, higher survival time is better.  If comparing weapons, lower survival time is better.

I'm going to start with a ship with one armor slot - the Sea Scorpion A R4.  This isn't used very much, but with the new launcher, I'm noodling around with an FvF build something like:

This build probably isn't fast enough to beat ballistic rays, but I'll try to figure out what my best armor choice is anyway.  I show this with the D2E, but I could try to use DU3, or a Plate 2, (Ballistic or penetrative).  

A fleet with all four builds is at:  
http://bpoutpost.com/shipyard/?2ahbfbfbfbfbfZbfiaEJ7ahbfbfbfbfbfZbf3aEJ7ahbfbfbfbfbfZbfDaEJ7ahbfbfbfbfbfZbf1aEJ7Z

Survival time depends on the weapon.  If I think about other FvF Fleets, some of the weapons most likely to shoot at me are: Assault Cannon Z, Assault Missile C, and Chainguns.  Certainly those aren't the only ones, but those are what I'm choosing to compare.  

When I added the DU3, I saw that compared to the Plate 2, it had less armor points and less bonuses, so it clearly wont be as good; however, I am leaving it in the comparison because it also illustrates a point when compared to Drac armor.

In the table below:
Ship Config 1: D2E
Ship Config 2: DU3
Ship Config 3: Penetrative Plate 2

Ship Config	Ship Config 1	Ship Config 2	Ship Config 3
Armor points:	2650	2880	3150
Evade:	44.00%	40.00%	40.00%
Missile Defense:	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Explosive Defense:	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Ballistic Defense:	40.00%	40.00%	40.00%
Concuss Defense:	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Missile Subtract:	0	0	10
Explosive Subtract:	0	0	0
Ballistic Subtract:	0	0	0
Concuss Subtract:	0	0	0
Expected Time of survival (seconds) from:	HIGHER TIME IS BETTER Accounts for "subtract" armor (resist% before subtract)
Assault Cannon Z	59.48	60.33	65.99
Assault Missile C	149.97	152.12	188.20
Siege Missile V	105.07	106.57	119.21
Shredder 3	150.65	152.82	167.14
Thud 4	261.73	265.49	290.38
Ripper 4	95.23	96.59	105.65
Assault Mortar X	18.95	20.60	22.53
Assault Rocket M	29.13	31.65	36.57
Inferno Rocket	11.03	11.98	13.11
Reaver Chaingun 1	114.39	116.03	126.91
Reaver Chaingun 2	59.17	60.02	65.64
Reaver Chaingun 3	40.83	41.42	45.30

First comparing Configuration 1 & 2, the extra armor points outweigh the extra evade against every weapon type, even the 'accuracy' weapons.  Then, moving to the Penetrative Plate on Configuration 3, we see that adding even more armor points helps (obviously).  I left a few other weapons in the table, just so you can see that against some of the high explosives like Infernos or Assault Mortars, this build has no chance.

So far, the Pen Plate 2 is best.  I'm also going to look at Ballistic Plate, and using D5X instead of the Guidance Scrambler 3, which lets me use heavier armor

Configuration 4: Ballistic Plate 2
Configuration 5: Ballistic Plate 3, replace GS3 with D5X
Configuration 6: Penetrative Plate 3, replace GS3 with D5X 

Ship Config	Ship Config 1	Ship Config 2	Ship Config 3
Armor points:	3150	3650	3650
Evade:	40.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Missile Defense:	0.00%	33.00%	33.00%
Explosive Defense:	0.00%	33.00%	33.00%
Ballistic Defense:	40.00%	60.00%	60.00%
Concuss Defense:	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Missile Subtract:	0	0	14
Explosive Subtract:	0	0	0
Ballistic Subtract:	4	6	0
Concuss Subtract:	0	0	0
Expected Time of survival (seconds) from:	HIGHER TIME IS BETTER Accounts for "subtract" armor (resist% before subtract)
Assault Cannon Z	70.41	79.90	68.63
Assault Missile C	174.47	192.60	227.78
Siege Missile V	116.56	120.90	126.78
Shredder 3	187.22	229.33	174.07
Thud 4	303.82	335.48	302.15
Ripper 4	115.49	136.07	110.02
Assault Mortar X	22.53	38.96	38.96
Assault Rocket M	34.62	59.85	67.35
Inferno Rocket	13.11	20.63	20.63
Reaver Chaingun 1	146.18	149.12	111.76
Reaver Chaingun 2	70.45	66.41	57.81
Reaver Chaingun 3	47.54	43.81	39.89

Now, you can start to see the tradeoffs, I highlighted the best survival times in Green.  Against the missiles and the larger ballistics, the Evade configuration did better.  Against the smaller ballistics and the splash weapons, the Ballistic Plate with extra resist did better.

So which should you choose?  It depends on what you plan to do with the fleet, and what you think your enemy will be packing.  But I want to summarize a few ideas:

• With few armor slots, more armor points can be better than Drac armor.
• Combined with some Resistance, Penetrative Plate can help against missiles more than evade.  (This doesn't account for evade helping prevent Phalanx from being overwhelmed)
• Ballistic Plate does better than Evade against the small ballistics, but against big chainguns... Evade rules.

When I started this article, I was also going to look at some Hellstrike configurations in this article, but it's getting a little long already, and I still need another 400k points to finish my raid. Also, I'm starting to see some hits from these nuclear cruisers, and they seem pretty decent. So...  

Next week: I'll look at optimizing the armor configurations on Nuke Cruisers.