ARMOR TANKS

[123stw]

Any ship class works when you have a significant enough credit advantage. You can just as easily frigate spam or CL rush with Tribe given credit advantage.

They are good for campaign because no particular fleet in there are devoted to anti fighters. And if worst comes to worst you can just hit the retreat button at any time.

[Majestic7]

A fleet dedicated to anti-fighter work does decisively worse against any other kind of opposition, with the possible exception of fast frigates with short-range weapons. Something is wrong if you need a dedicated counter fleet to have any chance against a specialised niche tactic. This applies both to armor tanks and fighters (though fighter swarms kill everything in campaign, including armor tanks). Niche tactics should tread edge of a dagger, where they either work really really good or fail totally. Now they are the do-it-all tool to victory, while balanced fleets are not the way to go at all.

Mind you, I haven’t even tried armor tanking myself, since I got disgusted with rolling everything with fighters. So I can’t say if they are as overpowered as fighter rolling. At least I haven’t had much trouble against armor fleets while playing with a balanced fleet. (Even though I know it is very unoptimal.)

[123stw]

There is no such thing as a good balance fleet. Having a fleet “balance” means spreading your resources everywhere and will always lose to specialized fleets. Therefore any decent fleet runs on a niche. Every decent fleet requires a devoted counter.

Unless you feel that plasma spams, MWM spams, CL spams, and frigate spams are balanced fleets.

[Mysticforce]

I had some recent success with largely bypassing armor tanks and lures.

1. Set up fleet (preferably rush to crack an armor tank MWM, but MWM or Plasma works too) EDIT: Set engagement range appropriately since you will not be using the Keep Moving command. If CL rush, set engagement range to 180…etc.)
2. Put one tank/bait/lure of your own at the forefront - doesn’t need to be a pure tank, just need to survive until an enemy ship that 1) isn’t the tank and 2) isn’t fighters fire on it. (It seems).
3. Give the Formation command to the rest of your fleet, on your tank/bait/lure.
4. Give Rescuer command to all ships that isn’t the tank/bait/lure.
5. Clear attack orders of the tank/bait/lure. Put Fighter engagement back (most tank+mwm fleets have some fighters, it’s just important to not engage cruisers, because those are the tanks or the lure) and adjust distance to 100.
6. Put your own fighters on Escort, target your tank/bait/lure. Either set to engage fighters 100%, or set it to engage cruisers 100% - there are ups and downs with either option.

When the battle starts, enemy cruiser/frigate lures will be ignored since your tank goes after enemy fighters, which will be either escorting the enemy tank or escorting cruisers in the enemy fleet.

As soon as your tank/bait/lure gets into range of enemy MWM or Plasma cruisers, takes damage and is destroyed, the rest of your ships will break formation and go after the ships doing damage to you, rather than the enemy tank that isn’t really doing much.

I repeated this method 5+ times against various long range+tank builds and effectively bypassed the tank(s) each time.

[jackau]

@Majestic7

@Vazeron1

Urg. I have to say, Armour tanks really, really annoy me. I mean, I don’t even mind FT spam so much, simply because you can counter them fairly easily. But I really don’t think that you should be able to make a ship that is literally immune to every. single. weapon. in. the. game. OP, much?

FT spam wins armored tanks though… They just lucky shot them to death.

Yeap! Lucky Shot them to death!!! LOL

During a Galactic Conquest play I encountered a capship fleet that bloody even move, against my 50 + squad strong fighter component it stood for some 5 minutes (those ship was designed against other cap ships it does not shoot back on my fighters).

[0evil_overlord0]

@lkohime

Well, while messing around with my latest attempt to gamebreak, I found something newish, not quite a gamebreak, and not directly linked to my original intent. I was looking through my captured designs, as that’s one way I can learn to be better at constructing ships, and came across an Alliance armor tank, with i think it was 76.something armor. I looked at it, and saw what was to me, a fundimental flaw in it: it had a power plant. It’s inclusion dropped the armor value of the ship.

I decided to divise an armor tank. Hull requirements were: power at or greater then 9. And an Armor Bonus. Well, I got an armor tank to 86.something armor. WITH a repair module, and an offensive missile so it can kind of keep agro. What’s your guy’s best build?

I used a high-resistance shield and 5 multiphasic shields on one cruiser, and sent a fleet of them against an MWM spam fleet with two armor tanks. My shields repaired faster than the enemy ships could shoot. Each of my cruisers also had a scrambler, a target painter and 5 MWM’s. Shield tanking FTW!

[Cragspyder]

I think a good solution to problems like this ‘weapon-immune’ ship would be to remove the ability to place non-hardpoint modules in hardpoint module slots.

That way you must fill hardpoint slots with weapons or defense modules such as guidance scramblers.

Of course this hurt frigates and helps fighters as it makes it even more difficult to get enough armour to survive fighter spam…

A good solution to that problem is to drop the ‘lucky shot’ ratio to 1% (from the current 3%) or perhaps even less. That way, it is more difficult for fighters to simply punch through any armour tank via weight of numbers.

We could also up the effectiveness of anti-fighter weaponry. I have noticed that the effectiveness of anti-fighter rockets (frigate module) goes up tremendously with the addition of 5 ‘painter drones’, fighters with engines and target painters, that orbit the frigate and target fighters, so that the rockets never miss. Would it be so game-breaking to have a frigate-sized target painter module?

Cruiser defense lasers need a boost, as well. if they are going to miss as much as they do currently, they could at least take out an unarmoured fighter when they DO hit, as opposed to needed several shots.

Followed by a reduction to the weight of fighter torpedo launchers, and a boost to the weight of fighter rocket launchers, and we’re looking good.

[0evil_overlord0]

@Cragspyder

I think a good solution to problems like this ‘weapon-immune’ ship would be to remove the ability to place non-hardpoint modules in hardpoint module slots.

That way you must fill hardpoint slots with weapons or defense modules such as guidance scramblers.

Of course this hurt frigates and helps fighters as it makes it even more difficult to get enough armour to survive fighter spam…

A good solution to that problem is to drop the ‘lucky shot’ ratio to 1% (from the current 3%) or perhaps even less. That way, it is more difficult for fighters to simply punch through any armour tank via weight of numbers.

We could also up the effectiveness of anti-fighter weaponry. I have noticed that the effectiveness of anti-fighter rockets (frigate module) goes up tremendously with the addition of 5 ‘painter drones’, fighters with engines and target painters, that orbit the frigate and target fighters, so that the rockets never miss. Would it be so game-breaking to have a frigate-sized target painter module?

Cruiser defense lasers need a boost, as well. if they are going to miss as much as they do currently, they could at least take out an unarmoured fighter when they DO hit, as opposed to needed several shots.

Followed by a reduction to the weight of fighter torpedo launchers, and a boost to the weight of fighter rocket launchers, and we’re looking good.

You would still be able to use my shield tank design, as it fills all hard points with weapons anyway.