Is anyone even use armor instead of shields ?

[Zordiark Darkeater]

Is there even a good reason too ?

[Von Faustien]

yes they have a purpose

rule of thumb

corvettes and destoryers all shields because they have low overall hull and armor works as hull point multiplyer where shields just add to it.

cruisers go a mix as they have the hull points to make useing lots of armor plate doable but dont skip shields on them.

battleships have a big hull pool so shove as much armor as you can and than fill the rest with shields

if your using mods like ISB,RS,NSC the same rules apply shields work better on smaller ships and armors useless on them but it becomes more vital on the bigger hull sizes

[Brian]

Yes.

Simply, shields grant total damage mitigation in a small pool. Armor makes your hit point pool resist more damage. Shields = small pool, ignore damage. Armor = huge pool, reduce damage.

What is better depends on the enemy in question.

[ParasiteX]

Also depends on what type of weapons the enemy are using. It they use kinetics a lot, or any other type of weapon that does heavy shield damage or shield pentration. Then go full armor.

If they for example use Lancers a lot. Then put shields on your big ships like Battleships and Cruisers, as lancers will prioritize those targets. Especially Awakened Empires Titan laser, which has very high armor penetration. So maxing out shields on your battleships is key to making sure they can surive the first shot.

[Zordiark Darkeater]

Almost all the weapons ignor like 50% of the armor also shield regen a slot seems a huge buff ... So i still dont see why armor can be good at all. Even with the hull regen a slot it seems weak

[ParasiteX]

Only larger weapons, medium and Large types get a small increase to armor penetration.
Kinetics only get like +15% penetration for medium and +30% for large size. Armor is still very effective at countering them than shields.

In general, vs Kinetics, Disruptors, strike craft and trops. You will want to focus more on armor. As those types of weapons are far ore effective vs shields than armor. Especially the sheild penetrating torps and bombers make shields completely useless.

[Zuul]

Meh, even battleships should go mostly shields. Assuming you've hit late game, and are sporting neutronium ore and a couple other armor upgrades (repeatable armor or Living Metal) you only need 1-2 armor modules to hit the armor cap.

Back before the armor cap, laying armor on thick had a purpose, now it doesn't.

At 107.62 you hit the armor soft cap on battleships, armor begins to have a reduced return on investment at that point. At 150.67 you hit the armor cap, you can have more armor, but it has no effect.

At year 150, I'm sporting a +40% armor bonus from neutronium and repeatables. That's a base of 112 armor (note the designer doesn't show this, you need to know your bonuses going in to know what it's going to have once built). So it has over 75% reduction dedicating no modules to armor. With 1 armor module it has 134.4 (84% reduction). Two is 156.8, so at that point I'm literally wasting armor.

With just neutronium and no repeatables, you're still sporting 84% reduction with 2 armor, adding more just starts to get wasteful. You're going to wind up stacking shields regardless because of the cap.

The only time players stack up armor on a battleship is because they have no clue that the designer doesn't show the bonuses and just stack on a bunch of wasteful armor that's giving no benefit at all.

Edit: The only place where the choice of armor or shields really matters is, ironically, on the smaller ships. On those ships there's an actual choice to be made depending on what the enemy is fielding. On the battleship you're pretty much already armor capped without dedicating your ship to an armor tank, so there's no choice there.

[ParasiteX]

Battleships are generally the ones most vulnerable to armor penetration. As the large weapons will mainly prioritize them. So they will always want a mix of shielding and armor.
I usually aim for around 75% armor in designer, and put the rest in shields. And if going against AE Titans i make sure to slap on as much shields as possible.

On Cruisers on the other hand you can easily get away with running full armor builds, when facing against a very anti shield focused enemy.

The main question for Battleships, mostly comes down to wheter or not to focus on shield capacitors, hull regen or crystal forged plating.