Talk:Alliance Crusader/@comment-76.24.210.16-20180824124831/@comment-100.2.78.49-20180828181021
The challenger is not even remotely more focused on armor. Yes, it has one additional internal slot but except for the two size sixes, they're smaller than the Chieftain's so it's actually *less* beneficial for hull tanking. They have the same military slot count (3) and the same hull hardness, while the Challenger has one less large HP but 2 more medium HPs. This gives it less armor piercing damage with general utility weapons (lasers, multicannons, cannons) making it effectively useless in its niche. It's slower than the Chieftain but has hardpoints better dealt against smaller ships, so its changes do not reflect any gains, but rather losses.
The Crusader losing another module slot and weapon slot for an SLF just means it's another cheap, shitty SLF launching ship that has no other role in the game except combat. SLFs are shit DPS for the record, except for the multicannon ship. They're good at drawing aggro against NPCs or killing smaller ships with laser weapons but anything but the kinetic multicannon is poor sustained DPS.
Another ship that can't do fun things because it has to give up everything to do its one gimmick. What a joke.