Ships & Modules

I had a few ideas in my head and I'd like to see what others think of them.

A lot of complaints about shield vs armor tanking is the speed penalties associated with armor tanking and many want armor tanking to be buffed to compensate.

I don't think that is enough I think shield tanking right now is very much in vogue and even if armor tanking was buffed it'd still be king.

So instead I propose these changes.

Increase armor mod values significantly to provide bigger buffers. Only plate mods, not actual ship armor values.
Make armor repairers extremely cap efficient, reduce repair rate slightly, increase time between repair and make it consume nanite repair paste. Overheat mode increases consumption of nanite repair paste by 200% and provides a 100% repair rate increase.


Nerf shield extenders significantly reducing shield buffers. Actual ship shield values unchanged. Increase
Buff the shield recharge bonus of all shield recharge mods significantly to over compensate
Remove all penalties between having to trade between shield boost and passive shield recharge.
Remove ASB and replace with an invulnerability burst, 2.5 secs of 97% shield resists with 30 sec cooldown.


The idea is to make armor the EHP king, make it very cap efficient as icing and to balance it with some sort of ammo consumption.

Shield is balanced by making it more risky with less EHP. However that is supposed to be balanced with greater in combat shield regen that does not require cap. It should also force a shield nano to have to balance between speed vs shield recharge vs dps.


I do not propose any changes to remote repairers.

Shield tanking was already better than armor tanking before the ASB. The ASB only made it even more skewed.

I don't agree with your premise that they are balanced and just different tactics.

IMO there is very little downside to shield tanking as long as you have the mids to do it. Once you got the tackle and prop on you can effectively shield tank some ships with just one LSE due to rigs.

How is that balanced at all?

In another words here is what I think is WRONG with shield tanking.

LSE's are too good, extenders in general are way too good. Providing both EHP AND passive shield regen with a drawback that can be compensated by simply adding more speed to your ship.

Shield rigs are in the same boat, I never think twice of putting shied rigs like core defence extenders on a ship.

However I always think twice about putting armor rigs on a ship. Losing 5% speed per a rig is awful.

Therefore in addition to armor tanking buffs I think shield definitely needs a nerf in the EHP department. However I don't think hurting passive shield tanking is a good thing. In fact I think passive shield tanking should be considered a viable tradeoff against damage or speed.

Passive regen is the root of all evils.

Armor doesn't grow back on its own, so any kind of armor tank is either going to be Cap dependant, or just a waiting game.

Shields magically refill over time. And the math behind it can be easily manipulated, to keep a passive Drake alive against 500 Neuts without breaking a sweat.

The fact that shields recharge "to full" in a given amount of time, is why Extenders are overpowered. Making "full" a bigger number, means the recharge is stronger, to get "full" in the same amount of time.

Shields have been biased for ages now, and there's never been even a glimmer of hope that it might change.

Along comes the ASB. Now you can still run a completely passive setup... oh, and passively boost over double what an active shield tank could conjure. With a little effort, you can fit 2x ASB, and keep up the magic trick forever just by offsetting reloads. Or run them both, and suddenly your cruiser tanks Dread guns!


Our only hope is that one day, they'll let us get our hands on the spiffy Terran gun from the trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKdTJjDnYzE&t=88

Ironically enough your complaints are 6 years too late. This is the just about same arguement we used 6 years ago when revelations sent ship balance into a tailspin that has taken years to correct. There was a time when every ship active tanked as plates and extenders were useless. Weapon caps use and ships capacitors were based on active tanking.

Then CCP introduced rigs and massively buffed plates and ship EHP (because Tux wanted "longer" fights). The net result were small nerf to hybrids, nerfs to lasers (but buffs to amarr ships as they didn't have to active tank) and massive nerf to projectiles (which were largely considered useless - imagine that). Finally over the years weapons have been buffed such that each can be useful in the right circumstances. People can whine all they want, but ship balance in EvE is about as good as it's ever been (and is getting better).

And now you want to scale back some of the revelations changes. With today's weapons this would be a huge buff to certain weapon systems, This change would be far larger than you expect. I would rather CCP continue with the ship rebalancing before they look at any specific module, otherwise some ships might need to be re-rebalanced as they are thought to buffer tank in their normal setups. Sure it's easy to say this or that module needs to be nerfed when used in this way, but to really balance a module, you need to consider (and test) it in many configurations (else we wind up with another istab - a module CCP changed because "nobody used it").

Nonsense! Did you even fly such a Drake in PvP? I'm sure your fleet mates were really happy about your role in your fleet

- said Drake, able to outlast 500 Neuts and to *tank* using passive shield recharge, serves no other purpose than tanking. Reason: you need to utilize all your med and low slots to get such a huge passive recharge. Afaik tanking is not a role in combat. Such a Drake couldn't even be a heavy tackler since all med slots are needed for tanking. As soon as you fit tackle in your meds your tank drops drastically. Nothing a combat fitted BC couldn't overwhelm. Damage dealt by such a Drake laughable, it's damage application is bad. A passive armor brick can be a heavy tackler at least, since all med slots are free.

- if a Drake is fitted to do anything else than tanking you need low slots for damage and med slots for propulsion, tackle and/or ewar. Now we have a peak regen of ~100 DPS. Even a frig can overwhelm this.

- if you'd know the math behind shield regen, as you claim, you'd know the EFT value for shield regen happens at ~30% only. Before and after it's lower. In PvP the shield regeneration servers practicable purposes mostly since you don't need to dock to get back your main source of HPs.

Having said that, I agree there should be a way how armor tanks could regain HPs in a passive way. As mentioned, for practical reasons. The need to dock or to have logistic ships around is one reason why armor is bad for solo/very small scale PvP in hostile space.

Regardless of what low-level players say, Shield Extenders and corresponding rigs should increase mass and reduce speed just like armor - functionality should define penalties. If a mod increases HP then it should slow you down. It's really that simple.

I think alot of people oversimplify the complexities of the two different tanking types alot in general.

If the secondary effects (the tracking modifiers; mass and signature) were streamlined the only difference between armor and shield at a module-balance level would be buffer versus regeneration and you would enter into a similar relation to active and passive: if you have logi armor would always appeal more. Shield would trend toward active and armor passive. They would then also be suggestive when it comes to different scales and gang sizes.

You would still have the slot-allocation level (damage/fitting mods versus active utility mods) to shake things up a bit, but overall we would see the different "roles" we already see today even stronger reinforced (ie., shield is fast and bursty, armor is tanky and well-rounded).

The problem with reinforcing those roles is that it turns into some self-fulfilling prophecy and any racial traits or special ships that enabled out-of-box thinking (Gallente fast armor, Caldari tanky shields) would be even more marginalized and forced into a rethink.

On the other hand, that is already being done with the winter redesign, so i guess my criticism of it is a day late and a dollar short. They are abandoning the racial quirks that were fun to play with, suprised people by challenging their assumptions or proved the sceptics wrong. I'm going to miss that now that roles are rebalanced per class/tiering instead (or should i say streamlined and limited to that). I think it's a big shame, still do. Alot of people are probably going to enjoy eg., fast ships with missiles (that always "made sense" in the past, but was balanced away from such a powerful clearcut role on the vast majority of ships), but we're paying for it through limitations of ingenuity and out-of-box thinking. We'll have less room to surprise people with fast plated ships, and the prophecy of "slow heavy tanks" will fullfill itself. No surprises, no reward for the surprising.

At the end of the day, it's just another one of them things that stop people thinking. It feeds Fon's "low-level" players that argue "plates are slow" without running the numbers, defining what they consider slow and actually looking at what ships can achieve instead. It feeds that complacency and that's disheartening to me... it's yet another dumb-down. Anyone can look at an armor module and see the obvious speed-deficit, yet today, there are still people catching nano-hacs with plated hacs and similar. The people who look at the modules and decide that it's impossible because of "it says right here, slow" will never learn the intricates of the game. They will remain "low-level".

WHAT THE **** HAVE YOU'VE BEEN SMOKING?
really?

lets sum it up:

less cap
less repair amount
INCREASED cycle time
force it to consume nanite paste


armor repairers are already inferior enough, as you require TWO to equal (not even 100%) a shield booster, so less repair amount is out of the effing discussion, and this brings me on to the ''less cap''... armor reps have a small cap use in the first place, but it becomes big because you need TWO armor reps to equal (close to at least) the repair amount of a shield booster.

INCREASED CYCLE TIMES.
nope, never ever.
we already get our reps when the cycle ends instead of when it starts, where the shield boosters get it at the start of their cycle.
this would again, make shield tanking far more superior no matter what.
end of discussion, PERIOD.

FORCED NANITE PASTE:
again, a HUUUUGE no.
this would make armor tanking utter useless in PVE, as well PvP because you are forced to use a charge, no matter the size of the armor repairer, whereas the shield tanking again, can do it for free (or with a single charge from the ASB)

you would lose money doing low level missions in armor ships
with you suggested changes, it would be even more borked to active tank a armor ship, because you would have to use WAAAY more reptime and charges to equal out a shieldbooster.

i could see a ASB in armor version consuming nanite paste, but not the normal one, especially because nanite paste goes for 16k a pop in jita (bye bye new players wanting to try armor tanked ships because of the recurring cost) whereas a cap booster goes for what.... 3-4k? (which means that the ASB can burn out 3-4 cycles for the same cost as a single armor rep)

your proposed ''buff'' sounds more like a freaking nerf in my ears....


anyhow, the thing you're doing wrong is that you're comparing Passive VS Active VS buffer tanking, which you shouldn't.
it's 3 separate ways of tanking a ship, which both have drawbacks and bonuses.
for example, active tanked armor ships won't have a awesome buffer.

People seem to not notice that armour already provides close to double the buffer of shield, a Rokh, standard fleet fit has around 175K EHP with links, an Abaddon has 300k +, thats a LARGE difference.

I agree that they should look at the whole picture. I also believe that changes are needed, namely in armor.

Capital ships and Gate camps however, although it is true they are mostly armor, you will also notice the fact that they are usually sitting still / not moving at all or very little in both of those scenarios, so the speed / agility problems are not a factor. The second people get out of their chairs and start moving about the room, it becomes harder and harder on the armor side to keep up and / or play dodgeball (arguably my biggest complaint about armor).

~Z