Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Disclaimer: this will be heavily minmatar based and biased since those are the only ships I fly

So, for all engagements that exceed 2vs2 or 3vs3, where active tanking stops to "scale", Amarr/Caldari are wanted to be the only viable races?

Ships that rely on speed and weak active tanks to win their engagement get their signature increased so they are easier to track and hit, negating the advantage their speed should give them, putting more stress on their weak tanks? Did that make sense to you prior to typing it?

Ships that rely on speed for their engagements are all but barred from using passive rigs, since it destroys their primary combat attribute. Yet I completely fail to see the absolutely destroying drawback a ship designed for passive operation receives upon fitting an active tank. Where did it hide?

Are you proposing, with a straight face, to active tank a vagabond? (Current ccp skill recommendations are high-velocity helmsman and passive shield tanking, which are polar opposites by your definition).

The traditional racial flavour attributes for minmatar include:

• drawback: easy to jam
• drawback: weak capacitor
• drawback: no strong tanking slot layout (less or even numbers of slots on the tanking row, never the full 8 except for the fleet phoon which we had to fight hard for, even distribution of HP between shield and armor to throw off min/maxing or even more HP on the off-tank type)
• neutral: cap free weapons (conclusion of the weak cap which can't really sustain anything cap using)
• benefit: hard to hit due to high speed
• benefit: hard to hit due to low signature

So, whichever form of tanking we use, active or passive, we straight up kill one of our two racial strongpoints.
Are we supposed to hero and/or honour tank?

PS: I took the liberty of oversimplifying my remarks since you took the liberty of oversimplifying the mechanics related to tanking rigs.

Its good that your coming to the community for ideas, and everybody makes mistakes so fair enough on that.

The primary issue is your nerfing nano ships because other things are broken, and are in some ways are making active tanking worse, because in the days of hurricanes that spew 600DPS active tanking relies on damage mitigation from speed and sig as much as the tank itself.

Your change makes active tanking worse in some ways while severly nerfing ships that arent the issue.

I would like to contribute by thanking Soundwave and Ytterbium for posting this idea in F&I before beginning the work and changes involved. I'd also like to congratulate you for thinking outside the box.

That said, I think you strayed a little too far from the box. As others in the thread have stated much more clearly than I, this idea is not the best. This change does not serve the purpose you're hoping for. A solution must be found to the lack of scalability active tanking suffers from.

You're already aware of the numbers, but I'll provide yet another example. Say you have a ship that can regenerate 500 HP every second. You are able to break even against a comparable ship as long as that enemy deals out a maximum of (you guessed it) 500 applied damage points every second, counting resists. Other factors may raise or lower that number depending on the situation.

For example, a fight against a ship with a large buffer tank may be able to hold out against you until you either run out of cap or die, assuming they have even a miniscule advantage over you between those two numbers. (Say 550 applied DPS versus your 500 HP/s active tank). A ship that has much less buffer than you will not survive long either way, so the bar can be set much higher versus them. You don't necessarily need to tank their damage for long, since you could kill them quickly.

This assumed a relatively even fight. As soon as you add another ship, as others have said, your tank crumbles. Active tanking does not scale well. Your proposed changes do not address this.

The worst problem here is that you've drastically worsened the active tanking situation by blooming their signature radius. As we all know, this will increase applied DPS, so a ship that was formerly on even grounds with you now applies considerably MORE damage to your ship per second thanks to your signature radius.

You would make active tanking even harder and less attractive than it is already, without changing the already existing issues with it. This is not a good change. It may be a good idea in the future once active tanking is on par with buffer tanks again, but right now it is not.

I won't address the other half of this change in this post, because the active tanking issue concerns me far more than a speed nerf to shield buffers. I want you to pay attention to the above text.

I for one would welcome our new Blaster Hyperion overlords.

Except active tanking in largescale pvp is terrible, active tanking needs to improve (without then not becoming drastically overpowered that it will grind down a single passive tank, or become an endless fight vs other active tanked ships) before it'll be taken seriously in pvp outside of a few niche ships.

Because you devs are responding (which is appreciated) I'll vomit up some more concrete thoughts:

It seems you are going for this:

Passive Shield - slows speed
Tanking Shield - increases sig (same as now)
Passive Armor - slows speed (same as now)
Tanking Armor - increases sig

I like Passive Armor as they are now. You sacrifice speed for no sig bloom. I don't like the Tanking Armor drawback you suggest, because that makes armor not sig-tank-ish. I think the kiting armor stuff this opens up is cool, but I want armor to stay with low-ish sig.

I think the Passive Shield drawback is currently not harsh enough, but I don't approve of making them basically the same as Trimarks. I think they still need some type of sig bloom (because you are increasing the size of the giant shield bubble around you), but I do like the idea of them slowing down a little. Currently, you can just throw 3x CDFE on pretty much any ship and you're good to go.

tl;dr - The only change I really like here is making armor repair rigs not slow you down, because that opens up some cool armor-kite fits. I want CDFE's to have a more severe drawback, but I do not advocate making them slow you down exclusively. Keep the sig bloom and subtract a tiny bit of speed, but don't make them trimarks.

The rigs change destroys not just one or two fits but the whole concept of fast buffer shield fits that sacrifice tank for range control and damage (aka most popular solo/small gang fits).
For decent active tank you need 3 slots for it (frigs are fine with 2 I guess). With prop module and point that makes it 5 mids for shield. How many fast hulls there are with 5+ mid slots? Instead of fixing the problem that rig drawbacks were grossly unbalanced CCP decided it is good idea to screw things up even more. Buff blobing/gate camping/station sniping more.

I dont have a problem with the Rigs and their effects, I have a problem with giving some race a preferred philosophy. I know, I know, its already in the game but at the moment its broken down between armor tanked (static philosophy) and shield tanked (nano philosophy). With the changes that you propose we will break down the two current philosophies or armor / shield into four tiers, that is the problem, that instead of armor or shield we will not be reduced to the following categroies:

-Slow Armor (Amarr)
-Slightly Faster then Slow Armor (Gallente)
-Slow Shield (Caldari)
-Winmatar (in nano warfare).

What happened to the sandbox? After all if the racial navies prefer those tactics does not mean capsuleers prefer them.

What everyone fails to realize is it does not destroy the concept, just the current model. Adapt and survive.

I dislike the fact that armor and shield tanking is going to be "the same". Also: I'm unconvinced that active tanking rigs need any penalty. Seriously, any at all. It just doesn't scale.

-Liang

This is quite possibly the worst idea I've seen out of CCP in years, and that includes Monoclegate.

Shield rigs penalizing speed is beyond ******** (guess why shield ships are more popular than armor tankers for PvP, especially small-gang PvP? Hint: it's because unlike their armor counterparts (which must fully commit to a fight due to being slow pieces of ****), shield-tanked ships can actually skirmish.

You're going to bias Minmatar ships (the ships with the LEAST amount of capacitor/cap regen in the game) towards active shield tanking (the most cap-hungry tanking method in the game)?

I just can't believe you're actually considering any of this. You're aware that the only times active tanking works are PvE scenarios where the incoming DPS is predictable and limited, and ridiculous PvP scenarios involving deadspace / officer fit ships, legions of boosting alts, billions in implants and designer drugs, right?