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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Armor / shield rig concept discussion for Inferno

First post
Author
Ninevite
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#101 - 2012-04-23 17:49:55 UTC
How about just rubberband the speed of the races some more and call it a day? The only issue right now is gallente can't catch anything and minmatar can run away from everything - there isn't a need to go in such a round-a-bout way to fix this
Skilfer Azizora
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#102 - 2012-04-23 17:52:13 UTC
Gnaw LF wrote:
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
We would like to discuss possible changes to Armor / Shield rigs for Inferno.

It would be the first of many steps to rebalance active versus passive tanking, and promote usefulness of active tanking in small, mobile combat while making associated rigs more compatible with Gallente armor repairing bonuses. In general, we want races that need to use speed in combat (Gallente and Minmatar) to favor active tanking, while races that have more a static philosophy (Amarr and Caldari) prefer passive tanking.

Any kind of armor / shield rig that promotes passive tanking would now have a penalty to ship velocity instead of signature radius. Any kind of armor / shield rig that promotes active tanking would now have a penalty to ship signature radius instead of velocity. Penalty amount themselves are not changing.


Rig list:


  • Passive rigs: any kind of resistance, HP gain, shield recharge rate, shield powergrid reduction rig
  • Active rigs: any kind of repair / boost amount, repair / boost capacitor reduction, repair / boost cycle rate or remote repair / boost rig



EDIT: As mentioned here, this is not on the "Test Server Feedback" forum as no implementation has started, this is just a concept that was passed along and that we wanted to discuss early on before proceeding further. Tweaked first paragraph on this post to reflect that, apologies for the confusion.



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.


This I can agree with. While each empire clearly does have its own philosophy in ship design (and always has, mind you), but making those philosophies too specific makes the game too restricting and creates a "class" system which goes against the entire idea of the sandbox; however, I do not believe CCP will take these faction philosophies that far. I believe this is just a step towards their overall plan to re-balance the ships. Brace yourself because the entire game's dynamics are about to change!
Liang Nuren
No Salvation
Divine Damnation
#103 - 2012-04-23 17:52:32 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:
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?


The only thing you complained about here was breaking the status quo. There's no need for hyperbole here.

-Liang

I'm an idiot, don't mind me.

MasterSoda MasterSoda
ShekelSquad
#104 - 2012-04-23 17:52:41 UTC
Lets just fix everything that is not broken.

Seriously, this is a change that NO ONE seems to want, and NO ONE asked for.
Skilfer Azizora
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#105 - 2012-04-23 17:55:43 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:
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?


They're going to be changing the entirety of current ship dynamics in able to re-balance them. This is merely one of the first phases in that process. When all is said and done, I suspect that everyone will have to redesign their fleets and fits almost entirely.
WInter Borne
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#106 - 2012-04-23 17:56:19 UTC
I want some of whatever CCP is smoking. It must be some GOOD stuff!
Luba Cibre
Global Song Setup
#107 - 2012-04-23 17:56:38 UTC
1) Don't touch rigs / pentalies.
2) Remove all of the active tanking rig penalties.
3) You've created a win-win situation.

Now you've still the flavour of armor / shield tanking, while buffed active tanking.

"Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise." 

Manfred Hideous
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#108 - 2012-04-23 17:57:01 UTC
There's really not much wrong with the existing rig penalties. If you want to fix active tanks, give them something that makes them more effective, rather than making buffer tanks less so.

Akyla Dey
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#109 - 2012-04-23 17:57:46 UTC
As has been said, changes to tanking could be fine, encouraged in fact.. However what you've done here is show us the front fender of a brand new car and expect us to pay for it and drive it off the lot. You say this is the first wave of changes, and we're supposed to understand them completely out of context to the larger plan. Well, no. Those changes sound terrible - unbalanced, counter intuitive to current gameplay, and the worst kind of homogenization for a game that is supposedly a sandbox. That is unless you can give us the larger picture for how these changes will fit in. Until then, please keep this stuff internal, because all you're going to do is get people riled up without cause.
Lord Zekk
Angel Raiders
#110 - 2012-04-23 17:58:43 UTC
I think the changes sound good.

Buffer Rigs
Encouraging players to have to chose between nano and tank is good. Ships which want to go fast need to have less tank. That's a good thing overall. Having a good shield buffer and being able to move faster than everything else is what makes nano ships OP along with their ability to do heavy damage.

Resist Rigs
The issue though will be with resist rigs. They are applicable to both buffer as well as active tanking. Active tanking ships always look at improving resists which allows active ships to tank more DPS without spending more cap or while spending less cap.

Active Tanking
The issue with active tanking is that all the changes in the past have increased ship DPS without improving tanking. This is why now we're at a stage where active tanking is much much harder to do than before.
Manssell
OmiHyperMultiNationalDrunksConglomerate
#111 - 2012-04-23 17:58:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Manssell
Mioelnir wrote:


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).




Ha, that was the first thing I thought too!

As a terrible Eve player even I know that in the vast majority of cases when fitting a ship that uses speed for part of the tank, you don't also try to active tank it. Unless CCP is going to add a ship bonus that pulls cap out of our pod sitting butts.

Also is it too much to ask for CCP to change their balancing philosophy from alway nerfing things people like, to one of making the sucky things just better?
Surton
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#112 - 2012-04-23 18:00:59 UTC
I don't quite understand this in terms to Gallente. Nano's and other speed enhancer hit Gallente ships much harder than they hit say Minmatar ships because a ton of your EHP as a Gallente comes from the precious structure the speed mods remove. It seems to me that making resist rigs affect speed means you significantly misunderstand how active tanking works. Resists make more of a difference to an active tank than do duration/cycle rigs on many ships, getting your resists as high as possible then using a single repper is more functional than just stacking a ton of reppers. I don't think those of you promoting this actually play the game and the races in question here. Gallente doesn't need anything else that nerfs it it's already quite **** in almost all forms, and nerfing the hell out of the only Gallente ships that see action, their frigates, seems stupid.
Poaw
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#113 - 2012-04-23 18:02:07 UTC
MasterSoda MasterSoda wrote:
Lets just fix everything that is not broken.

Seriously, this is a change that NO ONE seems to want, and NO ONE asked for.


Given that it's a roundabout nerf to Minmatar/Angel (or atleast their most popular ships/fits) I'd say you're wrong.

Although I think a better solution would be simply revisiting the current drawbacks for shield rigs and seeing if increasing them won't have the desired effect or reducing the drawback of armor rigs to -5% speed, because as it stands a 10% lose of spend is a great deal more of a drawback than adding 10% sig radius.
Skilfer Azizora
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#114 - 2012-04-23 18:02:11 UTC
Manssell wrote:
Mioelnir wrote:


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).




Ha, that was the first thing I thought too!

As a terrible Eve player even I know that in the cast majority of cases when fitting a ship that uses speed for part of the tank, you don't also try to active tank it. Unless CCP is going to add a ship bonus that pulls cap out of our pod sitting butts.

Also is it too much to ask for CCP to change their balancing philosophy from alway nerfing things people like, to one of making the sucky things just better?


I think the best thing CCP could do is give us an overall outline of the steps they plan on taking towards the final re-balancing. That way we can have a better picture of how they plan on reaching this vision.
Luba Cibre
Global Song Setup
#115 - 2012-04-23 18:03:35 UTC
This proposal clearly shows, that CCP has absolutely zero to less knowledge about pvp and fitting ships.

"Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise." 

Mioelnir
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#116 - 2012-04-23 18:03:38 UTC
Also I would like to wish all interceptor and interdictor pilots a happy 2012.
Liang Nuren
No Salvation
Divine Damnation
#117 - 2012-04-23 18:05:19 UTC
MasterSoda MasterSoda wrote:
Lets just fix everything that is not broken.

Seriously, this is a change that NO ONE seems to want, and NO ONE asked for.


We have been asking for active tanking changes for YEARS.

-Liang

I'm an idiot, don't mind me.

Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#118 - 2012-04-23 18:07:58 UTC
In fact, I think it all comes down to this:
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
This change is the first of many steps to rebalance active versus passive tanking, and promote usefulness of active tanking in small, mobile combat while making associated rigs more compatible with Gallente armor repairing bonuses.
This cannot be done. It can't be “the first step” because this kind of change needs a vast, sweeping, all-at-once kind of change to pretty much everything. Sure, you can break down the problem in parts, but it must still be part of a complete overhaul where pretty much every ship, module, and rig that in any way provides a tanking bonus is touched upon.

This idea suffers from looking at one detail without knowing what it's for or how it ties in with all the other details.

You need to start at the top: what tanking styles are there (currently, at least 4: active — including remote reps — buffer, passive, speed/sig, further separated into shield and armour)? If you want to promote one, as you say, then you need to figure out why it's not popular.

With active tanking, that's fairly obvious: it doesn't scale and doesn't provide much in the way of added survivability to begin with, it eats cap that is needed for other things, it comes with all the negatives of buffer tanking. You're trying to address that last problem by making sure the downsides are different (but only in the rigs… no mention of what, say, shield expanders and SPRs will do), but that problem is rather minute compared to the other two.

The first problem is more important: why doesn't active tanking scale and why doesn't it add to survivability? Simple: because you only increase your survival buffer (your HP) after it has being taken away, as opposed to having that buffer to begin with. A buffer tanked ship that has 50k EHP that encounters 1k DPS will die in 50 seconds. It makes very little difference how that damage is delivered until we reach really massive amounts of alpha, but there is very little in-between: either it dies instantly to the alpha strike, or it survives for ~50s under all that incoming damage. The buffer is there; the enemy chews away on it until it reaches zero. Boom. Very simple.

For an active-tanked ship, the buffer (re)builds as it's being removed, but only as long as it isn't all removed at once. An active-tanked ship that reps 1k DPS needs to be able to stay alive for 50 seconds of consistent fire in order to have the same staying power as the buffer ship, but there is absolutely nothing that says it will. Against one ship that delivers 100 DPS, it will survive indefinitely; against another 100 DPS ship, it dies instantly because that ship's damage comes in the form of a 5k alpha that immediately punches through every last HP. There's a very narrow band between “survives indefinitely” and “dies instantly” where that active tank actually becomes interesting — where the enemy is nibbling away enough at the ship's tiny buffer between each rep cycle to kill the target over time. Outside of this narrow band, the tank is pretty much useless: it's a waste of slots if you stray into the “indefinite survival” area; it made no difference if you're in the “dies instantly” area, and just one additional ship that shows up on the enemy side will easily turn the former into the latter.At the same time, aside from overheating the reps, there is very little active-tanker can do to adapt to the incoming damage. This is why active reps are used in missions and similar scripted PvE: because it's trivial to control (or, more accurately, stay below) that band.

…and that's just the first problem. We haven't even begun to touch on cap issues and the general downsides yet. Hence why logis are so popular: they let you have that buffer that makes repping matter; they let you scale the repping to the incoming damage (from just one rep from one logi to every rep from every logi); for two of them, they let you combat cap issues, rather than exacerbate them; they take no slots away from more important modules; and while they don't remove any of the downsides to buffering, they don't needlessly burden you with any either, the way local repping does.

So just based on that short analysis, what does local repping need in order to actually start working?
· It needs to either inherently provide, or not compete with, the base buffer needed to make the reps work to begin with.
· It needs to be constant, because outside of a 1v1, that's how the damage will be delivered. The degree of “constantness” determines how large the aforementioned buffer needs to be.
· It needs to be inherently scalable (variable rep amounts in a single mod, perhaps?).
· It needs to not have even remotely similar downsides as buffer tanking (if, indeed, any at all).

That last point, in particular, means that penalties on resist rigs would have to go. These rigs benefit all tanking styles, and thus need to be adjusted to affect something completely unrelated to any one of them. Also, note the first two points, which really deliver the same message: repping — local or remote — is utterly worthless without a buffer. You cannot separate the two as easily as you would like.

…and of course, beyond all this, we have the issue that there is a value in having shield and armour tanking be different.
Harimata
Doomheim
#119 - 2012-04-23 18:08:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Harimata
I think the main problem with active tanks is that it a) does not scale well in small fights, b) vulnerable to high alpha damage. With a low EHP, once you have more incoming DPS than you can tank, you will die very quickly. It also becomes somewhat easy to 1-shot if you can deal more alpha damage than the target has EHP.

One solution for how to overcome this particular set of problems is to introduce a module that can distribute the damage taken over a period of time. Once damage is taken, it is spread out over a span of X seconds. No damage is removed, it just converts the spike of "alpha" damage to more evently distributed "dps" damage.

For example, lets say ship (A) can deal 5k alpha damage with a cycle time of 10s. Ship (B) can tank 400 dps and has one of the new modules fitted (for the sake of 'math', the mod spreads the damage out over 10s). Here's what happens:

Scenario 1: 1v1 - A vs B
Ship A shoots Ship B for 5k damage.
Ship B's mod activates, absorbs the alpha damage, and starts distributing the damage at a rate of 500 dps over 10 seconds.
Ship B's tank reps at 400 dps, leaving the 'effective' damage at 100dps.
10s into the fight, Ship A's gun cycle and deal an additional 5k damage. The defensive mod also cycles, absorbs the 5k damage and distributes it at 500 dps over 10 seconds.


Scenario 2: 2v1 - AA vs B
00:00 Ship A1 shoots Ship B for 5k damage. Defensive mod absorbs and distributes damage at 500 dps
00:05 Ship A2 shoots Ship B for 5k damage. Defensive mod absorbs and starts distributing damage at 1000 dps
00:10 Ship A1 misses ship B. Defensive mod is still distributing 500 dps from A2's previous shot.
etc


This has some very interesting implications. For large fleets, it will prevent someone from getting volleyed off the field due to large amounts of alpha damage -- but this will force logis to keep repping ships for a longer amount of time. Also, makes titan DD's much more interesting, making it possible to take a DD and potentially be saved by a large amount of reps.

Edit:
Thoughts? I can see this becoming a big game-changer mod. It will change how fleets fight/engage and probably put more logis on the field. At the same time, it should be possible to create a EWAR type module that has the opposite effect -- this will distribute remote reps to a target over time.
Thenoran
Tranquility Industries
#120 - 2012-04-23 18:11:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Thenoran
Active tanking rigs would be just fine without any penalty to begin with.

The one that speeds up the rep/boost cycle already has a penalty in the sense of cap drain, for which the reward is that it is more efficient than the one that increases the amount repaired (for armor).

Passive tanks already have several advantages in raw HP (can't one-volley the shields/armor, negating the tank completely), no capacitor required and for shields the CPU of an Extender is far far less than any Shield Booster and the PG requirement for a large rep over an 1600mm plate is substantial.

Any passive bonus always brings benefits, it improves the buffer and it also improves the amount of active tank you can have if it is a resist bonus and not a flat HP bonus.

Active tank bonuses only ever apply when you are actively tanking damage and that is it.
The current 7.5% bonuses feel lacking compared to the very nice and versatile 5% resist bonuses you get.

On top of that, active tanking means you dedicate yourself to a long fight, since that is where active tanking SHOULD eventually win out over passive tanking, but only if your buffer and active tank outweigh the combined DPS and passive tank of your opponent.
And even then, by taking your time, you put yourself at a far bigger risk of getting blobbed/ambushed and what not than going all-out passive gank/tank.

Why not just buff active tank bonuses and take a good long look at the active tanking ships and modules themselves.

I would truly love to see a fast, active tanking ship that aims at avoiding some of the fire and having enough active tank (armor or shield) to soak up the rest, rather than all the LSE fits we see now.

Or, just having active tank be a valid alternative (fleet fights excepted since you'll just get one volleyed anyway) to a passive tank in almost any small scale situation.

Let it be possible that a Cyclone can have a strong enough tank to outlast a Hurricane whilst slowly bringing it down without having to completely gimp the fit.
You'll need to take look at the CPU requirements for some shield boosters to make that happen though.

Sig bloom and speed reduction are the opposite of what an active tank should be about.
Active tanks (in my opinion) should be the fast and nimble ships, requiring a ton of cap and maybe having some reduced DPS as a result, but more then able to hold their own against a passive ship, even if they take longer to do it.
Let the passive bricks ships be exactly that, big fat bricks that can lob death and destruction at you, but only if you're a brick yourself.

Active tank rigs should just not have any penalty and honestly said they could use a buff compared to how resist rigs (especially shield resist rigs for their cost) currently benefit both active and passive tanks.

Lastly, I feel some ships given an active tank bonus are not getting enough of it or it just doesn't fit.

Why does the Hawk get an active tank bonus?
Where in the heck is a frigate supposed to get enough cap from (small cap booster doesn't cut it) to really make use of that with only 4 mids and being a bloody frigate with a huge EM hole? Especially with its sibling the Harpy getting a resist bonus.

The Brutix and Myrm, only having 5 and 6 low slots respectively, but they have an active tank bonus?
A blaster boat BC that needs mobility to do anything only gets 5 lows for an active armor tank?
Blaster boat without any mag stabs or tracking enhancers? Maybe if it could tank like the devil it would be an option?

Buff the active tank bonuses to 10% and just give the Hawk the resist bonus instead.
The only frigate that can active tank in my eyes is the Vengeance, and only because it already has great resists, retains mobility and has a cap bonus. It's actually a decent example of how it might work..