Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The important question: what metrics do you intend to use to determine if this balance pass is successful? Is it going to be completely arbitrary, or are you going to actually look at real numbers? If this balance is demonstrably enemic, or breaks something, what do you intend to do to fix it?

double post. see below for complete post.

A little clarification about the cap usage of the AAR would be helpful please. You say the AAR uses the same cap as a normal armor repper.

1. Is this affected by anything that lowers cap usage on normal reppers, like the warfare link?

2. At base stats a small t1 rep uses 40cap, will a cap 50 be completely consumed by the AAR? If so this is 80% efficient.
At base stats a medium t1 rep uses 160 cap, will a cap 200 be completely consumed by the AAR? If so this is 80% efficient.
At base stats a large t1 rep uses 400 cap. This is 100% efficient.

3. If the answer to 1. was yes, then using the warfare link makes the AAR even less efficient in all cases.

4. When not loaded the ASB reps normally but uses the ship's own cap - why does the AAR suffer a reduced amount of rep once it begins to draw on the ship's cap?

5. The large t1 ASB reps 2.17x the amount of a large t1 shield booster whilst the AAR reps 2.25x it's standard equivalent. The additional rep is too small to justify penalties that the ASB doesn't get, especially given it is pre-penalised by the one per ship limit.

Otherwise, I'm a supporter of new skills where they make sense and add more diversity. Older chars like Nik run out of things they want to train and it leads to a sense of being directionless. I think the rig penalty changes were good and will certainly help the active armour tanking fits, though the yawning hole underneath armour buffer fits and the issues with an active local-rep-only bonus still remains. Generally this seems innovative and I welcome it but more needs to be done before active tanking will be in a good place for all ships versus the resist tanking alternatives.

Does not fix the main problems of balance between Shield and Armor tanking.

It's a big difference, if the boost comes when I need it (ak "need shield NOW!!!") or several seconds later (ak "fuuuu, 0.0001 and my rep had save me :( ").

It's a big difference, if you can just fit oversiced equip (L-booster @Cruiser/BC and XL-booster @BS) or barly fit intended reps (CPU+PG use is simply not balanced between booster and reps).
Best excample is:
Hurrican+med boost (59 shield/s) v Harbinger+med rep (53 armor/s)
But who fits a MED booster @BCs? IF you fit an active tank then you use Large Booster and get 100 shield/s.
Ever tryed to fit a Large Repair @Harbinger? It would give you 105 armor/s which is compareble to Large Boosters. It WOULD ... if your power grid wouldn't explode (2300/1875) while trying to fit it :(.

And finaly on top of all boosters you gain this nice little auto-recharg for shields which can be allready more HP/s then armor repairs do.

List to fix balance:
- adjust CPU + PG need to be similar
- adjust activation time of armor repairs (11.25 seconds for L-rep is a joke compared to 4 sec for L-booster. You are dead befor the rep hits!)

Difference and alternatives are cool. But sometimes for the love a balance equality is better!

PS: totaly forgot the Shield Boost Amplifier .... can't find Armor Boost Amplifier :( Please show me where I find them.

Good changes, 90% of the people in this thread are overlooking obvious answers (and are from my frickin alliance no less).

Trivial:
5% resist bonus: 1 / (1-(0.05*5)) = 4/3 = 1.33333. This applies to local repair, EHP, and incoming remote repair.
7.5% rep bonus: 1 + (.075*5) = 1.375. This applies to only local repair.

This should remain true for all of the changes in question.

-Liang

Some numbers to help us understand what the changes mean for active armor tanking.


A Prophecy outfitted with:

1x Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer
2x EANM II
1x DCU II

1x Aux. Nano Pump I
1x Nanobot Accelerator
1x Nanobot Overcharger I


An overloaded AAR with charges nets us a 550 dps tank which is very respectable. If we go with a dual rep setup, 2x medium armor repairer II nets us a 651 dps tank with half the overload time.

The Nanobot Overcharger is key here as overloading boost repair/sec by +71%.

What happens if we put 3x nanobot overchargers in there? Assuming the stacking penalties are the same as for all other modules (1x first, 0.86x second, 0.57x third) we're looking at overload boosting repair/sec by +171%. This would result in 646 dps tanked with the AAR setup.

Three nanobot overchargers plus overload also reduces the cycle time to less than half its original value. For the medium AAR this would be 4.45 seconds.

Please elaborate on this. The thread linked in my signature contains a comprehensive debate on the disparity mentioned by IamBeastx. I started this thread the first time the dev blogs mentionned fixing active tanking, asking for community input. Yet, no dev feedback was given so far.

It would not be overpowered, it would just make active bonused ships usable in fleets without ignoring a bonus (thus leading to using another ship, with either a second weapons bonus or a resist bonus instead of the contextually useless active bonus). If you are thinking about Marauders in tournament matches, that's an extreme edge case and should be adressed separately if at all.

Without a fix for that disparity, active bonused ships (armor or shield, same issue) will always be at a disadvantage in any and all situation involving RR. With the new logi t1 frigs and cruisers, there are more and more situations involving RR. Please save the active bonused ships from becoming gimmicks.

I am really disappointed by the proposed changes. The mass reduction is all nice (still won't make a difference against a shield kiter, but it's a start), but the PWG penalty on active fits will further nerf the dps (gunsize) of armor tanked ships, already carrying less damage mods and fitting smaller guns than shield fits in general. I think that a reduction of the speed penalty on all armor rigs (not just the active rigs) would be a better approach.

The incursus nerf means the following to me: You are reading "the incursus works" as "armor repping just needs more repping amount". It works because it can fit decent dps alongside decent tank, while maintaining decent speed. The proposed changes will ruin it.

Furthermore, you agree that neut immune active tanking is OP, yet you refuse to:
1 - Do something about the ASB's neut immunity
2 - Restrict ASBs to one module per ship.

Instead you inflict both required nerfs on the armor tanks.

You are really not making it easy for people to like your ideas this time Fozzie.

I approve of these excellent changes wholeheartedly. Raivi, you are a gentleman and a scholar. May you have many strong children.

Sounds great! Is it just me or Sacrilege will become even nastier now? You know, tackling you pretty much forever and now not burdened by rigs.