Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Most people will say shields are superior to armor right now on the subcapital level. While the AAR somewhat aleviates this it still has a number of large drawbacks to shields.
The biggest of these differences is speed. Buffer armor tankers are slower due to direct penalties, and active tankers don't have the option of fitting nanos.

Shield modules have a direct penalty of signature radius, but it is pretty much ignored in most circumstances. While both speed and sig affect tracking, only speed gives you control of the battlefield. Shields should have a new counter to their strength, something that reduces their tactical options like how speed reduces armor options.

My proposal is that all shield modules that don't use capacitor (rechargers, extenders, ASB's, passive hardners, rigs) will cause a penalty to capacitor recharge rate.

A shield tanked kiting ship will be unable to run its microwarp drive for extended periods of time, forcing it to manage how it kites more carefully. On a brawling vessel, you will be more vulnerable to capacitor warfare obviously, forcing you to fit noses in your utility highs or capacitor boosters in order to keep ewar or weapons running.

why should shields have a penalty? is it not punishment enough that shields take more damage than armor and eat twice that cap that armor mods do? theres a reason they cycle faster you know

and yet armor ships yield much higher ehp than shield ships at all times and run dual reps to make their tank just as stable at shield, i see nothing wrong with this i dont see sheild extenders giving nearly the amount of hp buffs as an armor plate has, and no shield ship has more than 7 mid slots (and thats only one ship) to armors 7 or 8 low slots which many ships from each race have, this is perfectly balanced as/is

Yeah you cannot beat them, join them right ? Time to give up dem pretty Amarr ships and get myself into bellicose, moa or blackbird monstrosity (oh my God ...)

Shield mods that directly affect shield regen already have a cap penalty, most cases active hardeners use more capacitor for shields. Active boosters are a bit whacked but thats more the armor ones being broken rather than shield ones being broken. Most skirmish ships already have to do a fair degree of capacitor management when using MWD.

Armor needs some tweaks but shield skirmish is one of the least broken things in the game right now.


EDIT: IMO it would be a counter productive move anyway - people are more likely to burn out and escape the first chance they get rather than risking it later when they might not have the cap to GTFO. The current setup gives more chances for people to make mistakes and/or play too close to the edge.

Introduce AAB.

If anything shield tanking needs a bit of love, but only for T1 ships to be honest. As it stands right now Armor tanking is considerably more efficient than shield tanking, especially when your in fleets with armor logi. How do we know this? Go look at the standard fittings for incursion fleets and tell me what you see. I do Active and Passive tanking for both Armor and Shield and I can tell you from personal experience, once I switched to armor tanking I almost hated flying shield tank ships because of how inefficient the shield tank really is in comparison to armor tank. Yeah sure you cant throw on a X-large shield booster and aim for cap stable and be pretty darn hard to kill but there is one thing that really sucks about shield tanking and that is the penalty to sig radius meaning everything can hit you. If you armor tank, you fit a DCU II, 1600mm RT II, and a EANP II with three medium trimark armor pump I's and a AB to make up for the speed lose be pretty well off. For shield tanking though there really is not much you can do to get that sig radius down.

When I used to run with ISN we always used shields, even on my vindicator it was shield tanked. That boost to sig radius shields give only matters if you aren't moving, and if you aren't moving you either are a super brick tanked maelstrom, have a tackle ship on you that you need to kill, or an entire fleet has tackle and your ****** anyway.

When you armor tank an AB doesn't make up for the speed because every pvp ship has a propulsion mod, armor plates reduce AB effectiveness on top of your base speed due to increased mass. The shield tanked ship still outruns you, who gives a **** your sig radius is slightly higher, just keep your traversal up and they will still miss.

Balance should not be two things being the same, but those two things having the same value.

Herpaderp I know shield modules use more midslots, they also use less lowslots granting more speed and more dps. Yet those ships specilized in armor tanking are not often given enough mids to utilize that advantage other than the holy trinity of scram web prop. Then on ships that do have enough midslots like the thorax, you will see people fit them with a shield tank anyway.

I know some shield modules have cap penalties which is the exact reason I proposed cap being the penalty. However you don't see very many pvp fits with shield power relays now do you?





Also I see many people talk about how armor or shield gangs are superior in different circumstances. Each style should be viable in all circumstances.

Why? You provide no specifics for why one is better you just say that one is. I will argue that shield is the supierior tanking type in many more cases than armor is. Prove me wrong.

The buffs to buffer armor tankers still leave them at a disadvantage to shield tankers, it is by no means a fix. The new AAR is nowhere near as strong as an ASB which gives total immunity to cap warfare. Armor tankers still get kited to **** by shields, shield do more dps, armor ships may only have 1 extra midslot over a comparable shield tanker for ewar.