Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You can still balance it by amount though, or a number of other things:

• Amount gained is not the same as amount drained.
• Amount drained is lower than neutralizers
• Fitting Nos will provide minor penalties to your cap (max cap, recharge rate)

While I am glad the change is moving away from %, the problem which you stated you wanted to avoid (relying on the state of your opponents cap) is still present for same-class fights. This change only affects fights which are on multiple classes, but the effect is going to be relatively static across the change when the fights are still within the same class.

I still believe that nos should be able to suck a target dry of cap. It just needs to be balanced to not be as good as neuts because you're getting the cap it sucks (or, potentially, a fraction of it) back, and the module doesn't have an activation cost.

Currently NPC's for NOS targeting is good to OK... I hope that doesn't change else my Incursion Bhaal with double 39km range NOS will no longer be CAP stable

Do NPC's cap change/deleplete like pilots? It seems different especially since you can't NEUT NPC's effectively

NPCs work differently AFAIK.

altho i think the change is kewl, it isnt more realistic.

when you hook 2 batteries, capacitors with different charges or any combo of power holding devices together, they will come to a balance.
1 10 volt battery hooked to a cap with 5 volts will stabilize at 7.5 volts each if the cap is big enough to hold the electrons the battery has. they will balance out. somewhere.

if you kill power on the cap, itll drain it from the battery down to another balance point.

a neut sends your cap "out of phase" to another ship and "shorts out" an amount of cap.
a nos is like hooking jumper cables from one vehicle to another.
if the charged car is not running, the dead car could drain the good battery to a point where neither car can start.

altho the way it was sucked, its more realistic.
now, its more like a leech or lamprey. it sucks a certain amount of blood until the host is dry (or atleast less that the lamprey).

imagine how the sentinnel and the curse is going to perform. a nos and 2 neuts....suck it out, then turn it back on someone...=)

Doesn't seem like a very big change. Still not going to use them.

I agree with Mibiatch. I derped a similar idea before going back and re-reading this one and I was suggesting the same thing, so I support it. My only difference was a MIN based on module size, meta, and skill.

This sounds amazing, please do it. man Amarr is getting all kinds of buffs today, first our t1 hauler is going to haul the most now and now a buff to nos!? awwww yeeaah Amarr ftw.

Will change absolutely nothing.

Nos are yet used mostly against an upper class ship and only as a counter to neuts, e.g. drami vs vaga - nos is required to keep vaga scrambled (staying in closerange => keeping maximum transversal) despite being neut'ed, or curse against a battleship - although curse cap warfare mod range is far beyond bs neut range, t2 warp disruptor is not, so even of you cant take the hositle down you can at least use the nos for an emergency mwd cycle and gtfo.
Rarely used on active tank bs, but I personally prefer neut because it gives huge advantage against all lower class ships, especially ability to disable tacklers.
And, like I've wriiten above, the buff in question wont change much in terms of nos usage.

I have no idea why you guys decided that 2006/2007 nos were imbalanced, used to fly nos domi/eos a lot and it was totally fine high slot compensation for drone boats and overall good utility mod.
And nos is by no means a fleet or even a mid sized gang mod, it is pure solo/small.
Bring back the old nos mechanic, make it 100 maximum cap/cycle (down from 125) for heavies, other sizes respectively, and disallow cap transfer when target cap is at zero (I was pretty sure it always worked that way, lol) + if target has lower amount of cap than you nos maximum trasfer, the nos trasfers the amount which you target has. So nos will be used in slow fights (solo/small) to win the long term cap warfare, and neuts will still be used a lot for fast capacitor disable in both small and large gangs.

I have seen a few people making suggestions like this and I would support a Nos mechanic that works based on the flow of energy in each ship capacitor. I have always thought that Blood Raider ships should be fit with NOS and webs and be completely unstable in cap. The only way the ship is able to run is because once it tackles a target the NOS pull cap and stabilize the ship so all the mods can run.

An issue that I see is where a fleet could use a NOS tackler that would then feed cap to the fleet... but maybe that isn't a bad idea, sure makes for interesting small fleet mechanic.

((change in cap of target) - (change of cap in my ship)) / (sum transfer amount of nos attempting to effect target can transfer) = maximum amount i can steal

Other thoughts:
• Could be bi-directional
• This should eliminate frigate blobbing as mentioned before
• NOS transfer, activation, and fit

EDIT: changed sum of amount nos fitted can transfer to sum transfer amount of nos attempting to effect target can transfer

Good start, and fixes a fundamental problem with nos mechanics, but more tweaking is required to make them actual viable options.

Small Energy Neutralizer II: 10 CPU, 9 PG, -7.5 cap/s on self, -9 cap/s on target
Small Nosferatu II: 15 CPU, 10 PG, +3.2 cap/s on self, -3.2 cap/s on target

A nos takes far more fittings than a neut does, while having a much smaller effect. It also does not do its intended job very well:

In an equal-sized fight: (e.g. neut Rifter vs nos Punisher) The neuting ship is aware that the neut will kill its own cap, and is set up to not require a lot of cap. This means that it will run the neut regardless of the presence of a nos, until it is dry. Because of the mechanics of the nos only working if the target has more cap than the user of the nos, the end result will be a cap-dry Rifter applying damage and managing to hold up a point, and a cap-crippled Punisher struggling to keep its guns on, and cursing at the useless nos it has equipped.

In a different sized fight: (e.g. nos Rifter vs neut Rupture) With a T2 neut, the Rupture neuts 15 cap/s while using 12.5 cap/s of its own to power it. The Rifter's nos would flip those numbers around. However, when the Rupture has 1300 cap to burn through, it does not really care if it loses another 3 cap per second. The Rifter, however, would still be losing more cap than it can regenerate even with all other modules off. This makes the Rifter have some ability to keep its modules on, but it can do nothing to prevent having them forcibly turned off every 12 seconds.

Moreover, this mechanic change does not change how that fight goes at all. The above description is exactly how that fight goes right now. This is because the the Rifter always has both less absolute cap (since it's a frigate) and less % cap. After a single neut cycle from the Rupture, the Rifter finds itself at 42.5% cap facing a Rupture at 88.5% cap -- a situation in which the old nos and this new changed nos behave identically.

Lastly, this absolutely does not address the situation of it being useless to use medium and heavy noses, as they use vastly more fittings than neuts (gimping the fit), while not giving any real advantage in most fights. The only ships that I believe are positively impacted by this proposed change are the Cruor and Sentinel, which will be able to troll around with a neut/nos combination, sapping everything dry even if their own cap is dry.

The idea is a good start, but a serious change to either the nos amount, fitting costs, mechanics or any combination is needed. My suggestions are:

• Reduce nos fittings to below those of neut fittings. A very situational mod with questionable usefulness shouldn't be one of the hardest things to fit.
• Change the cap lost / gained amounts of the nos to give more cap but not drain more. Effectively, make the cap lost and cap gained values non-equal, but keep the "must have less cap" requirement. This would result in a more effective "defensive" usage of the nos.
• Change the mechanic to not require less cap, but instead just serve as a "cap equalizer" module. If you have less absolute cap than your target, then you steal some of theirs. If you have more cap, they steal some of yours. This can be coupled with an increase in the neut strength to be an effective way to fight ships of larger classes, providing a permanent "weak neut" effect while giving cap stability. It also requires intelligent use in equal-class fights, since activating it can have a punishing effect if you had more cap than the target.
• Nerf neuts so they are in line with the strength of the nos (probably not required and a bad solution).

Thanks for looking into it and taking feedback.

tl;dr: Right direction, but makes very little progress towards making noses useful. Larger / more fundamental changes are necessary.