Player Features and Ideas Discussion

People dont use heavy nos because battleships are required to fit a cap booster anyway

No, here you are wrong.
A heavy NOS with a 3 sec cycle time WOULD be useful.
You are analyzing a static scenario where ship A has a certain cap level and ship B has another. But thats nonsense. Cap-Levels are changing.
If you fit a NOS, you don't want your cap to go down. More precisely: you don't want it to go below the activation cost of your modules. All other cap levels are irrelevant, because no mechanic (except jumping and onlining mods maybe) ever asks for certain cap levels.

So yes, your NOS won't maybe do anything most of the time.
But IT WILL DRAIN cap in the one case that matters: you are out of cap and the opponent still has some left!
REGARDLESS of whether you calculate percent or total amount.

And in that one important use case a cycle time of 3 secs compared to - what is it now, 16 secs? - changes EVERYTHING.
Because with 3 secs, the worst things that happens is that you have a lot of trouble micromanaging and some modules will be deactivated for 1 or 2 server ticks.
With 16 seconds you may be like 15 secs without your hardeners/repair/stuff - not to mention tackle!

Because nobody would ever fit more than one NOS. That would just be crazy!!... :-/ (And props on choosing one of the lowest cap using weapon in the game, especially one that would definitely be used within 24km of the target.... That's sarcasm by the way.)

And you are missing the point. It's not just that NOS used to drain targets down to zero, it's that they did it at no cost. In fact you gained from doing it. Whereas a neuts ability to drain is dependent on your cap. If you cannot fuel the neut, you cannot drain. There is a cost there which balances the mod. Do you see the difference there?

And regardless of what Rise says, non-stop cap drain was not what CCP "fixed" with the NOS-nerf. You can ignore the facts as much as you like, but the mechanics of the nerf itself make it pretty damn clear what they considered the problem. Plus what they stated were the reasons for the nerf at the time. But whatever.

As a little explanation for people that where not around during the time of massive nos use:

A nos is was not a strict neutraliser defence weapon(because neuts where weaker and only used in combination with nos to for fittings that relayed on capping your opponent completely out), it was used to feed tackle and tanks in small gang pvp(what where a lot more common back then). This was during a time where rigs and faction mods where a lot rarer, ships had less cap(all ships got a big capacitor buff during 2007), ehp values lower(all ships got a big EHP buff in 2007), ships had a lot less fitting(fitting got buffed a lot over the years), ships had a lot less range and dps(constant weapon buffs, TEs, more fitting for bigger guns and weapon mods today etc.). EW mods where more powerful(multispec ecm was useful on any hull, no scripting, EW mods provided 100% of both bonuses all the time) and most of your targets you did see in solo/small gang where actually active tanked.

The premier nos ship where drone ships, because the re scope mechanic did give drones full shields again and made them a lot harder to kill than today. So the drone ships only had to cap nuke the target(again most where active tanked) to win fights and had a very powerful tank on her own. Another problematic use where nano BS, that where not really stoppable without focus webben(since her mass and the high speed did move them out of web range before even 90% webs had any big effect), they used nos to power up her mwd and shut down active tanks or tacklers.

While most solo/small gang ships did fit a nos in the utility slot, if they had one, it wasn't a big deal. Mostly because everybody had one and it simply equalized cap drains on both hulls and even a bit of a balance factor, what made hulls with 2 slots for nos actually good active tanks across the board of engagements, instead of just good to shut down frigs.

While I like the idea to make nos more used again, the design idea is heavy flawed. Nos should be useful for all ship classes, while a BS nos shouldn't cap nuke a frig in one cycle like a neut, it also shouldn't be useless against 90% of your targets in a solo BS(what will be undersized). Frig nos already works as a good counter against neuts, because you will have next to now cap after 1-2 neut cycles and you will get enough cap to keep your point, ab and weapons running.

Can't we have something like a balanced middle ground where fully nos fitted drone frigs and cruisers are not neuting everything down while they tank you with your own cap and bigger hulls finally have alternative to fit a neut in every free high slot?

Some fair comments here. I agree that a heavy Nos with a 3-s cycle time would be much more useful than the current 12 s, and that whatever is done to Nos, this should be changed. I also agree that the key use of Nos is in maintaining your ability to activate tackle, guns, hardeners etc. People should never fit Nos thinking about its effect on the enemy's cap - that's the job of neuts.

But none of your comments indicate that it is necessary or even desirable to change the current % cap rule to an absolute cap level one. Indeed, given the very low cap level at which an absolute-cap-level heavy Nos would activate against a small opponent, it can be seen that it is directly counter to the objective of making heavy Nos useful and balanced. Simply put, nobody uses heavy Nos now, and they won't in future even if the cycle time is decrease to 3 s if they don't believe they will get a meaningful benefit from it until their cap level is so low that it doesn't matter. The activation barrier has to remain as a % to ensure equality between classes.

If that's the goal, then it's a stupid goal. Small Nos are already dependable and useful on frigates, serving to keep their tackle running under hostile neuting, particularly the long-duration med and heavy neuts. The "very specialised fit" for heavy Nos that you amusingly refer to simply doesn't exist. People don't use heavy Nos now and they won't after this nerf. Why are you so desperate to nerf an unused group of modules? Sense, it makes none...

I don't understand your reference to Nos being unreliable. Current % Nos isn't unreliable; on any ship, you can rely on it to kick in when you are low on cap, to maintain tackle and maybe a hardener. It is a reliable defensive module - it just isn't attractive on larger ships because of the cycle time, smaller drain amount relative to the greater cap requirements of larger ships and larger ships' greater ease of fitting cap boosters. Your idea of absolute Nos would make it much less reliable on heavy ships, hence why everyone is telling you that's a nerf. The only way to regard current Nos as unreliable is if you're using it to try to cap out an opponent - but this is the job of neuts, not Nos!

I think your position on Nos and perception that it's "unreliable" stems from a fundamental confusion regarding the distinct roles of Nos and neuts, and the importance of maintaining these clearly defined roles. Neuts are reliable offensive mods, designed to cap out your opponent; Nos is a reliable defensive one, designed to protect yourself from being capped out, whether by hostile neuting or by excessive cap drain of your own mods. The argument should never be defined in terms of "should I be fitting a Nos or a neuts?", because that implies that these mods have a similar usage and role, when they don't. When you want to cap out an opponent, you use a neut; when you want cap defence, you use a Nos. The question of "Neuts or Nos?" should never be asked. Instead, you choose Nos or neut depending on the roles that you expect your ship to be fulfilling and the environment that you expect to be operating in.

Actually yes, I've just found your original Nos thread, and your desire is simply to make Nos another form of offensive cap warfare mod. This is both unnecessary and undesirable. Neuts already work perfectly well in the offensive role. We learnt from the old-style Nos that self-fuelling neuting of the kind that you describe, coming from smaller ships against larger ones, is a fundamentally bad idea.

This is the great advantage of % Nos. By preventing the effective use of Nos as a self-fuelling neut, it maintains equality between classes and leaves both Nos and neuts clearly defined in their respective gamespaces with distinct roles, one being offensive and the other defensive. Your ideas would wreck that balance and design, regardless of your baffling desire to nerf the hell of heavy Nos.

Re-read the OP, that was not CCP Rise's goal but one of the EFFECT's he describes.

Quote: "we are going to make NOS good again"

A reasonable understanding of this would be to increase their effectiveness equally across the board and not for a single ship size at the expense of another. This means that the net "uselessness" stays the same and that is why this is a bad change.

In your BS v BS scenario a heavy neut would still be more effective in my opinion, a 12 sec NOS cycle time is a weak defense against neuting, you'd be better off with cap boosters in that case and fitting a heavy neut and hopefully cap his neut out before he does yours.

Which is fine... IF you are not using modules (offensive or defensive) that consume a lot of cap. In that case your Neut does you more harm than good.

You might also check Fozzies posts on that same page.

I think if they did something, like this obviosly I pulled the percentages out of thin air and they wold need some study you could find a point where the "nueting" effect of a NOS would be useful, but not overpowered, but it could still be usefull on bigger class vessels.
The NOS + Nuet would be much slower to cap out a ship then a 2x Nuet (both since the reducing effect and the generally weaker drain of NOS vs Nuet), but much more cap effecient, that looks like a fair trade to me.

As it stands the only use I can see at all outside the frigate use is something a curse having one to lock onto three ships and nuet two and nos the other to help with cap stability.

Nothing is wrong with it as long as CCP makes that explicitly they're goal. They haven't said as much so all we can assume is that they mean for them to be useful across all ship sizes like neuts. This change runs antithetical to that so if they only want them effective for frigates then they should say so otherwise I'm going to scratch my head at changes like this.