Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Kind of surprised this debate is still going on.

Folks, I understand some of you are unhappy that NOS will not often be useful against smaller opponents (obviously this mostly affects the larger hulls).

You should consider that there are many examples of modules in EVE that do not perform well against smaller opponents (any of the larger missile groups come immediately to mind, as well as most large guns).

This is by design.

You have one cap warfare weapon that is ideal for dealing with smaller ships.... Neuts.
You have one cap warfare weapon that is ideal for maintaining you against larger ships... NOS.

Sure, fittings, cycle time, and drain amount can be looked at and perhaps slightly tweaked. But the concept of a BS weapons system that doesn't work optiimally vs smaller vessels is sound... and not given a second thought throughout the game.

I appreciate that it makes your dislike for the new system appear more weighty to say that NOS being of limited usefulness vs smaller ships is somehow odd or unfair/unbalanced... but obviously nothing could be further from the truth. This encouragement to use the right tool for the job depending on not only your ship but also your opponents ship is pretty standard... and it is rather intentional (and good game design) that you can easily be caught out if your opponent is not what you expected.

Anything less than this puts us right back in the well demonstrated situation of NOS becoming over powered again (yes, even with current fittings, cycle time, and drain amounts as they are).

Outside of PvE that is, but since the primary concern as presented by CCP for all the rebalances is PvP, this is right to the point.

Perhaps even have some ships (specifically BS) get a small Role Bonus in regards to NOS (ie, the poor Amarr ships cap level requirements for using a NOS be imaginarily lowered so that you aren't stuck with the situation of them effectively being useless for them against every other race's BS for example).

And as a final note for the day, in defense of those of us who love the thought of the Abaddon, but consistently see it as the ***** in PvP outside of other fitting it with something other then lasers or rather specialized fleet doctrines...

How about trying to give these proposed balances to NOS a true chance, and go back to what is now something of an old suggestion of mine, and quite a number of other Amarr loving pilots... reduce the Abaddon down to 7 turrets, balance it's damage bonus abit, and give it a high slot to try out a NOS with?

Heya Pelea.

Interesting proposal.

Keep in mind though that running NOS on Amarr BS won't really be an issue (depending on fit). Amarr ships in general (and especially their BS) tend to burn cap at an alarming rate compared to other races. Having a lower amount of cap available than your opponent during the course of a battle won't be much of an obstacle for most typical laser fits.

Absolute Nos is so called because it uses absolute cap levels, rather than percentage cap levels of current percentage Nos. Come on, use your loaf, I've been using this terminology throughout the thread, and it's really pretty self-explanatory.



Yeah, what you've done here is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the problem. All of your fancy numbers are basically irrelevant, because it's really pretty common for the neut to instantly cap out a frigate - immediately in the case of a heavy neut, and either immediately or on second activation for a med neut.

For example, a MWD-fit Rifter operating at 75% of its max 252 cap, giving it 189 cap, is hit by a single med neut outside small Nos range. This takes its 189 cap down to, er, 9 cap - 3.6%. So when it gets into small Nos range it really doesn't matter whether it's using absolute or percentage Nos, because you can be pretty sure that both will activate. When the second neut cycle hits, 12 s later, it nukes the frigate's cap to zero, and again you can rely on both absolute and percentage Nos activating, meaning that, again, absolute Nos offers no advantage over percentage Nos in defending against neuting.

If you want to increase the ability of Nos to defend against neuts in a meaningful fashion, then you need to change module parameters, not the module's mechanic.



Yeah that's a pretty desperate link to make.

Its going on because very few agree with you or CCP's approach of "well I know we're not addressing any of the real drawbacks but lets go ahead and make the change and see what happens" and then not touch them again for 6 more years.

You had that ability in the geddon before they changed it. How many used a heavy nos there?

Also changing a whole ship just to make a useless mod fit on it. Would be better off leaving the high slot empty and using the PG and cpu on more plates and cap boosters. edit just checked a nos takes more cpu and 200 less power grid than a mega pulse so they might not increase cpu and pg :(

I sure as hell wouldn't be putting a nuet on a laser 'baddon, it's **** for cap even assuming only 7 turrets, the point is to use the nos so that it's effectively only burning cap off of 6 of the turrets... Assuming that Ranger 1's theories of it burning through it's cap enough to push it below threshold to make use of it vs other BS would actually work. But it might give it what it needs to work outside of speciallized fleets like the Hellcat while not being Artie fitted, I'd love it if CCP would throw it up on the test servers for us to try out like this and see if it's honestly workable.

It may surprise you to learn that many combat frigates that are NOS fit are not designed to be cap stable unless the NOS is doing it's job. You might also consider that the NOS plays a role even when the tackler is not under Nuet pressure.

You might also consider that NOS will also be used (again, much more reliably) on cruisers of all types (often used for heavy tackle and/or BC's.

You're trying to prove your point based on only one possible scenario and focus all possible attention it. You're also completely ignoring how most PVP ship operate at very low cap levels (large and small), or other factors that enter the equation like how Cap Injector use changes the picture in a variety of interesting ways. Sorry, that's not going to fly.

If you can't come to grips with the fact that it is more reliable overall to base the limitation on hard cap instead of cap percentage you should probably stop trying to discuss the issue. Especially since my "fancy numbers" are simply basic and undisputable fact, that you deem "irrelevant" in the one scenario you can come up with where it wouldn't make a difference over the present system.

Answer the question my friend.

Which is easier as a general rule, for a small/medium vessel to stay under a larger vessels raw cap amount... or to stay under their cap percent?

When you can come up with an honest answer to that question we can have a discussion.