Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let's put THAT in perspective, since you inadvertently just proved my point, as well as giving me an idea that might help.

Plates have a very good fitting progression between 200, 400, 800, and 1600mm. While it would be nice if they cut off 50mm in favor of a 3200 plate, that's beside the point.

Why not in addition to setting prop mods to certain class sizes, adding 5mn and 50mn prop mods? 5mn would be best suited on destroyers, but could also be fit by frigates, and 50mn would be best suited on battlecruisers, but can be fit on cruisers. This would help balance the problems with current oversized prop mod fitting, it would allow for decent freedom and mobility as well as opening up some new play stiles with the mid-ranged props. Here's some fitting stats for them to get an idea of how they'd be implemented on ships:

-5mn ab uses 25 pg, 20 cpu, 5mn mwd uses 75 pg, 35 cpu.

-50mn ab uses 300 pg, 35 cpu, 50mn mwd uses 700 pg, 60 CPU

Thrust values would be half that of the next size up. Sound good?

That's not outside the realm of possibility, although with how the tracking works with capitals I'm kinda glad they don't have their own prop mods.

To your point about d3s, yes that is the case, but this has been a prevalent problem long before their introduction; t1 dessies and drone cruisers in particular have a habit of abusing the hell out of these in gang fights, which is where the main focus lies. Having 5mn and 50mn size props not only helps manage this problem along with barring the current oversized, it still lets people focus on their speed with a larger prop without being too broken, and without gimping their fit too terribly. As I said, they would be valuable on mid-size class ships like dessies and battlecruisers, the latter of which would probably have quite a bit of fun with them.

that just hurts everything else though; quite a few frigates and destroyers have enough trouble trying to fit offense and defense (hookbill and corax, I'm looking at you), so limiting the ship fittings themselves wouldn't do the job. I think introducing mid-sized prop mods and banning usage of higher-level ones would be the best route to go since it brings things down to sensible levels while still allowing for the option to focus on speed primarily.

Oversize prop mods on cruisers is actually a bigger problem than oversize prop mods on frigates, and largely because of the effect is is having on the battleship meta. There is no reason for advanced cruisers to be tanking as well as they are currently, while still doing BS level damage. Take away oversize AB, and they are down to just their native mobility and their T2 tanks.

With the new sov, we are moving into a system where mobility matters even more than it does now. So giving appropriately fit battleships better ability to counter them or hold the field while still lacking mobility is important for letting them keep some sort of role in the future meta.

Oversize prop mods are broken simply because of the very wide range of fleet comps that they counter. If you get to the point where the only counter to something is more of that something, then things get very very stale.

The simplest and broadest solution is to add stacking penalties for fitting modules and rigs, and carefully chosen penalties for engineering rigs. Being able to increase PG by two, three or even four hundred percent is silly, and make it impossible to define a clear range of fleet roles for ships. If base speed is too low in the absence of oversize modules, then increase base speed.

Fair enough, then increase the powergrid of all battleship-size modules - tank, weapons, prop, etc.

Then increase the powergrid of battleships too.

Makes it harder for cruisers to roll oversized prop mods. To be fair, this makes it harder for cruisers to fit oversized tanks now. :(

The problem of oversize tanks and lack of stacking penalties for hp buffer or engineering rigs aside, there's a different problem that comes from increasing the grid of platforms, and that is fitting and role diversity.

Currently, there isn't much reason to not fit the biggest guns you can. The tracking differences between them are miniscule (15%), their target sig resolution is uniform, and you simply lose optimal range, which boils down to damage application. If they all had roles as distinct as missile launchers, how much grid or processing power they had would matter a lot less. (It's kind of an interesting thought experiment to ponder how fleet battles would play out if there were no such thing as turrets, only missiles.) If turrets were more differentiated in capability, there would be less reason to fine tune fitting so long as you could balance tank with damage or other role abilities.

I definitely prefer fleet battle scenarios where if you encounter something in the furball that is designed to take you down, then you go down fast. However, if isn't fit for that, you sail on past to fulfill your fleet role. So long as every hull type is useful in the furball, you create a lot of microbattles that might turn the bigger conflict depending upon how they play out. This helps small groups to matter even in big fights. Fundamentally, this is why I regard ships or modules with broad damage application and effectiveness to be problematic. They are what make fleets boring, or bolster the efficacy of F1 mashing.

People like oversize prop mods because they negate damage application from a broad range of sources. However, because that applies to everyone, it diminishes the game experience for each of us by narrowing the dynamic range of what is possible. If the only counter to oversize prop mod cruisers is themselves, then you only encounter oversize prop mod cruisers in fleets, or only their diminutive peers in smaller affairs. Better to negate the broad effect, and then ameliorate what makes it so appealing, especially if that too is a broad effect.

Well quite a few ships already have trouble fitting both a decent tank and a decent weapon loadout, so knocking down their base fitting for something that may or may not be unrelated to their usage is very heavy-handed and unnecessary since it very much hurts, rather than helps, their situation as a whole.

Going halfway with introducing prop mods that are mid-sized between the current ones is good because it still lets people enjoy oversized fit propulsion without gimping their own fitting, as well as still reaping enough of the benefits of a prop-focused fit to make it viable, just not overpowered.

This is a very large nerf to frigates and destroyers as a whole, since while you did suggest reducing weapon fitting by a certain percentage for them, things like their tank fit effectively by a fairly thin margin. It would unfairly penalize the whole class by taking an unnecessary hit to fitting space.