Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As part of the ongoing module tiericide efforts we are making some consolidation and balance changes to armor plates and shield extenders.

In general the principles being followed are as for module tiericide as a whole:

Goals of Module Tiericide

• Reduce unnecessary complexity
• Provide meaningful options within the module set

Specifically the pattern of changes for both armor plates and shield extenders aims to:

• Remove the clearly superfluous '50mm' and micro' size categories.
• Consolidate 'Named' modules from meta levels 1-4 into two variants within meta level 1 - a 'compact' variant and a 'restrained' variant.
• Maintain the general positioning and power level of Tech II variants in the families.
• Place 'Storyline' variants in a place that is somewhere between the 'compact' and Tech II variants in terms of relevant stats.
• Significantly enhance the appeal of 'Faction' variants with substantial relative easing of fitting and increases in bonuses, while maintaining relatively low penalties.
• Establish diversity within the 'Faction' variants by adjusting stats in broadly in line with thematic notes as far as available tuning allows.

The case for removing the 50mm plates and micro extenders respectively was fairly clear. It also seemed reasonable to double up the HP bonus of small shield extenders to open up more use cases for them compared with medium extenders. The case of plate size groupings is more complicated due to the greater number of options that exist. There is an argument that 100mm plates remain something of an oddity but for this pass we have decided to eliminate the obviously subpar options represented by 50mm and micro modules and see how matters develop.


Change Sheets - Updated 22-05-15

Rather than blast a series of densely packed numbers at you in text form, the changes can be viewed in the following sheets:

Armor Plates Module Tiericide

Shield Extender Module Tiericide


Consequences of Consolidation Changes

Some merging of modules will take place as a result of these changes.

All existing 50mm plates will be changed into a special 'Storyline' 100mm plate designed to be very low fitting, low bonus, low penalty. The same will hold true of Micro shield extenders, as they will merge into a Small extender following a similar stat profile.

With regard to blueprints, we will update the 50mm blueprints to 100mm plate prints. As there are BPOs they will be updated to the equivalent 100mm variants.

There are no micro shield extender blueprints with the exception of the existing storyline module print and that will shift to its new 100mm incarnation.

In terms of 'Named' modules, the 'Reinforced Nanofiber Plates' range will merge into the 'Crystalline Carbonide Restrained Plates'. Likewise, the 'Reinforced Titanium Plates' will merge into the 'Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates'.

With shield extenders this process is mirrored by the merger of 'Subordinate Screen Stabilizers' into 'F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extenders', and the merger of 'Supplemental Barrier Emitters' into 'Azeotropic Restrained Shield Extenders'.

Aspects of naming have necessarily changed to reflect the changes, with the balance of flavor and information in naming conventions that has been settled on with previous sets of module tiericide changes.

As a reminder the meta module signifiers used for these changes are:

• Compact: lower fitting requirements
• Restrained: lower penalties on use

The sources of modules will remain the same in terms of loot drops, LP stores and so on.


Release Plan

These changes are planned for the June 2nd release and are currently available to play around with on the Singularity test server.

Please let us have your feedback or questions regarding these planned changes.

What is the point of having Meta levels at all, if you're just going to skip huge sections of them?

It goes from 0, to two kinds of 1, to 5. That makes less sense than what currently exists.

Thanks for releasing the official statement.

The changes seem good at first glance. I like what you have done with small extenders, they might be useful now. I still think the 100mm plate needs buffing more though to be used. Perhaps 400 added armour HPs as opposed to 300, and then I might consider using them more.

i guess once all mods are balanced ccp will just compact the meta levels and remove all empty spots or remove the notion of meta all together.

Will BPC / BPO's for 50mm plates be converted to Storyline BPO, or regular 100mm BPO?

Is there any reasons why there is a large variety on the different faction plates while faction shield extenders provide the same HP boost?



The new system is way better. The old meta stuff was just only meta 4 being used (and sometimes meta 3 if meta 4 is expensive) and then the rest of it was trash. Now there are different choices. LIke for MWD you can pick between better cap, easier fitting or lower sig bloom.

I have a question in regards to COSMOS/Storyline Faction Plates and Extenders, why are the fitting requirements for these being increased and in several instances being harder to fit than the 'compact' meta variants. I thought that Storyline/Cosmos was supposed to have the best fitting requirements?

Small shield extenders get double HP over 100mm plates. 200mm plates have roughly same HP but 10PG or more and slows the ship down.

Ships that will be fitting these modules won't prefer either really, just that PG is more valuable on small ships.

Ive always wondered how sufficient armor to cover a Battleship with 1.6 meters of steel all fits into a 50 cu m package. The armor thicknesses seem to be just so huge!

Possible change to make it all make more sense: Drop a zero. 10mm, 20mm, 40mm, 80mm and 160mm plates.

Also: Do you have any idea of the usefulness of the other meta levels? It seems odd to just have them abandoned.

So, what will happen to the 50mm reinforced steel plate BPOs and the micro shield extender BPOs?