Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Nope, nope, and nope. Go re-read what I wrote about oversized prop mods again and maybe bring a dictionary this time or something, because you clearly didn't understand it the first time. At no point did I say that oversized prop mods were *always* OP, to quote me:

"Oversized prop mods are OP on anything that can fit them without trading off too much,"

Key words there.

The XL Shield Extender thing is straight from CCP every time anyone's asked them at Fanfest for the last eight or more years. They won't add an XLSE because it's part of their vision for the differences between Shield and Armor tanking. The 1600 plate is an XL Armor mod, the 800 plate is a Large sized one.

Oh and yes, I did study Game Design in school.



I never said it was oversized, I said it was an XL module. As in, the same way an XL Shield Booster is an XL module. Not everything that "Extra Large" is horribly hard to fit. Tank modules and Cap Batteries are generally a lot easier to fit than Prop Mods which tend to be much more punishing in terms of fitting trade offs.



It's really not

Go read what I wrote the first time, like I said above.

Prop mods tend to be *much* more punishing on the fittings than tank modules, and Battleships don't have as much room relative to prop mod size as you seem to think. Also those smaller guns are under utilized for a reason, outside of a few niche fits and a couple of gun types most are almost worthless, especially the smallest size.

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Oh, and in case you didn't see it, the XL shield comment was from fanfest. It doesn't show up on a quick and easy google search. If you want to find it go watch the game design videos from the last few Fanfests, it's in one of those. Oh and this is something that's been asked about on and off for years, and on top of that the number of times CCP have actually drastically changed course on these things is *tiny*. Why you seem to think it happens all the time is beyond me, because *none* of these:



are things CCP ever gave a hard no on. They gave specific comments on *other things* that were a bit *similar to* some of those things, but not those things specifically and especially not 'engaging in a FTP model'... where you got that I have no idea.

I don't really care what you think about me and my knowledge of the game. I've worked to educate myself about the game, how it works, and what CCP's views and plans are. You seem to have half-arsed it and now you're showing up, half reading my posts, and whining that I said some things I didn't and you disagree with them. Whaaaat indeed.

You made a blanket statement and got called out, accept it. By the way, which ships currently exist that can overprop without making a significant tradeoff?



So, 550 powergrid for a 1600 plate or 200 CPU and 500 grid for an XLASB isn't a significant investment for a cruiser? Or a heavy neut on a curse?



Read above. Take a gander at the fitting compromise you need to make on a syfi to fit an XLASB, a ferox to fit dual XLASBs, a dual battery stratios, heavy neut curse, triple rep hyperion, 400mm plated command destroyers, cloaky interdictors, or double plate devoters. The common thread among all of these is that the player is faced with a choice between the specific functionality of the modules they choose to fit versus those they don't, and in all these cases, the MAJOR compromises that are made aren't because of the prop mod. Bottom and mid tier weapons are heavily represented in battlecruisers and down, particularly in the case of autocannons and blasters. Some of the smallest tier are surprisingly good, such as quad light beam lasers.

Also, many battleships consume less of their powergrid relative to their weapons and propulsion modules than cruisers that occupy a similar role, in some cases, quite dramatically so. A thorax with heavy neutrons and a compact mwd uses 90% of its powergrid, while a megathron uses less than 75% with a compact and neutron blaster cannons. The maller and abaddon also come in quite close with their respective weapons and prop mods, at about 75 and 79%.



Right, and practically every idea that's conceivable has been asked for over the years.

You're saying that hard coding a lower threshold to titan tracking then introducing HAWs, removing and re-introducing AOE doomsdays, emphasizing the permanence of character skill choices, then introducing a method to respec toons and engaging in FTP aren't a major shift from previously held attitudes? What about sov mechanic changes? Or asset safety? Those aren't major shifts either?



From my perspective, it looks as if you're acting pretty defensively, trying to use semantics to wriggle out of previous statements, inventing credibility in an unverifiable environment, and trying to put words in my mouth, all without ever citing examples or demonstrating any actual knowledge of the game or it's mechanics.

Apologies for that.

Anyways, getting back to this. My concern isn't that this would be OP, it's that the fitting required to make it balanced would make it mostly unused and worthless, and worthless modules aren't a good thing for the game.

Looking at the Mallus for example it takes ~22% of your base PG to fit a Pb Medium Cap Battery or a little under the cost of two largest size Medium Pulse Lasers.

If you translate this up to Battleships you're still looking at at least one gun's worth of PG which puts it at 2.5-3k PG. Either that or you drop the PG to something that's sorta more viable for fitting but then the cap bonus isn't really worth while for a Battleship for basically taking away 1.5-2k worth of PG.

That's also without getting into the full T2 and other versions of the module with higher fitting requirements than the Pb and Faction options. Those I'm not sure where they'd get used, considering the pattern for Cap Batteries is the Pb take 2/3rds the PG of the T2.

Throw in how anemic the smaller sized gun options for Battleships are and it sorta feels like the only place this gets used is in a state where it suddenly becomes the go-to Cap module for a BS.

At that point I think I'd rather just see them go through with their Stacking Penalties and larger bonuses plan for Cap Recharge and then you have a stronger incentive to run a mix of Cap Amount and Cap Recharge.

Does this make sense? Anyone have some spitball numbers that contradict this?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to become the 'goto' (beyond possibly for amarr ships, since they have more PG to start with... yes, yes, I know, lasers eat that up quick, but still!) cap mod... well, ok, with the new cap rechargers, I can see the potential for that happening, just b/c larger cap pool bonus means the recharge % buff counts for more... but realistically, I also see the proposed changes to cap rechargers easily knocking cap batts in general 'out of the running' for main fitting options on every other racial ship but amarr as it is, since they already have a notably better base recharge, give the mods a large enough bonus to that and while you might want to use a cap batt as a 2nd mod, your 1st is gonna be the cap regen...

Which is what the 'meta' was for how many years before they finally re-balanced cap batts?

As things stand now, if I'm working on a Gallente fit, I often am using a 3 mod/rig combo of cap batt & cap regen for best effect... and on Cald/Min, it's usually just a 2 mod combo, even on the battleships (whcih actually just seriously points out how screwed 'baddons are for cap, considering that's usually all they need for a decent amount of 'managed' cap stability for PvE anyways, but the 'baddon still wants 5).

(when I say cap batt/regen mod in regards to rigs, obviously it's CCC or Semiconductor... my skills are high enough I don't see a significant enough improvement to overall cap usage by using Eluctriation (reduce laser cap usage) rigs in general)

tbh, I don't really expect anything towards laser cap use, as they are apparently balanced just fine for Apocs and Navy Apocs in both PvE n PvP, and apparently they're also fine with them for 'baddons in PvP.

As for how useful such a Storyline XL Cap Batt would be... well, that can be balanced with a low enough loot spawn rate on the BPCs to keep their prices nice and high as well.

You're asking the wrong question.

Instead of "Why can't I fit an XL battery to a battleship?", you should be asking "Why do I have to fit an L battery to a cruiser to for the battery to be worth it?"

Related: "Why is the best choice for cap booster charges usually to just shove the biggest charge in the booster can take?"

CCP doesn't "design the meta," at least not with very much precision. Oh, they try, but it's complicated enough to be essentially impossible to get right. They throw out tools and change them based on how we use them at some indeterminate future date.

Case in point: a Navy Drake with rapid lights is better against most of what it encounters (at least in FW space) than a Navy Drake with HM or HAM, because frigate menace and how badly HAMs apply to almost everything. Oh, and RLML leave a lot more fitting space for tank.

Or the Small/Large Ancillary Shield Booster. Small were supposed to be for frigates, large for crusiers/BCs. Except they very rarely see use for that. People prefer to bolt on a micro auxiliary power core for MASB on frigates, or (dual!) XLASB on BCs/BS, and stacking Large Shield Extenders and Core Defense Field Extenders on cruisers is better than running LASB because fitting costs (and reduced sig radius not helping against RLML, and one LASB not being able to keep up with RLML). See also: bigger cap booster charges in ancillary boosters not giving you a bigger shield boost.

Or blops: those seem like something a "Hmm, not enough fights are happening in dangerous space, let's make a new tool to surprise people with." What it did was make people dock up the instant anyone showed up within jump range (or local if solo and empty) because of how quickly things could go bad. You can rat with a PvP fit, but you eat a lot of cap boosters (or have to run one of those oversized battery fits) and won't have a full set of charges for when someone drops into your site to say die.

As for the batteries, the non-oversized ones do two things: they give you a little extra cap buffer (with regen included), and they give you a noticeable amount of cap warfare resistance. A booster on a battleship is usually a better way to deal with hostile cap warfare because it takes quite a bit of neut pressure to counter. Just fitting a battery... means you take about 30 seconds longer for a dual-rep or oversized-shield-booster PvP fit to cap out.
I can think of two places you'd want to run a booster with a battery:
One is if you're soloing around in an armor battleship with 5 mids (i.e. Hyperion/Tempest/Domi) and expect neut pressure. This would make it about 33% harder for someone to force you to turn off a module with neut pressure. The extra passive cap regen would be a very minor bonus on a dual-rep+blasters fit, and not the point of the module. Most of your cap regeneration would come from a booster you put in another mid slot.
The other is if you're in an armor fleet and know your opponents are going to run neut ships, and you want them to expend a lot more cap trying to shut your systems off. Normally, the rigs would be claimed by trimarks and mids by prop mod + booster + maybe tracking computers. A small to medium group might be able to just run batteries if the logi arm of the fleet runs remote cap transmitters., except ECM and damps