Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So... I was reading a post in another forum where a new player was educated into the reasons for not dual tanking - spreading your tank between shields and armor. While the effectiveness is most certain and logical, it is at the same time really stupid. Why would you bother putting shields on a ship if they were meant to simply be ignored?

Consider a ship like the Maller, with its 3 mid slots and massive armor tank bonuses. You'd have to be utterly ******** to fit a shield tank on it, and yet, it has shields. Why would they bother putting shields on a cruiser that cannot shield tank even a frigate?

This is kind of a very massive change to Eve which would break any good fit, so I imagine it would never happen, but I'll put it out anyways because I think that the concept has merit.

Ships should all triple tank.

Their shields should give them solid resistance to Kin/Explosive, their armor should give them solid resistance to Em/Therm, and their structure should be as it is now. They would be strong in one of those three categories as they are now, but their other two buffers would not be ignored.

In order to reinforce this, hardeners would see stacking penalties against their fitting cost within their category. For example, fitting two invulns would mean the second invuln would cost 50% more fitting space. Fitting an invuln and a shield resistance amplifier would see the same fitting penalty. Fitting two EANMs, same thing, an EANM and a hardener, etc. There would also be a modifier based on the size of the ship so that you couldn't just brute force it with battleships and capital ships. Stuff like adaptive nano plating would need fitting costs changed.

Fitting an invuln and an EANM, however, there would NOT be a stacking penalty.

Rigs would amplify calibration costs of like-modules. For example, a second EM screen would cost 50% more calibration.

Plates and extenders would NOT see this penalty as they already have high fitting costs.

Now all of a sudden, all ships have very real resistance holes in their primary and secondary tanks, which if you mean to be efficient means you need to swap ammo (Hybrids and Lasers would be different from missiles and projectiles; where missiles and projectiles have selectable damage, hybrids would be therm/kinetic damage and lasers would be EM/explosive damage, allowing them to less effectively apply to either tank but equally effectively apply to both tanks).

Something like the Maller would have a tough armor tank on it, but with a big Explosive hole in it, their shields would need to be able to protect them from said explosive damage for "a while". So they throw either an invuln or an extender on to help plug their kin/explosive hole.

Benefits:
- Now fleets want shield and armor logi
- Because shield and armor logi will probably be present in fleets, doctrine flexibility can increase
- Players swapping ammo types mid-fight to account for breaking shield buffers will out-perform players that don't (skill?)
- Armor tanks are no longer "always tankier" because shield reps will seriously mess up someone who changed ammo
- Shield tanks are no longer "always kitey-er" because kite ships will probably still want some kind of armor
- Active tanks become much more viable in PVP, in spite of the danger of being neuted out
- Buffer tanks remain viable



Thoughts?

As a thought experiment I think it's plenty interesting, just so long as everyone respects that underlined bit, lol.

I think my biggest problem with the general concept is that it makes fighting player ships NPC levels of predictable. If you were going to do something like that you'd have to make it much less predictable which tank type a ship is going to favor so you don't just automatically shoot the right damage at the right ship/tank type, and there have to be ways to be unpredictable.

IMO something like this would probably work better with a game that has a more block-placement fitting system as opposed to slot types with heavy restrictions like Eve's High/Med/Low setup.

That way you have more freedom to plug a hole and give someone a nasty surprise at a lower cost than Eve currently incurs, especially if you have to plug two per type.

Also I don't think anyone sane would ever tank a ship in Hull in lore. When you're taking Hull damage you're getting to the point of crew deaths with every salvo. The main reason stuff like Freighters end up hull tanked is because they have so very much hull and so very few crew. Basically their high hull is just a quirk of their construction, not an intentional tank decision.

Honestly, strictly going by lore, a ship shouldn't have "structure" at all. Whatever gooey insides your ship has, the moment the first hull breach happens, your ship will turn inside out. If they were fighting depressurized (a la The Expanse), they wouldn't "explode" when they die.

I would disagree that it makes things predictable. 1v1, if they have a shield repper, you're gonna have to keep pushing their shield down until they need to reload before you swap to armor ammo. Otherwise, you'll have to work a whole lot harder just to get through their shields.

Gang or fleet fights, logistics pretty much guarantees you will need ships doing both shield-favoured and armor-favoured damage. Some ships to break shields, some ships to break armor. If one half of your fleet isn't strong enough, you may not have enough time to break the armor before the shields get repped up, and then of course the armor gets repped up too.

Completely agree that as a thought exercise, it could be exceptionally fun, with a great deal more reliance on having that buddy or group next to you.

Nanites.. yes. When in doubt, you can either thank or blame nanites. One of these days I'ma ask CCP for a nanite missile to go and melt their armor off.

What I mean though in Eve is that an explosion requires an oxidizer - atmosphere in most cases. Even the fusion reactors wouldn't "explode" unless you were watching the infrared spectrum. Something like missiles, sure, they're self-oxidizing, but that's a pretty limited subset. In the Expanse, the Donnager was depressurized, and it was certainly a big ship. I guess small by Eve standards though.

Fair point on predictability there, yes you would certainly know a lot faster what you needed to use.. There would however be the potential for partially patching resist holes to throw a wrench in things. Imagine dual em ward fields, should in theory push shield em resists up to a good 70%. Now you'd have to apply thermal damage.

I touched on damage locking a bit. Hybrid and Energy turret weapons would be able to apply evenly (yet less effectively) to both shield and armor, where selectable damage would only apply well if the right damage type were chosen. I could totally see the "I don't have to change ammo types" as a significant plus in a high-paced fight, especially with the enemy ship's shields going up and down all the time.

If this did come to pass, I don't think anyone would be sitting around. Shield and armor logi would both be busy, if only by virtue of the general massive amount of damage that gets dealt in a fleet fight. If armor logi ended up spending too much time sitting around, then logi could simply be relieved of their shield/armor roles and just become "logi". Different slot layouts, role bonuses, attributes, and such would differentiate them enough to provide different use-cases for each.

The DPS that aren't applying well to shields would be applying well to armor, and visa versa; having one without the other would likely be doomed to fail if they had both logistics at the ready. So they would all be equally effective and ineffective at different points in the fight, yet essential regardless.

And now that I think about it, you could split your guns. Imagine a ship with 4 howitzers, 2 on EM and 2 on explosive. Hit them with the first volley with EM, then hit them with the second volley on explosive.

Reading comprehension is a thing... try training it up to at least level 1, and then re-read the OP.

While the idea is interesting, I just can't come up with any explanation for how would a lased deal explosive damage. That's not what lasers do.

You quite clearly did not read or understand it. Go ahead and train level 1 reading comprehension, and try again.

You've never killed anyone or been killed and are giving suggestions for combat? Or you know, you could post with your main.

Proving credibility does make a suggestion mean something different. Until that happens, I assume you are a newbie who doesn't know the game, or a vet afraid to post with a character you play with.

Either way, any post by someone with no in game history isn't taken seriously.

Start making good suggestions and maybe you would have a point. Making bad suggestions with a throwaway forum alt doesn't really add much to you.

And yes, actions and history carries a lot of weight into what is good or bad. Why are you afraid to post with your main?