EVE General Discussion

This is what happens when I have too much caffeine and happen to be on amphetamine analogues (legally, of course).

Since EVE is now 9 years old and has too much momentum to change easily, I realize that this is either impossible, impractical, or both. Right now, I believe the slot system could use a major overhaul, and I believe that it could be changed in a way that would make ships easier to balance against each other, especially in the interests of tier-icide.

Instead of the current setup, I thought about having something like this:

_ turret
_ launcher
_ damage modification
_ damage mitigation
_ utility

Essentially, the modules themselves wouldn't change, simply the slot layouts of ships. I believe such a system could more clearly define roles and distinguish ships from each other.

Armageddon: 8 turret, 2 damage modification, 5 damage mitigation, 3 utility
Apocalypse: 8 turret, 2 damage modification, 3 damage mitigation, 5 utility
Abaddon: 8 turret, 5 damage modification, 3 damage mitigation, 2 utility

Obviously, the number of each and total number is a ballpark figure, for discussion purposes. In such a system, it becomes very clear which ship will tank better, which will do more damage, and which will be able to have an abundance of utility slots for miscellaneous purposes.

Which modules would fit under which classification is pretty straightforward.

Damage modification:
Heat Sink, Gyro, MFS, BCS, tracking modules (passive and active)
Damage mitigation:
Repair, invuln, hardeners and nano membranes, etc (passive and active)
Utility:
Prop, EWAR, RR

No, the sky is not falling and your brains won't be fried by changes. But I do feel like the system needs tweaking like this, because the current slot placement of some modules is unintuitive, arbitrary, and in some cases downright odd.

aaaaand where does EW/ECM/ECCM fit into all this?

not to mention WCS, Cargo 'spanders, etc?

EDIT: aaaand I fail at reading.

But what about ships like the Falcon/Blackbird/Scorpion (?) that are pretty much ECM ONLY.

And what about my smexy shield tanking, lazor/arty Myrm of AWESOMENESS?

Since they're not involved in either damage modification or damage mitigation, they're utility.

I believe that there's a problem with the current system because some ships are far too limited by their slot layouts. A system like this would let CCP balance certain aspects of a ship without messing with others. Given that they stated they'd like to eliminate tiers, it would be a great time to look at ideas to make all the ships viable.

An idea would be to make high-slots fixed turret sizes and then give larger ships primary and secondary weapon banks for large and smaller support weapons. And then add small ships with coaxial mounts for fitting larger weapons.

Too bad this would mean redesigning EVE to such an extent, it will never happen.