Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For those of you who don't know the specifics, and I'd assume that's the majority of you, here is a brief overview: Shield Uniformity is a function in which shields naturally begin to allow partial damage penetration to armor once they go to 25% HP or below. The skill Tactical Shield Manipulation (TSM) acts to increase the uniformity of shields--that's how much of the shield HP does not allow damage to get through--by 5% per level. So at level 5 it's supposed to provide complete uniformity, meaning damage will never penetrate shields and hit armor until the shields have been fully depleted.


In short, uniformity is good for active shield tanks, and bad for passive shield tanks. With an active shield tank, it makes sense to want uniformity. You want all of the damage you receive to hit your shields where you (presumably) have the best resistances, and thus will take less net damage from those attacks. But a passive shield tank that is based around a fast natural shield regeneration will actually prefer letting some damage through when the shield is close to collapsing. The shield reaches peak recharge rate at 25% HP remaining, and as it gets lower, the rate of recharge falls quickly. If some of the received damage penetrates past the shield and into armor, it lightens the load on the remaining shield, allowing it to continue regenerating quickly for longer.

The easiest example to produce is with a Drake or similar shield-tanker fit with a strong passive-regen setup, in a PVE mission having its shields worn down just slightly faster than they can compensate for. With no bonus to shield uniformity (uniformity 75%), the Drake's armor will gradually be eaten away while its shields will hold, gradually losing their ground. This can buy time for the Drake to finish off some enemies and reduce the incoming damage, potentially allowing shields to recover. But with 100% uniformity the difference is very large: the Drake's shields plummet faster the lower they get, very quickly reaching 0% and causing the shields to completely stop regenerating while the Drake's weak armor is torn to shreds in seconds.

=============================================================

I want to see something done about this discrepancy with shield uniformity, something that allows both active tankers and passive tankers to be satisfied. As it stands, the TSM skill is counter-productive to passive shield tankers, which is made particularly lousy by the fact that it is the major prerequisite for tech 2 shield hardeners.




I have a proposal: modules that increase shield regeneration rate are generally used only by those who are passive shield tanking, thus perhaps those modules should decrease shield uniformity as a bonus to their regular effects. In particular, the Shield Recharger (mid slot module) needs a boost if we are expected to ever use one because even a ship devoting 8 slots to a passive shield tank will still fail to layer resistances enough times to make the Shield Recharger better in any case than a shield hardener.

So I propose that fitting one of these modules to your ship reduces your uniformity by a set amount, with the total uniformity reduction simply being the largest value of any module you have fitted, meaning it doesn't stack:

Shield Rechargers: -25% uniformity
Shield Flux Coils: -20% uniformity
Shield Power Relays: -15% uniformity
Core Defense Field Purger rigs: -10% uniformity

This would also make the TSM skill potentially useful even to passive tankers as it will increase uniformity and prevent it from going too low with these modules. Ideally, 70-80% uniformity is probably best, but with TSM untrained and a Shield Recharger fit, one could get as low as 50% uniformity which you don't want, thus giving you a reason to train TSM.

while i have no specific proposal id rather see the issue addressed with a change to the mechanic.

Solution searching for a problem.

you probably don't passive shield tank?

there is a problem with TSM where leveling it hurts your combat performance with some fits

the OPs idea is not perfect but its better than a lot of the ones out there



to be honest something needs to be done about passive shield tanking right now you can count on one had the number of ships able to pull it off in PvP and they generally have to give up most if not all of their DPS to do so

AFAIK, the entire purpose of a shield tank is to prevent damage from getting at the thin armor and soft structure beneath. So, why would anyone want to allow damage through the shields in the first place? Additionally, if you're in the situation where you're taking enough damage that your passive shield tank is dropping down to near or below 25%, you need to be focusing on your GTFO.

This is being said by someone who solo'd lvl 4 missions in a Drake for years.

That is correct. Basically, lacking shield uniformity makes it so that as shield regen rate goes down, DPS dealt to shields also goes down as some of it bleeds through. That armor has little other use to your ship, one of the best things it can do for you is buy you time to let your shield tank recover.




That's not what happens at all. Even with lots of bonus resists, a passive-regen ship will have less EHP within the broad range of decent regen rate on shields than it has in both armor and hull packed together. The bleed-through will only very slowly whittle down your armor and it really can make a tremendous difference. And yes, I have actually experienced this on the battlefield. Way back before I had trained TSM 4, I flew a Drake with tech 1 hardeners into combat missions and would often find my shields drifting a bit below 30%, and I would not become alarmed if I was about to kill off a few rats in the next minute or so because I knew I had plenty of extra buffer to recover with. Now I actually lost a Drake in a mission after I trained TSM to 4, I saw my shields going down and I'd not thought about shield uniformity but was used to having over a minute to fix the situation. Well I saw my shields at 25%, then I looked away from my shields for less than ten seconds before I heard that 40% armor alarm. There was not enough time to align out before my Drake was destroyed.

The difference isn't negligible, it isn't minor, it's tremendous in the right circumstance.

The different resists of armor have saved me a few times in just this way, but it should be adjustable in the fitting window.

Now as one of biggest contributes to the bad idea thread, I would go further so that the passive sheid users aren't the only ones reaping this benefit. Adjustable shields with the option of up to 50% bleedover into armor. I dual rep on occasion, so the option of having split armor/sheilds appeals.

Armor taking 50% of each hit's raw damage with the high resists in the sheilds weaknesses would be fun to play with.

Just to be clear, separate from my own "wouldn't it be nice" digression, supported +1

False, in many cases it buys you a LOT of time. This is why it is extra important in PVP. It is difficult to test in PVP which is why my numbers come from PVE, but it is in PVP where you are much more likely to be forced to stand your ground. Passive regen tanks could be a lot better (and perhaps actually useful) in PVP if the pilots actually lacked that shield uniformity that TSM provides.

You got the gist of it, and it should be limited to station fitting window, but I'm not sure if the fitting windows in space or station can have options the other doesn't. Not saying it can't happen, I just don't know.

Having options only available in station would be a great feature, like fine tuning your ship in proper facilities. Keeping this from supercaps might also be for the best.