EVE General Discussion

Most fleets are split up into one of two camps: armor or shields. With mechanics the way they currently are there's really no way around it: choose one or the other for your entire fleet. This is a big problem in a lot of ways. Fleets are unable to be both diverse and effective, and players who focus on flying one type of ship are automatically excluded from half of the fleets available to them, to name two of the more obvious problems with this system. There are also probably a million and one ways to go about fixing this, and I'm not sure any of them would be considered "easy" fixes (in the sense that they wouldn't belong in the "little things" category.) I do have a suggestion, though, and feedback, trolling, complaints, insults, and the like are all welcome here.

I've been training up my shield skills recently, and when looking at Tactical Shield Manipulation (one of the silliest skills in the game, currently, imo) an idea struck me. What if damage bled through (at reasonably balanced rate) even at 100% shields ... and what if this applied to armor as well? Ships with supermassive shield tanks but next-to-no armor would suddenly become just a little less viable and fleets who intend to be in combat for anything resembling a longish period of time might then want to consider bringing both shield AND armor logi. All fleets at that point would also want to consider bringing some tertiary method of repairing hull damage on the fly as well.

Balancing something like this out so that the numbers work and it doesn't totally negate the idea of having a strong tank in just one area (shield/armor) while simultaneously helping mixed fleets to be more viable would be a bit of work, but ultimately I think it would be a good thing. It'd require damage to leak through at a reasonable rate even at 100% shields or armor, a new skill for armor tankers to match Tactical Shield Manipulation, and for those two skills to be reworked. With this change, hopefully more people would be allowed into more fleets.

Discuss/troll away. I'd especially like to see discussion here on ways to make mixed fleets more of a serious option (and whether or not that would actually be a good thing from a "having fun playing a game" perspective.)