I think you're missing the point of this thread. We've been asking CCP for months now not to just post numbers up right before a patch is released, but to engage the community in more advanced discussion about design intent - before they even get to the stage where numbers start being adjusted. Thankfully, they've obliged and I hope that this is the beginning of a new trend. It's exactly the sort of communication that the CPM has been pushing for.

When balancing anything, whether its weapons, dropsuits, or vehicles - you have to start with an outline of how you want the game to play out on the battlefield - and this discussion doesn't have to include numbers in any way. Once you establish good goals, numbers become the means to an end - the tools with which you execute a design strategy. Typically, all players have received in the past are those numbers - and without the accompanying discussion of intent. This is completely backwards: there is little value in CCP wasting time balancing numbers according to a plan that the players may or may not agree with. What's the point in "fixing" vehicles if CCP disagrees on what needs to be fixed?

All that to say - numbers come in to play towards the end of this discussion, once goals are tweaked and finalized. If there's any major red flags here, CCP is saving a ton of time and money by allowing you to point them out now before they sit down to crunch numbers.

This is also why all the QQ about "OMG THIS NERFS MY ________" is fairly irrelevant and premature - no one should be making assumptions about other variables (AV weaponry, WP accrual) being fixed. AV will certainly need adjustment, that goes without saying. Again, tweaking AV numbers to balance against this new design strategy is something that is done during its execution - not during the initial community sanity-check, which is what this thread is really about. Once they move into the number-tweaking phase, you can than evaluate the values adjusted based on the criteria established by the design strategy: They'll clearly either support the concept or they won't.

Many thanks to those that HAVE been patient and realize that this sort of communication is exactly what we want to encourage CCP to participate in - and shelved the bitching and moaning about buffs, nerfs, and numbers for the time being to focus on the merits (or lack thereof) in the strategy outlined in the OP.

I hopped on a HAV in a FW match today and it completely dominated. The new map gave him lots of places to seek cover and we survived the entire match. Only once did we get very low on armor.

So I think the fear of this patch being a nerf for HAVs is wrong.

So everybody wants invulnerability from the little armored soldiers running around, lol, get a clue! You are all taking parts of the game you like and saying "make me special because I spent isk to get this" lol, this game comes from CCP.

In Eve players blow up trillions of isk worth of ships and stations and stuff daily.

Even the biggest ship worth trillions of isk can be captured by a warp bubble from a ship a fraction of the cost. Stop whining and man up! Your HAV and your dropship are not going to ever be invulnerable, this is a kill and be killed game that is part of the kill and be killed sandbox created by CCP. Do not deploy any vehicle you don't want to see blown up, keep it shiny, nice, and safe in your assets and bring stuff to the battlefield you can afford to lose.

The absolute foolishness of this statement is laughable. No where in Eve is safe, let me repeat that for emphasis, NO WHERE IN EVE IS SAFE!

My corp specializes in high security ganking, and war decs, it's what we do.

If you undock in high or low secuirity space we can kill you, if you flee to your player owned station we can blow it and you up. If you are in Null security space everyone you meet not in your corp or alliance might blow you up.

Do not speak of what you do not know.

So I believe no dropsuit, no vehicle in Dust514 will ever be invulnerable, remember it's kill and be killed!