Of course it won't work, because people want to solo vehicles instead of using teamwork to bring them down.

slot layouts are not the be all end all of progression.

I'm not near a Playstation at the moment, so i cant quote numbers, and really don't need to:

tiercide in EvE afaik introduced bonuses to hulls.

We already have coloured suits in DUST, so the player base is used to identifying different "hulls" thru colour skins, i feel this is important as it does reduce the processing demands made on the PS3.

so all we need are HAV and DS hull (and LAV if needed...) that have specialized and generic bonuses.
edit::::standard racial tanks require level 1 in racial HAV skill, Advanced level 3, proto level 5.:::::

bad example 1 "standard"
madrugar hull cost 75,000 isk, standard green colour
1% reduced hyrbid turret heat build up per gallente HAV skill lv

bad example 2's "advanced"
madrugar assault hull cost 175,000 isk, grey and green "concrete jungle" camo skin
1% reduced Blaster turret heat build up per Gallente HAV skill lv
+3% Heavy Armor Repairer repair amount per Gallente HAV skill lv

Madrugar Enforcer hull cost 175,000 isk, selected panels: 'dirt brown'
3% reduced Railgun heat build up per Gallente HAV skill lv
1% reduced Railgun CPU needs per Gallente HAV skill lv

bad Example 3's "proto"
Madrugar Assault ii hull cost: 500,000 isk, base coat black-selected panels "urban jungle" camo
+15% Turret Ammo resupply rate
-2% Armor Plate CPU/PG requirements per Gallente HAV skill lv
+3% Heavy Armor Repairer repair amount per Gallente HAV skill lv

Madrugar Enforcer ii hull cost 500,000 isk, base coat black- selected panels "dirt brown"
+7.5% Turret Zoom Fidelity
1% reduced Railgun CPU needs per Gallente HAV skill lv
1% reduced Railgun Spool Up time and Heat Build up per Gallente HAV skill lv


Amarr HAV
"Preacher" hull cost 75,000 isk, "tarnished silver"
1% reduced energy turret PG requirements per Amarr HAV skill lv

2 "advanced"
'Preacher-Ares' hull cost 175,000 isk, tarnished silver with selected panels "urban jungle" camo
2% reduced Pulse Laser Turret PG requirements per Amarr HAV skill lv
+2% armor resistances per Amarr HAV skill lv

'Preacher-Horus' hull cost 175,000 isk , tarnished silver with selected panels "dirt brown"
2% reduced Beam Laser turret heat build up per Amarr HAV skill lv
2% reduced Beam Laser Turret PG requirements per Amarr HAV skill lv

3 "proto"
'Preacher-Horus ii' hull cost 500,000 isk, Black base coat with gold trim-selected panels dirt brown
+7.5% Turret Zoom Fidelity
+2% Active Armor Hardener resistance per Amarr HAV skill lv
2% reduced Beam Laser Heat Build Up and Turret PG requirements per Amarr HAV skill lv

'Preacher-Ares ii' hull cost 500,000 isk, Urban jungle base coat, gold trim-selected- panels matt black overlay
+15% Ammo Resupply Amount
2% reduced Pulse Laser Turret PG requirements per Amarr HAV skill lv
+2% armor resistances per Amarr HAV skill lv


figures are completely bonkers and pulled from the hat of an old homeless guy that lives down by the train station...
The point Should be that slot layouts don't need to change from tier to tier, that by using hull bonuses akin to the system in EvE, you can make hulls attractive for both generic bonuses and highly specialised bonuses.
CPU/PG would need attention for each tier but that is as it always is.

tldr:
slots are not important... design, design goals and parameters, and adjustable sliders for later balance are important.


....>.<
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imho
okay i puts the lotion on and gets back in its box :(

You missed his point. Prototype Dropsuits are balanced by time (SP) and ISK. They are equal or better than lower tiered gear. In an equal environment (both using STD mods and weapons, with equal FPS skill) the guy in the protosuit will ways beat the guy in in the STD suit. Or ADV suit.
And this massive increase in effectiveness is what kills the game for newbies, especially when at a certain point, there's no reason not to run protogear, because you can always afford it.

Now, I don't think anyone is saying it's working that you whip newbies in your high-sp gear; they're saying that it should come with drawbacs, like the way that a Duvolle is stronger but harder to fit than a GEK.

I think the suit and vehicle bonuses are done wrong. Every suit and vehicle should have bonuses and they should reflect the race and purpose of the item.

Standard HAVs should have about two types per race. Each race should have an HAV that focuses on damage and one one defense. The bonuses should increase with the level of a certain skill.

Advanced HAVs should get two bonuses. One bonus that is skill dependent and focuses on damage or defense and a static role bonus. Each race would have three to four HAVs and they would all have a different role bonus but the damage/defense bonus would be the same as the standard. Bonuses could include damage resistance, speed, armor/shield reps and logi focused bonuses. They would encourage diversity.

Finally, prototype vehicles would include the lower tier bonuses and then an additional skill based bonus to push the specializing to the edge. Their final skill based bonus would be for things like armor rep range, ammo supply rate, cool down and other bonuses that are geared towards changing how a module works.

The way I see it is that a standard vehicle should be very flexible and just as powerful as an advanced and an advanced should be a bit less flexible but better at the one job it is made for. Prototype vehicle should only be good at one job, they should be a glass cannon or a defensive beast. Just because the vehicle is a prototype doesn't mean that it has to have more slots and resources. Proto vehicles are specialized weapons and shouldn't be just more of the same.

The point of specialized equipment is to do one thing really well not just add more resources. Proto gear should have draw backs because they are specialized into one role, the bonuses should be better but the fitting should be tight and they should be focused on one job not be a jack-of-all-trades.

You're using "pay to win" in a sloppy sense. Why? State your agenda.

I think when you say "pay to win" you mean tiericide. And also alignment of DUST with more conventional FPS titles.

Zdub, you've earnt thus thread a place on my lust with your comments, you made some points I hadn't considered before. Also Im off the opinion that tiered modules aren't a bad thing, it promotes fitting choices and speciliasiation in your fit, that's good. I'm after the suits and the weapons to a lesser extent, I'd like to see the tiered variants removed and balaned correctly, say around the advanced level for examples sake, and then a greater emphasis being placed on the varaints of weapons, such as the breach and the burst AR, you get the picture.

That said in prepared to hold off on that area and see how things like the changes to swarm launchers turn out, it may be that im off the Mark in this area, we'll just have to wait and see.

Additionally, we have to use "the current environment" to prove people wrong.
So, it is apparent in this current environment that vehicals and dropsuits alike receive more slots and fitting when they advance through the tiers. So, it would be logical to give an adv caldari tank 6 highs and 3 lows because the standard caldari tank has 5 highs and 2 lows. Mirrior the same advancements for the armor tanks and give both more fitting and bam! Thats an advanced tank. From there, follow the same procedure for the proto tank, escalating their builds to be a true proto tank.

In this envirnment of progression, skills often give additional benifits in additon to unlocking gear, like mass driver operation unlocks more massdriver variants and gives a 5% increase to explosion radius per level. So, the skill that unlocks the tiers of tanks could give a +5 to 10% shield/armor tottal HP per level, respectfully. Or +5 to 10% PG/cpu bonus, or speed, or additional resist, what have you, or any combination of these bonuses like the current enforcers have.

This way, tanks become much, much more powerful throughout the tiers so they can compete with proto AV.
Giving proto tanks 7/5 respectfully would be okay because infantry will still be able to handle them, many AV specialist have proficientcy 5, double/triple damage modded proto AV, the maximum amount of punishment possible in dust and they travel Yooo together in squads. They can handle a tank no problem and by the time we actually do get our proto tanks, many dozens of hundreds more players will be doing the absolute maximum amount of damage possible in dust

However, this is only staying in the "current envirnment" and advancing through the tiers using the fitting methid, increasing slots and fitting stats. But! There is another equally effective way withiut using too many slots. Instead, you can model proto tanks the same way the adv tanks were in chrome, improving base stats over the under tier. for Exmaple the sagaris. It had more speed, fitting, shields, sheild regen and was faster than the gunlogi, its stats were significantly brighter than the gunlogi and was significantly more effective dispite only having the advantage of one additional low slot over the gunlogi. So, you could bump the base stats significantly to make a prot tank, give the skills like x per level, have an additional 3 or 4k shields, built in resist, a built in heavy rep or active residt that you can use in addition to how you fit your slots, ect

The only problem with this is that unlike infantry, tanks already have a huge advantage in survivability and damage output. Each fitting slot drastically increases capability multiple folds greater than every slot an infantry gets. Infantry suits were designed to fight infantry. Not tanks. Tanks were designed to fight tanks and Infantry. See where I'm going with this?



Giving tanks 5-10% a level in survability is a horrid idea. Let's take a heavy. 400/400. Give them 25% increase, that's 500/500.

Take a Mardrugar now. 1200/6000, now goes to 1490/7500. That's a massive increase in EHP, which is totally out of line with the boosts given to Infantry. Now, if you want to talk 2% per level up to 10%, that makes a little more sense. You cannot simply give tanks the same boosts given to infantry, because of the already inflated values in survivability and EHP that they get already.



At this point, I'm about 100% sure you completely failed to make a Proto tank which is on par with the idea that IWS had in mind. First, I can take an MLT fit and destroy a PRO fit infantry player. It's not that hard, I just have to play a little better. The difference between PRO and MLT is not that high for many things(i.e. there's a 3 damage/round difference between a STD and PRO AR). Making tanks - as you put it - "much, much more powerful" is just going to break them, and proves that you DID NOT read what IWS wrote. The idea is not to make them powerful per se, but to make them VIABLE. Stepping from MLT to STD to ADV to PRO should not make you god, it should simply give you an edge.

Furthermore, the amount of AV players is in direct response to how powerful and broken tanks are already. Making them power powerful will exacerbate problems, because THAT'S when you'll start seeing way more AV - and way more powerful AV - on the field. Remember - You skilled in to your tank to kill indiscriminately. Infantry players have to go OUT OF THEIR WAY to skill weapons and proficiency in to AV in order to become competitive. MLT AV does laughable damage to anything higher than MLT tanks right now. We have to waste hard earned SP to even have a chance to counter tanks. All tankers do is spend SP to simply become *more* effective. They have no ''alternate role'' that they have to skill in to in order to counter AV.

Finally, do you have any idea how dumb you sound when you talk about "AV people traveling together in squads"? As an AV player, I have never went in to a squad with other AV players for the simple purpose of hunting tanks. The real problem is squads in general. Don't get the community thinking there's some pandemic of AV hordes roaming around to gank their shinies. It's not true.



This is the only thing you've said so far that made sense. Just go back and examine the amount of HP you want to give them. Reference above: 25% increase is about 2850 HP. You want to give a 3-4K increase per level? That's a 35%+ increase in HP per level - NOTHING infantry can do will be able to compete at that level. And that's before the resist and rep bonuses you're referring to, which will exponentially increase EHP even further past that.

Overall, 2/10. B for effort, F in everything else.