Takahiro Kashuken
Red Star.
EoN.
3431
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Posted - 2014.04.19 13:11:00 -
[1] - Quote
Part 1: Engineering & Capacitors
Part 2: Armor & Shield
Look at EVE, look at it, a sea of skills and modules await you except we are playing DUST and we have less than ever in the vehicle tree and marketplace even though we are supposed to be all living in New Eden.
To be a part of the same world would make you think that various things would be very similar such as the skills and modules.
But they are not and this is a problem.
Skill books
The skill books in EVE all offer a bonus or even 2 generally, a few skill books still do not offer a bonus but unlock a ship or module which has a bonus attached to it.
Example - Caldari Battlecruiser Skill - Required for the Naga/Drake/Ferox/DNI/Vulture and Nighthawk.
Now the Drake has 2 skill bonuses attached to it which are 4% bonus to all shield resistances and 10% bonus to Kinetic Heavy Missile and Heavy Assault Missile damage per level - The skill book that increases these bonuses is the Caldari Battlecruiser skill book.
So at Caldari Battlecruiser level 5 that is 20% resistance and 50% to Kinetic damage for the Drake.
So the skill book doesn't have any bonuses but instead it is the ship which has them so the incentive to skill up the book to level 5 is still there and it is the same for all the current ship types and at a certain level which is generally at levels 3 & 5 it will unlock the next skill book which in this case would be Caldari Battleship and level 5 will unlock T2 Caladri Battlecruisers.
You could say this is the case for dropsuits but the skills are tied to the book instead of the suit but work the same way when you level the book.
Looking at the Core Skills in DUST, infantry have it all and so did vehicles, pilots had access to skills which improved the amount of Armor/Shields/CPU/PG they had before they were removed.
This meant that just as it does in infantry and in EVE a 20mil SP pilot/player will have a small advantage when in comparison with a 0SP pilot/player.
The Core Skills are a bonus and with Infantry and EVE pilots they are a must have, you get to increase the amount of Armor/Shield you start with, the increases to CPU/PG means that you can fit better modules on a basic suit/ship or it gives you more room to fiddle about with your ship knowing that you don't need to use a CPU/PG module because you have enough. In EVE you get a bigger Capacitor which recharges quicker which means you can last longer with an active tank or just turn a active tank into a passive one or a mixture of both.
Add in other skills which reduce the CPU/PG for other modules and weapons and you can fit your dropsuit/ship better, you can make it tank more damage, you can make it tank longer, you can make it dish out more damage, you can increase the EHP, you can increase the passive recharge etc.
All the skills help you in some way in EVE but also increases the variety of fits you can use, for vehicles users in DUST this is not a possibility, we are limited by our skills/modules and vehicles .
Modules
The modules in EVE are plentiful and varied, generally there is 2- 5 different T1 types of the same module varying in different areas like resistance percentage, capacitor use, CPU/PG fitting requirements, heat damage, damage etc.
After T1 we have T2 modules which are a straight upgrade, bit more expensive CPU/PG fitting wise but overall offer better stats.
Then we have Faction/Officer and Deadspace modules which are generally a lot more expensive but can be slightly better in different areas i.e. Better CPU/PG fitting requirements but can be very expensive due to how rare they are.
In DUST vehicles modules are hit and miss, some improve from Basic-Adv-Proto like Shield Extenders and Armor Plates but others like Hardeners do not, they change in how long they activate for and cooldown but the main mechanism doesn't change at all.
So Shield Hardeners are at 40% and that is the same across the board, instead in EVE all modules get an improvement in its main mechanism - So a active Explosive Shield Hardener at T1 offers 50% resistance to Explosive damage, the T2 version offers 55% but the Faction/Officer and Deadspace variants may change its activation time or activation cost.
So Basic could have been 30%, ADV 40% and Proto 50% for example, add in rare modules from PVE in 2018 and you could save on PG/CPU while it lasts 10second longer but gives 45% resistance instead.
The Shield Extender also ignores EVE, in EVE it increases the passive recharge on any ship, the larger the module the bigger the passive increase and the passive regen works even when taking damage.
Another problem is module sizes, EVE has Small/Medium/Large and Capital sizes where as DUST is Small or Large. If and When MAVs come into play Medium needs to be added but really they should be added now anyways just for variety reasons and testing.
The skill books and modules work hand in hand with each other and the addition of the capacitor makes it work even better, more variety, more playstyles and more things to skill into which are useful and not useless.
It can make using vehicles challenging and fun again, it can make pilots happy knowing that if they skill up this book they get x back in return which means they can do y fit and test it out in the field and it can separate them from the 0SP noobs who may roam about looking to get into vehicles but the advantage would be still to do with the pilots skill and vehicle fit and how they use it in z situation. |