Still Tiericide will not work for Dust as it did for EVE, it will either bring some strong benefits or ruin variation and invalidate SP like it does for tank modules.

You're both right and wrong here.

Right because tiericide is about specialising the higher ranked suits, making them better than the lower ranked ones at specific roles, like Logi, scout, assault, heavy.

Wrong in your comparison to the ship classes in EVE. Dropsuits aren't the equivalent of all the ship classes in EVE, they're the equivalent of just one of the classes. So standard suits would be the equivalent of T1, low bonuses to give light, medium and heavy suits a bit of a role bonus, but make them still usable for any role. Advanced would be the equivalent of T2, better bonuses in more specific fields, so you start to properly see Logi, Scout, Heavy Weapons and Assault, maybe adding something like a Combat engineer at some point in the future, but at this level they start to also get less effective in other roles. And Proto would be T3, where suits are the best they can be at one task, maybe bonused for one type of weapon or equipment, but they're at a serious disadvantage if you fit them for other roles.

Each race would have it's own specialisations in each role by what types of modules they're bonused for. Amarr assaults would have bonuses to laser rifles and Caldari assaults bonussed for Rail rifles , for example. That way to get the most out of the game, you would not only put SP into whatever specialisation you wanted to play, but you'd also go into other races to give you more weapons variation or into other roles for greater tactical flexibility on the battlefield.

This is exactly how it works in EVE, you don't fit lasers onto a Minmatar Logi ship, like the Scythe, because there is a better ship for them, in the form of the Ammaran Maller or Omen.

The suits would also get slot layouts and bonusses for either shield or armour tanking, making it much rarer to find someone who has set up a dual tanked dropsuit with three or four times the base eHP.

I don't really understand why the dropsuits weren't set up this way in the first place or why CCP didn't foresee the protostomping problem with how the suits are set up at the moment.

There would, of course, be a period of adjustment whilst players got used to the new system, but once that period was over, Dust would be a more balanced game where new players wouldn't automatically be stomped because they don't run all proto gear and skill and tactical squad composition would become an important factor.

Or that's what I think anyway.

Dust dropsuit levels are not equivalent to ship classes in Eve. We're all in the same class, the dropsuit levels are equivalent to the eve ships tech level.

And lack of variety is exactly why we need tiercide, because it will create more variety as each level of dropsuit becomes a more specialist thing. Standard suits would be highly flexible on the battlefield, but never doing any one role as well as the others, Advanced would be more specialised, but still with a bit of flexibility and prototype would be highly specialised at one role and ineffective at others.

The standard suits, would effectively be the current light, medium and heavy ones. Little in the way of bonuses so they're versatile and adaptable. Advanced would give you some role bonuses so you're encouraged to fit them a certain way, but they still have some flexibility. This is where you get the equivalent of the Scout, Assault, Logistics and Commando roles. Prototype would be a step beyond where suits are bonused so that they're extremely effective at one aspect of their role, so this is where you'd get dedicated snipers, and advanced scouts, and things like healer logi or support logi. But the Prototype suits would, through adjustment of the slots, pg and cpu, be only good at their intended role.

I don't think I'm explaining this very well to be honest, but the main point is not comparing the range of dropsuits to the whole range of ships in eve, but comparing them to a single ship class, like frigates for example.

I'm not sure how vehicles fit in, I've never really used them and never really studied them at all.


[Edit because I forgot to mention this] Aurum gear should be limited to cosmetic changes and boosters.

Another fantasy to break is how cheap your suits would be if they where player provided.

we're talking 10 isk, not 10 hundred, 10 thousand or million; just 10 a pop. Unpopular ones will dip further and may become refine fodder; the specialists would likely gain most popularity capping at 1k a piece.

When you look at the fairly small mineral amounts a frigate takes, and realise that it costs 100-200 thousand isk for a T1 hull, then scale down to a single dropsuit, Iron Wolf Saber's estimate of how little they'd cost may actually be on the high side. Most likely, a Blueprint in eve wouldn't be able to make less than 100 or possibly 1000 (or maybe more) dropsuits due to the small mineral costs per suit.

Not in the quantities we're talking. Morphite is currently selling at roughly 5000 isk per unit and Zydrine at around 500 isk per unit (and these are eve isk, not dust isk) a T1 frigate takes roughly 2-20 zydrine and no Morphite. Morphite starts getting used for T2 ships and a T2 frigate doesn't take more than about 50 units of Morphite. Scale that down to dropsuits and one dropsuit would take a small fraction of a single unit of each. Even if it was pure Morphite, A dropsuit would not cost more than a couple of isk.