To follow up, what would I do?

Change HP modules to percentage based with stacking penalties.
(this means you can put more HP on a scout, but you will never be HP competitive with a heavier suit)

Give each suit ONE ewar based bonus
(remove the scan range from caldari/gallente and then give it to amarr)

Give each suit ONE other bonus
(i.e. something to excentuate their racial profiles)

This may mean altering the base stats across entire suits in order to make the suits unique.
(as has been shown before, the stamina/regen bonus to the amarr scout suit is completely pointless witht he way regen and speed interact)

Just to throw it out there one last time for CCP, to keep it simple

You can't balance the gal dampening with the cal precision without the waves of opportunity provided by the cloak for the use of the other two scouts. The cloak dampening effect was thy only thing that allowed cal scouts to have their current racial. I'll tell you right now, its not possible to balance this without nullifying one or more variants of the scout.



By changing the cal racial to a non precision bonus, these will happen

1) Two scouts automatically become more viable, no longer needing to dampen so hard (since alpha is taking away their defense). Since they are not auto detected they can focus on their specialization (mins hacking, amars fitting)

2) The gal scouts utility drops since auto detection is not so prevalent, why have a high damp when the only thing that can possible catch you is a gal logi? It still has the range bonus, that can be debated if you want, but the result is that the gallente falls down with the other 2 scouts.

3) Last but not least, the cal scout utility is free to still make it relevant and on par with the scouts, also its changing one sinlge variable rather than another roll of the dice with a lot of changes in racial bonuses. What the cal scout racial could be is probably what my last response to this thread will be. After that point, its up to the powers that be to make a smart decision.



I will also say that the removal/reduction of dampening on cloaks gives you guys more work, but if this is happening then the cal precision has to go, and I don't say this with joy either, its just what is required for balancing given this direction and limited resources.

Your math is full of assumptions and shortcuts. Explain why 20%? Explain why no stacking penalties? Would the non-stacking penalized modules multiply in a compounding way or be lumped together?

Every other module in Dust suffers from decreasing return on investment, why should HP mods be any bit different? Even the speed penalties for the armor plates are percentage based!!

The way it is now, the plates add a dispropotionatly large amount of HP (as a percentage gain) to smaller suits, allowing them to have all of the advatanges of the light suit but to circumvent the drawbacks (wet paper towels for HP). This flies in the face of any balancing attempts, and it also makes the base HP stat much less important (part of the reason why medium suits are so entirely compromised right now).

All of that aside (including the maths, I can just throw more figures at you as well.) Is something that you have overlooked. Every other module in the entire game.

Due to the percentage based modules, no other suit is really going to be even close to a scout in the scouts roles (scan radius, profile, precision, speed, stamina, stamina regen, shield recharge, and hitbox size). Sure a medium suit might be able to come close to the scout in ONE area, but not the other 7. The scout can become compettive with medium suits by fitting HP mods, while retaining ALL of those advantages above.

This is the problem we must address. Scouts are already kings of 7 different base stats in a game largely dictated by percentile gains. The only base stat that it is truely lacking is easily made up for by module in which the scout (relatively) gains the most from.

No, as long as the rest of the modules in the game only allow suits to be competitive (stat wise) with suits from their same class, HP should absolutely be no different.

This would be very detrimental to gamepley. The viability of the gallente scout doesnt come from the ability to remain unseen; it's the tanking ability that makes it meta worthy. The only scout that can counter a caldari is gallente and vice versa but; with the proposed change to cloaks, this will no longer be the case. The minny and amarr , with the right modules, will be able to pick up the gallente scout once the cloak bonus is done away with.

The problem with gallente and most other scouts is the equipment slots. They have two equipment slots in which they choose cloak and something else which is, IMHO, not right. All scouts should only have 1 equipment slot and choose if they want to use RE or cloaks....

Summary

The problem with gallente scout is bricktanking and having the cloak on. It has nothing to do with the bonus which will be very necessary once the you eliminate the cloaks dampening effect. This will make it so that no scout is safe from caldari scouts no matter their skill level. Rethink this...

Bricktanking is the problem not the dampening bonus.

No, my assertion that all other modules in this game are based upon a STANDARD design philosophy that only two types of modules break, shield HP and armor HP modules.

It is further reinforced by the fact that CCP has knowlingly designed suits that certain modules are just downright useless on. Your assumption that the"assault scout" as a viable playstyle is 100% opinion and with numerous counter examples in CCP game design. For instance, on heavy suits(i.e. commandos and sentinels) damps, scan range and scan precision mods are next to useless because of the incredibly poor base stats of these suits. Actually, Scan range mods are more or less useless on all suits but the scouts.

You also convieniently skip over the fact that the "assault scout" is hands down better than an assault is given the current meta. The "assault scout" can come within ~1-200 eHP while having greater scan radius, scan precision, profile dampening, movement speed, sprint speed, strafing speed, jumping ability, stamina pool, stamina regen, shield regen and an extra equipment slot. This suit is only competitive because of the ludicrous amount of relative HP a scout can get from set value armor plates.

No, we do not need a jack of all trades, master of most suit (what the scout is now). We need a return to suits competing with eachother (stat wise) within their own class, as all of the rest of the suits do. Your argument stems from the belief that you would increase fitting options for one class of suit, you totally disregard the fact that having one suit class that is superior to another in nearly every facet destroys variety it doesn't increase it. You rally for less of a meta, not more of one.

Scout suits should be just that... scout suits. Just like how logi suits should be logisuits and assault suits should be assault suits and so on. The great fitting system that we have allows a large variety of fits within each class, and yes to allow each class to perform (with lesser efficiency) roles it is not intended for. Absolute value HP modules directly contradict that.

Base stats SHOULD matter.

EDIT: Or are you arguing that there should be a "Scout sentinel" role?

14dB means under the focused radar.

In summary

Overall we generally agree that
1)GA scout could fit too much because of his native dampening
2)GA scout also got a free repair module on top of that
3)GA passive scan bonus doesnt necessarily make sense for role
4)CA scouts passive scan (fondly known as wallhacking) a tad too much
5)Cloak gameplay with dampening is a key factor in fun ewar
6)The need to specialize is enforced in a big way with power graduation
7)To not force equipment selection by having built in scout bonuses for the cloak specifically (such as duration for GA)


Cloak keeps dampening, and at better rates than we originally proposed, 0-5-10 instead of 0-2.5-5
*GA scout damp bonus to 3% per level instead of 5% for a maximum bonus of 15%
*Reducing CA passive scan to 3% from 5%
*Reducing GA passive scan to 1% from 5% (I would think this gets changed to something more fitting later)
*Reducing GA regen to 1/hp from 3/hp
*Duration changes stay the same as original proposal with the same recharge ratio as the old cloak

Updated Hotfix Alpha Numbers

No changes to shared group scans
No changes to Gallogi FS, it is a very narrow scan with a limited steatlh counter by another role than CA scouts. I want to see how that plays out.
No changes so bonuses affect modules fitted (a much bigger change)


I have updated the google docs accordingly

I just simply do not believe in having stats and numbers equating to immunity; if there is any sort of immunity to be gained it should be from player skills and player skills alone.

If you want to be undetected it should be sourced from player skills not because you shoved on a harry potter cloak and some sneakers on.

It should be because you poked the other guys eyes out; threw sand in their face and darted around like a wild illusioned shadow.

If you want to detect players it should be sourced form player skill, not because you shoved on a magical scanning wand and waved it in the air.

It should be because you keep your head on a stick, watch your back, and check the points.

why not just make the cloak 10-5% damp instead of completely removing it.

Everything needs one counter measure. Make the focused scanner scan to 14 db. On a proto galante logi. Paper rock scissors
<---- caldari logi personally

Or maybe make classes of plates-light, medium, and heavy (militia - pro of all). For example, a light proto plate only gives you 60 hp extra but has no movement penalty on heavy and very low on scout. On the other end of the spectrum proto heavy plate gives you 180 hp extra (per plate) but a 7% penalty to heavies and 10% to scouts. This would give more variation on speed vs ehp while balancing them on the scout, since a near undetectable Gal Scout running 1k EHP runs at the speed of a heavy, while scouts who want to speed tank could still add a light plate or two. This would mean a Gal Heavy stacking plates would be almost a god sticking on a single point, but in open terrain would be a sitting...er, waddling duck. I know the light plate is pretty much what Ferroscale is, but if you changed it to weight class plates, each weight class of plate could have a movement penalty to each weight class suit.

or perhaps make movement accelerate the use rate of the cloaking duration

This is what I say needs to be done to balance scouts. No more cloaked RE guys. No more cloaked uplinkers. It forces you to use a gun with the cloak.