I agree now is the time to reintroduce pre-loaded skills, but I am still a bit confused what you mean with "equal benefit".
Do you mean:

A: All players get the exactly the same skills unlocked and pre-fitted with skill points, regardless of race and bloodline. The skills selected for this are universally useful (I.e shields, armor etc) to all races and classes.

B: New players gets skills pre-fitted based on race, bloodline etc, but the selected skills are of "equal benefit" to each race. I.e All new players get shields, armour unlocked, but Caldari get one point in shield while Amarr get one point in Armor.

As stated before, I would really like to see option B if we want to pre-fit skill points.

Is my Cal assault still stuck with its "unique" and useless bonus, this goes btw for the Gal too.

Vehicles
HAV inertia increased so switching from forward to backward movement is more realistic, and reduce fuel injector boost to speed.

Shield based HAV and DS buffed ehp, Gunnlogi and Myron

A.

The reason being that we want the choice of picking a race purely based on the philosophies and doctrines of that race, not based on the advantages it might give to a particular style of playing the game. The beauty of the game is that your skill choices are entirely yours from the moment you create your Merc. A allows us to give everyone a helping hand regardless of what the choose to skill into.

That way you can choose to change your style of playing the game without feeling that the time you spent skilling into scout wasn't wasted and give you a solid base to build on as you earn SP skill into a heavy role, or even another races weapons and suits.

Has the been any further discussion on adding to vehicle enter/exit times (to eliminate instant teleporting into and out of a vehicle)?

Someone else (sorry, don't remember who) suggested borrowing a weapon reload animation as a placeholder.

Thoughts?

I like B.

Yes you should still have the option to do what you want but this is kinda like handing out free stuff and it makes your opening choices more meaningful from a rpg perspective.

Dear players

we are ready to share our narrative for Hotfix Delta. As usual, some, all or none of these changes may end up being deployed when the Hotfix is ready. I also want to share that we are very happy with the new CPM and that we are starting to gel as a team that wants only the best for DUST 514. Lots of positive interaction and discussions in the last few weeks.

These are the high level gameplay features we want to look at for Delta.

Weapons
Sidearms - rebalance in a similar way as rifles were, ranges, requirements and damage, mainly through buffing and tuning existing weapon behaviour (reducing ion seize, ROF on scrambler, flaylock power and blast radius, to name a few ideas)

Add all Miltia Sidearms and Miltia HMG to Market

Snipers - We simply cannot have snipers so far away in the redzone they cannot be touched, while also being immune to countersniping. However, we also want to improve the Improved headshot damage, decreased range, improved damage. We have been studying Domination maps, and some of the farthest redline sniper spots that can camp the Objective to get a good gauge of the situation. There cannot be a risk free way of playing the game, for each role there must be a counter.

Plasma Cannon - increased projectile speed

Swarms - efficiency against assault dropships needs to be improved fairly, there are a few ways (increased speed, nerf afterburners, increased lock on timers, probably not lock on range nor damage). We will buff normal dropship ehp to make up for their shortcomings.

Rifles - tweaks to Scrambler, Assault Scrambler and Assault Rifles (plasma)

Assault HMG buffed, burst HMG needs a slight tune down

Dropsuits
Minmatar dropsuits - small ehp buff across the board

Standard and Breach Forgegun and Railgun Turret splash radius reduced or removed. Blast stays on Assault Forge Guns. Holding a charge with a splash makes sniping in many cases redundant, and the Forge is primarily AV.

Turrets
Small Rail ROF reduced

Large Blaster splash reduced

Small Blaster splash increased, maybe range increase

Vehicles
HAV inertia increased so switching from forward to backward movement is more realistic, and reduce fuel injector boost to speed.

Shield based HAV and DS buffed ehp, Gunnlogi and Myron

Other
Damage profiles - Projectiles (Combat Rifles, etc) to -15%, 15%, or -20/+20 from -5%, +10%, plus fixing turret damage profiles to match intended design

NPE - all Frontline starter suits will have racial pistols, snipers smg's, and others magsecs, academy length increased, all new players injected with dropsuit upgrades skills (shield armor and core). Granting these skills coupled with militia sidearms and hmg allows us to reduce starting ISK to 25K

Shield Modules - 15% or so CPU reduction of Energizers, Regulators and Rechargers

Nanite Injectors - heal same amount of shields as armor, yes quite a buff

Nova Knife optimization skill added

Add new Officer Light Weapons as well as key missing FW items to the LP Store


Most of these issues have been mentioned and discussed on the forums, discovered through data or raised by the CPM.

Let's have a courteous and constructive dialogue and detailed threads will be hitting shortly.

considering they expend more ammo due to increased range, i would suggest increasing clip/drum size, reload speed and total reserve ammo

or are you referring to assault suits?

...reducing ion seize

...Snipers - There cannot be a risk free way of playing the game, for each role there must be a counter.

Plasma Cannon - increased projectile speed

Minmatar dropsuits - small ehp buff across the board

Nanite Injectors - heal same amount of shields as armor, yes quite a buff

B would be great but without significant changes to the NPE, beyond the scope of Hotfixes alone, A is the best compromise for the time being. It also has the potential side effect of increasing player retention even further.

I've been using heavy shield extenders on my python to achieve a EHP of 4204. To put that into perspective, a un-fitted gunnlogi has 4150 EHP, the madrugar 5200 EHP. With the use of heavy vehicle mods, I've effectively turned my python into a mobile, flying tank. It's no wonder swarm launcher users have such a difficult time downing my python.

Solution: Make it harder to fit heavy modules on non-HAVs. Increase the CPU/PG cost of heavy vehicle mods and increase HAV CPU/PG accordingly. Give a small buff to non-heavy vehicle survivability mods to encourage more usage over heavy ones.

There are certainly known objectives where a single forger can hold down the fort at sniper range, and kill multiple hackers in one shot. Why would you snipe in that case?

Dear players

we are ready to share our narrative for Hotfix Delta. As usual, some, all or none of these changes may end up being deployed when the Hotfix is ready. I also want to share that we are very happy with the new CPM and that we are starting to gel as a team that wants only the best for DUST 514. Lots of positive interaction and discussions in the last few weeks.

These are the high level gameplay features we want to look at for Delta.

...


Rifles - tweaks to Scrambler, Assault Scrambler and Assault Rifles (plasma)

...

As stated before, if everybody have level X in a skill, it removes the point of having that skill to begin with (IMHO)

I can only say, please read the OP again.

Dear Rattati,

Any update on fixing the commando suit color? I know you were looking into it for Charlie but I guess it fell through.