its not the logi role or the equipments fault.. its the fault of stupid goddamned equipment spammers who spam equipment at supply depos and then switch to their chosen slayer suits.. (usually 50% scouts and 30% sentinels 15% assault 5% logi)

BANDWIDTH LIMITS WILL KILL LOGISTICS!

I like the idea a lot -- just lookin at the numbers:

Say you have a BW of 32 (for some Pro logis).

That means about 8 pieces of equipment (extremely simplified). Is that what ya'll envision in terms of quantity? Seems just a tad high to me -- but I'm not a logi so I really don't know.

I agree Zeylon Rho. If you want to buff Logi's, buff Logi's. If you want to discourage role-tourism, there are more straightforward ways that involve applying the "cost" to the player at the supply depot, rather than a "cost" to the team when some blueberry switches and randomly pops that well-placed uplink you thought your squad could use. There is little accountability in the role-switching aspect of this, and it really only encourages Logi's to persist and not other roles.

There are numerous threads about problems with the supply depot. I think adding a 30 second delay to suit switching at depots, or possibly even costing a clone, would be role-neutral, player-costing alternatives that don't require a whole new game mechanic.

Please, buff Logi's. But don't pretend this equipment-popping, bandwidth idea is a good way to address role-switching.

My apologies. I had no intention of moving off task. I was only responding to Cross's pointer to this thread in the referenced Logi-buff thread, and him indicating they were intricately tied together.

Forget I said "Buff Logi's".

Forget I suggested this is an unfair solution to "role-switching".

Yes, it will limit equipment spam. Yea!! I think it carries a lot of baggage in order to do so. Boo!! I think there are better ways to limit equipment spam, but this thread is about this one idea which seems to be a done deal, so since I can't seem to get on board with it enough to debate the specific numbers, and discussing its overall shortcomings is off-task, I'll leave off.

Once upon a time, I told CCP Rattati to remove scout's sidearm slot.
He reply me with only one word " NO ".

I had thought that Logi were the cause of the Uplink Spam. However, I have learned from reading this thread that those "Logi"* who cause Equipment Spam all switch to HMG Sentinels after they have deployed 2 or 3 Logi suits worth of equipment, which explains where all the extra HMG Sentinels came from.

As a dedicated Sentinel since 1.3 I always looked at it as a sacrifice to have to spawn in a different fit to help the team when no one was placing Uplinks. Instead I learn that many people do this as an exploit.

Why did you say "not a good solution" when you are the one who brought up "Scouts should either have one less equipment slot or have no sidearm slot." ?

I don't object against low bw on scout, but I urge CCP to reconsider RE and Prox bw. The ability to stick 3 - 4 RE on a tank should be fare on every suit.

No, I'm not on crack. I am High On Frustration with this proposal however, and if my lack of running full proto in pubs OR running slayerlogi TGS builds has taught me anything in the last 2 years its that IF I do, I can be reeeaal good at it. This **** nerfs us even more dude.

the best thing for the group is for the Logi to flip frames into something actually combat-appropriate (since Logis now and by all available proposals are absolutely not and won't be)

So the whole thing in this thread about people swapping roles after deploying equipment got me to thinking... If they make it so that the bandwidth of the currently equipped dropsuit is used for the max deployables possible, how will they actually get that code to work?

I mean currently they can't even get the Amarr Logistics Dropsuit bonus to work right so how is CCP gonna get this change to even reliably work?!?!?!?!?!

What am I talking about? Right now an Amarr Logi suit is supposed to decrease deployment time on uplinks that they deploy. However if they swap suits, then that bonus goes away. Ok that part works well and good... But if you die and come back in the same suit, your bonuses are STILL GONE!!!!!

So what do I foresee happening? I foresee a world with deployable bandwidth where a logi suit deploys its maximum bandwidth of equipment, dies and then comes back into game with the same suit and all of its extra bandwidth of previously deployed goodies ALL GONE!!! Because before CCP can even do anything like this they need to fix the code that is already broken for this aspect of play!!!!!

Well that's the thing -- you do this currently. And currently we have equipment spam which will require an entire new mechanic introduced to combat. Ergo -- doing this is bad.

You probably shouldn't have 4 to 6 uplinks. You probably shouldn't have 2-4 nanohives. Probably shouldn't have 3 REs.

Assaults have an equipment slot. Commandos have an equipment slot. Scouts have TWO!

So have them share the load with nanohives and uplinks. Squad up with people in an organized manner. Defend your uplinks. Stop RE frisbee'ing. Don't throw out all your deployables RIGHT away. Drop a nanohive. When it pops drop another. You don't HAVE to carpet bomb them so that ammo is pretty much a non issue.

Supply depots moving up in value to be similar to a CRU would be cool.

Like I said -- 8 seems like a lot o.O

It would seem to me this equipment limiting will only be a good thing as we will see less heavy spam, more tactical engagement/organization, and less resource eating spam.

(wasn't done editing my post :P)

But that's a fair point too. The fact everyone can drop a ton of equipment is also a huge issue.

So what would you say -- as a logi you think you need a fair chunk of bandwidth. But Assaults, scouts, and commandos should only have enough to drop 1 piece of gear about?

Am I wrong thinking 1 logi should not be able to set up coverage for a 5 point map alone? Or did I misunderstand your post.

Honestly the idea of an assault, scout, or commando being able to have only 1 piece of gear (or 2/3 if they are explosive in nature) doesn't bother me as an assault. Nor would the idea of a logi going up in equipment to compensate that limit bother me much. I'm just not quite sure what would be optimum while not 'overly easy to break with tons of stuff that the enemy can't reasonably clear out thereby reducing tactics.'

Almost all the gameplayI do is logi. And I think this change will impact me negatively. Please hear me out:

I understand that there are concerns about "equipment spam". By this, im sure they mean when people put down 50 nanohives around a supply depot. But thats not where I get any WP from because I dont do that.

Here is what I do when im playing Dust:

I spawn in, I have to get out and get my uplinks out fast. If its Line Harvest, I got to go and place uplinks on the roofs so that if my team suffers a bunch of setbacks, we have a place outside of the redline that is safe to regroup and relaunch from. It allows a outmatched team to keep trying instead of being redlined and waiting out the clock. If its Fracture Road then I prefer to have one on the pipes, as well as at locations I-7 and C-7. This creates a "flexible front line" and allows a team to reground and encircle an enemy who has the objective in Domination.

I need more that just 1 uplink, and I always place a Remote Mine on my uplink after I plant it as a trap to any shotgun eager scouts. Heck, sometimes when I know my team is about to be driven from an area, ill plant some nanohives with Remote Mines on top as we retreat, knowing that victorious squads get careless sometimes. Ive taken out entire squads with this kind of trickery. Im a player who plays 99% solo, i been playing for almost a year........this is going to curtail my creativity. So far ive been doing well because Ive had the flexibility to. Even LAVs, every time I use one, place some REs on the seat beside me, so if it gets captured I can get revenge on whoever killed me and stole it. Which brings me to my next point:


Proximity mines: Yeah, I use them. I should mention i have mines Lv5. I can slow down, scare, or destroy heavy or light vehicles. This is part of my job. I supply the frontline. In order for me to do that, its preferable if I can prevent an enemy vehicle assault on my teams rear or flank. I cant have the same suit with 3 sets of mines that I have for my 2 sets of uplinks and 1 set of RE. I need two different suits.

Its not "throwing down cheap equipment either". My proto proxymine fit costs something like 70,000SIK. And I dont always get to get away with it either. Sometimes an enemy tank or a scout with an early start catches me.


Plus after all the equipment is down, then what do I do? I no longer have a role. Right now I can take a dropship, land in a hotzone, throw down some triage nanohvives, and then blast off. For player who play in squads, its more feasible to follow someone with a repair tool or revive team mates. I cant always do that. Im always a solo player. When my job is to supply, I need to be able to deliver all these resources on time without compromising the rest of my supply chain. There have been times when im the only logi on a 16 man team. Imagine how much worse it would be with limits. If you want to say that "if you deploy stuff in a logi suit you cant use anything else except a "logistics" suit," then I would accept.



How about before everything gets changed, try a few small hotfixes:

-Prevent equipment from being deployed within a certain radius of a supply depot. A large enough one because the supply depot provides nanites so there is no need for equipment near it.
-Increase the range and radius of flux grenades so that they can be thrown into high places
-Increase the hitbox vertically to 0.3M on equipment so it can be targeted easier (exception: proxy mines)
-Introduce a mass driver that fires flux rounds (ok maybe thats not a hotfix)


Thankyou for considering my concerns.

I think there should also be a blueberry "here's how you drop uplinks" educational video added to the EULA agreement screen

After reading this thread I have determined 2 things.

1. Scouts think they should have the capability to do everything with the same suit SOLO. They are not OP and should not be forced to change how they play, everybody else should have to.

2. The players who truly play a logi are going to suffer from this, because the tourists who insist on vomiting equipment just for WP.

Equipment spam is the problem that BW is supposed to fix. I think BW is NOT the answer, there are much better ways to do this and the ideas in Cross's Logistics thread are the most solid I have seen. I know that there are no comments by a dev there, but I also know that you have been reading it.

It is very seldom when running with a squad that I need more than what my suit can put out at one time. But a player should not be punished for using multiple suits to change with the situation. The problem is not that one player uses multiple types of equipment it is that currently they are allowed to put large amounts of the same type of equipment in one place, mostly around supply depots. The fix to this is to put a non deployable radius around equipment of the same types. Granted one problem is repair hives with nano hives needing to be close for repair and resupply not a bad thing.

Uplinks are the exceptions if you want good fall back points you need to put out some well placed uplinks. Not 5 in a line out in the open on the way to the objectives. WP whores know what I am talking about.

There should not be any need to put hives anywhere near a supply depot. For that matter no equipment should be allowed within a determined radius of said depot. Drop links included, your better off putting them in a better location so your team can spawn in and retake the depot.
.

With appropriate dialing of the numbers in Cross' idea, BW and its inherent limitations to gameplay outside of equipment are not neccessary.

Having both would be an odd scenario, and having both imposed would be hyper-redundant. Either one seems to fit his idea of an addressing of spam, but that doesn't mean one isn't better than the other when negative side-effects get weighed in.

Good to know you're Cross' voice-piece now, he's been having trouble speaking for himself.

Loving the changes as teams become reliant on Logistics players to give them support instead of allowing them to spam equipment everywhere, as well as preventing "Logi Bombs" (so to speak) in city nodes, which have been blamed for frame rate and fun reduction.

I have a question regarding equipment BW vs Max Active that you don't cover in your example. I'll attempt to make my own example:

To get an understanding, I'll explain the equipment. 1) R-9 Uplink 2) X-3 Quantum Nanohives 3) X-3 Quantum Nanohives
Yes, this is not an ideal setup, but it's just to explain my example.

So far, the Logistics player has used up 4 equipment with 2 left on his person. As we know, X-3s have a Max Active of 2. However, the Bandwidth Limit has also already been reached too. So what happens when...

Logically, we know only 2 X-3s can be active at the same time, so it would be feasible for the 1st X-3 to pop, given the Max Active Limit was reached first. The R-9 Uplinks remain untouched, the 2nd X-3 stays, and the 3rd X-3 actives and rainbows and unicorns appear.

My fear is that they don't appear and the system checks the Bandwidth Limit first...

Resulting in the above.

Can you shed some light on this Rattati? Rainbows and unicorns or will Logistics players have to extreme micromanage to a level beyond OCD?

EDIT: Cleaned-up/formatting.

Furthermore, the Logistics role in your spreadsheet show Equipment Slots as having 2 for Standard, 3 for Advanced, and 4 for Prototype. I will put my tinfoil hat on when I say this but, are we to believe that the Logistics class will follow that format across all racial logistics dropsuits for the upcoming rollout of Equipment Bandwidth?

SO, new idea.

I am already a declared fan of Cross' proposed equipment revamp, the one Shayz is talking about, I see it reinforcing Logistics (rightfully) as THE equipment use role and while it will have some adverse effects on certain playstyles it doesn't outright nullify others the way BW does.

I am against BW in its entirety, because at it's core it address SPAM (very worthwhile endeavour) but as a collateral cost it also completely eliminates certain Combat Logistics gameplay (which I oppose).


SO, since SPAM is the problem AND evidently switching usage of a Logi suit is the method, why not institute some code that tracks the SPAMming actions themselves and once the algorithm recognizes the spammer it a) kicks their ass out of the match completely b) insta-pops ALL equipment they've deployed c) deducts fully from their wallet all associated suit and fitting costs including the frame they were attampting to switch into and d) ALSO calculates up to that point in the match how many SP they would have received and deducts it from their current available SP pool! If their current available is 0 or less than what they would have gotten then they go negative until they generate proper WP to balance the deficit.


SO, we already know CCP is more than capable to track player action vs. game result (FW friendlyfire negative points, vehicle driving and acceleration cues moving vehicles around etc.) and script appropriate reponses for the cues.
Script a piece of code that when it sees [drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-SWITCH OR SUICIDE-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-drop-SWITCH] all in one particular area it frikin' kicks that ass to the curb and leaves a nice fat CCP bootprint on it.

CCP Glinda, now that she's no longer in denial about equipment spamming and the inherent lag it produces, can track and calculate roughly how much equipment it takes, set a worthwhile time limit to the "drop drop drop" element and quantify the algorithm/coding so it can't be broken by [drop-drop-drop-drop-(x action, say squatting down or firing a weapon)-SWITCH-drop-drop...] but still allows for active LOGISTICS which can be very much drop-drop-drop sometimes.

Playtesting would be required. Analytics on existing and predicted Logistics use play metrics would be required. Coding would be required. BUT, this is the **** being done anyway to institute BW already and if composed correctly PENALIZES SPAMMERS without victimizing gameplayers.

I'm all for growth, balancing and improvement and neccessary changes, especially those that cut down or eliminate exploitation. I'm not for the monthly Calvin and Hobbes comicstrip "New Rule!" method of addressing issues.



btw, I am at work again (if I'm going to spend time doing game design, I'm getting paid dude) so if it takes me a bit to respond to responses that's what's up.

*douses self in gasoline*
Flame On!

There's no place like Logic , John, so yeah, CCP Glinda's going on tour.

And to paraphrase someone, somewhere, just dismissing an idea outright without saying why or showing how it's otherwise unreasonable or unworkable really just makes the dissmisser appear....dumb or something....

Kinda fed up with all this "Go Proto or Go Home" nonsense. Rattati, since the hotfixes have started when you crippled the Cloak field into 0/5/10% dampening progression but kept that 10% a necessary aspect for 3 of the 4 scouts to participate in stealth, have only continuously moved the divide between new players and Vets. This bandwidth is nonsense really only drives that home.

When this changes will be deploy players will be able to deploy 8 of 9 uplinks with something like this:

Logistics mk.0(660HP)

- Combat Rifle
- Flux Grenade

- Vizam Gauged Drop Uplink
- Vizam Flux Drop Uplink
- Vizam Quantum Drop Uplink
- Vizam Stable Drop Uplink

- 3x Complex Shield Extender
- Complex Shield Energizer
- Complex Armor Plate
- Enhanced CPU Upgrade
- 2x Complex Profile Dampener

Then switch to Amarr Logistics(because of sidearm and extra BW) that instead of Uplinks have Repair Tool, Active Scanner and good quality nano with he will be able to drop because of extra bandwidth.

That is one way to exploit BW system, those 8 uplinks mean a lot on public matches, especially if they are placed on rooftops. Bigger thing that consort me is that player may come back to base to switch Logistics suit to one that have just bpo weapon(to lower his loses in case shot-off) and stay for entire match in vehicle - HAV, ADS or any other - players doing so will perform more roles then they should, and because of it I think that vehicle BW need to be included in this changes; player BW need drop at least to 4 when they enter any vehicle to finely end with rooftops-uplink-spam nonsense.

Oh and don't nerf the suit's ability to carry equipment, just introduce a team quota on equipment like vehicles.

My solution is just one of many that are presented by people, who spend waaay more time on the forums than I. CCP should really do some investigation and talk to a variaty of players before they try to fix a problem that should not be fixed before other issues and once they have a ranked list of issues then seek solutions from the members for the best fix vs developments fix which is usually wrong.

I am not trashing CCP for they have done some good things lately, it just seams they are out of contact with the player base and listen to a few forum warriors that don't represent the player base.

Well,if the responses consisted of more than BW work around suggestions (BW modules,BW skill,BW on sents),then maybe they would.

ummm

Why do you have to be a dedicated type player like logi or scout?

What about situational awareness?

I have spent untold hours developing skill in playing and skill books to have a diversified play style of different types.
What type I use depends on the game situation:
if my team is fighting and has no spawn points then I give them spawn points to keep fighting for the objective.
If my team is getting killed by tanks or DS I try and deal with that with a tank or swarm or DS
If my team needs is losing clones and holding an objective then I give them nanos and reps.
if my team is pushed to redline then I give them spawn points up high only reached by DS or CRU in my DS over objectives.
If my team is noobs and can't get it together then I put on a heavy and assualt the point to show them what they need to do.
If all points are red then I put on a scout and run around and hack points to disrupt the enemy and allow a break out.

Soooo why should you say I only need to play one type of role?

I don't mind the "one role at a time" concept at all...it's understandable. The part I do mind is that the penalty for switching roles is dramatically different for logi players vs. any other role.

There's not a lot of ways to cut back on the ability to put out high levels of equipment without directly impacting logi suits. I would honestly like them to roll out the update to the support suits before introducing BW.

This may be a stupid question but, will the APEX/FACTION BPO's be categorized under PROTO or BASIC ?

Agreed not a logi balance pass but it is one that greatly effects them. How you implement it will determine the assesment of positive or negative and your track record is for the most part pretty good in this regard.

I like the idea of increaseing the value of support players obviously. I would also offer that if some of our logi suits game worthiness weren't weighted entirely on deployable equipment this would be a lot smoother to work with. Balancing the equipment and the logi's inconjunction wtih each other is similar to why cloak and scouts need to get looked at together.

I do like the BW bump to Amarr and Cal logi you noted in the spreadsheet and it clearly helps the two races that are heavily dependant on deployable bonuses.

This appears like a valid concern.

You don't in fact have to equip a deployable item to keep it on the field. A 950 ehp slayer-logi will do that just fine (as just configured at protofits.com). That's definitely a weakness of the current design proposal.
... Of course that is a weakness it shares with the currently implemented design, but a weakness still.

The much simpler "if you don't have it equipped on your suit it goes pop"-rule would solve that and the EQ-spam without the whole EQ bandwidth design...

the point. It has flown over your head.

Warpoint spam from uplinks and hives IS a benefit from logi suits. crap them out, swap suits, trash stays, warpoints free of effort or concern flow in. No risk, since you swapped back, you're in no danger of losing an expensive logistics fit. and since you can drop asstons of hives, why not make two fits? one to spam hives, another to cover 75% of your team's uplink limit by yourself, then swap to a useful suit and go kill people?

THAT'S what I'm talking about when I say bypassing logi weaknesses.

It's not tactical flexibility. it's farming.

The simple version would have been, to charge everyone for switching suits or loadouts.

So as soon as you switch suits, everything that's not part of the new loadout gets dropped on the Battlefield and is taken from your assets.

EQ Spam would still be possible but at a price in isk.

To prevent role switching, just treat every role change at supply depot as suicide. I would be perfectly fine with that, but every spammerAmarr and Caldari logi would not!

Cheers