Not to mention that there is a fundamental problem with the balance of armor and shield. Adding more variants before hammering out this imbalance will only compound the issue. Trust me, we've already been working on variants within the community for some time and we reached the conclusion that the way armor and shields work need to be looked at as well.

If you want to see the results of our first pass on vehicles in general, feel free to look here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16DwpratAsrJ1zbxry8VFqoeAMdFGuc-IsHNSPULZK6M/edit?usp=sharing

Besides the Scriptures this is my Bible.

Currently shield vehicles have the benefit of stacking multiple hardeners which performat 15% greater efficiency than armor hardeners allowing them massive eHP, with a pretty sizable amount of shield regen on top of that. In addition, with limited Anti-Shield AV as well as no Laser turrets (compared to Explosive Missiles), Shield vehicles have a sizable advantage over armor vehicle, so something has to give.

I thought heavy weapon parity was being looked into for the future? If amarr a/v lasers are anything like infantry lasers, then you won't have anything to worry about. There probably be a cry that shields are UP once that happens

Even then you still have the issue of Shields regenerating faster than armour with no module required and an additionally 15% damage resistance vs those weapons which essentially negates skills like Proficiency and in some cases even damage modules.

Like it or not Shields on Vehicles, specifically Tanks, need to be adjusted so that their hardeners are not too effective like they are now, and so that regeneration on shield vehicles does not trump Armour rep rates without module investment.

It works this way everywhere. Dust and eve. Shields have much better regen than armor, even without investment. Cal assault base regen is 30. Gal assault is what? 3?

The real issue I find with armor tanks is the lack of CPU/PG. That needs to be looked into. Shields tanks can fit anything. Armor tanks can barely fit standard mods even at level 5 skills

A madruggar with speed mod, damage mod, two rep and a hardener would be great, except they won't fit. Even at standard. Fixing CPU/PG would certainly help.

Also, A/V vs tanks was balanced. Adding additional slots will break that balance. Is there a way for us to increase the power of tanks WITHOUT increasing their number of slots, even at proto?

For some reason I remember Rattati being very opposed to increasing slots.

Pardon me putting it bluntly, but how the hell is any sort of better tank worth the sp and isk if it has no additional slots?

Bonuses. Increased CPU/PG, differing base stats

Increasing slots will require rebalance of av again. I'm not opposed to it, but av meant for being a threat to proto tanks usually wrecks everything else too easily. This has been experienced before when tankers went to war with av'ers on the forums about a year ago. If we balance av for what we have now, then even proto av will be useless unless the whole team uses it for one proto tank brick tanking. It's been seen before

I cannot say that for any reason that it would be enjoyable to use a Marauder with the base number of slots.

It simply does not scratch the itch.

Yet most AVers while seeking balance agree that it was badass to take down a Marauder due to the high SP cap, cost, and sense of achievement.

And honestly with AV how it is now, while I believe a 1v1 ratio of AV to V should be maintained....., its not hard to dish our 10K between two players using the correct AV option.

As I've pointed out before Armour HAV had significantly higher EHP pre 1.7 and were still wrecked and AV hasn't been this good in a long time.

Shields are what we have to be careful about though.

Honestly, I'm just paranoid. Since release, tanks have been repeatedly nerfed, rebalanced, completely redone, and nerfed again. I spec out of tanks recently because there's no reason to have one. They serve no purpose, have no role, no way to influence a battle. Remember when we could shoot down the MCC?

I want tanks to useful, and to serve a purpose on the battlefield. There is no situation where a tank is necessary. There's no gates to be blown up, we can't destroy null cannons, and we can't shoot the MCC so what do we need a tank for?


That said, what are we going to use marauder tanks for that justify their use? How can they be used to support infantry? Making a stronger tank when there's no use for it seems odd. A proto dropsuit and weapon helps you do a lot of things besides killing. What would a proto tank do for anyone? If there's no tanks on the field what do we need it for?

I feel like tanks are one side of a coin that had no other side to it.

And again please remember that each tank is operated by one person. Requiring a 3-6 man squad to kill a proto tank is too much. What happens when there's 6 proto tanks? You wouldn't have enough players in a match to fight that.

I feel bad about how I feel, but tanks have no use for anything other than killing bolas. At least drop ships are useful for getting to rooftops.

You've got to think of the worst possible fits to see if that would be balanced.

In all honesty we need to rebalance some current modules around a 5-2 slot layout.


Possible troll fits:
- 5 damage mods and two armor plates, the redline special.

- 3 damage mods , 2 hardeners, particle cannon, plate, repper.

- 3 hardeners, Shield booster, extender

- Or hell, 5 hardeners on a continuous cycle.

This will not be fun for either AV or Tankers. The only counter might be itself.

We ought to also brainstrom other possible checks and balances.

As I've said before, simply adding PG and CPU to the Madrugar wont do much to help it. They will still need to fit 1 Repper, 1 Plate, and 1 Hardener. Even if all of those are maxed to proto, the eHP simply wont stack up against a Gunnlogi running 2 Hardeners and 1 Extender. And yes you're correct that shields in Dust typically have much faster regen rate than armor, *however* nearly all shield fits will fall short of comparable armor fits in terms HP, which is not the case for vehicles. Shield Vehicles enjoy both high HP as well as great regen, and they should need to pick between one or the other.

Lets just assume we stick with the 3/2 and 2/3 slot system for now. So you have 3 slots you can work with. Every HAV requires at least 1 hardener and 1 HP extender (You can argue that 2 hardeners will work as well, but regardless) and then the means to regenerate HP. Armor wont regen on its own so it's 3rd slot innately gets consumed by an armor repairer.

Armor
1 Hardener
1 Plate
1 Repper

While this is...extremely boring, it's the bare minimum needed for an armor vehicle to survive.

Shields on the other hand dont have to fit a repper since they get their regen back much faster.

Shield
1 Hardener
1 Extender
--Free Slot--

Currently they can fill that free slot with another extender or hardener, keeping high HP regen and pushing eHP even higher. This is problematic, there is no tradeoff. So lets say you decreased the natural shield regen rate by X% and then offered a module to increase it by X%. This would mean to maintain the same level of shield recharge, that Free Slot would need to be filled with a Recharger of sorts. OR they could accept the lower regen and put in a hardener/extender to maintain the same high eHP they're capable of now, but with longer regen times. I think this is the basic outline we need to consider when looking at shield vehicles.

what about increasing armor plate hp values?

again, current av vs vehicles is fairly balanced. is reducing shield tanking hp necessary because it's OP, or because armor plates are too weak?


also, its a very strange thing to note, that armor is superior to shields PASSIVELY. a passive tanked shield tank is not as good as a passive tanked armor tank. but an active tanked shield tank is better than a active tanked armor tank. active shield modules have much shorter duration than active armor modules.

do you think that perhaps we should flip things around? make shields much more rep focused, and armor more hp focused? what about damage mods? arent they supposed to narrow the eHP gap between armor tanks and shield tanks?

I feel that they are enough anti shield mechanics in place that we dont need to nerf shields, just yet. id be interested in seeing how the new warbarge strikes do in future meta.

That is another option to look at, but bear in mind that then you have armor vehicles is obscene levels of HP which isn't going to sit well with AVers.

Also I'm not really sure what you mean by an Active Armor Tank as we no longer have active armor repairers.

And damage mods are great on an armor tank, sure, but they do you little good when you get instapopped by a missile tank.

yes but isnt that what av'ers have to deal with anyways against shield tanks? im thinking we could increase the plate HP to provide the needed raw HP for the hardener to make up the difference. they really wouldnt have much more eHP than shield tanks.

the armor tanks dont have enough cpu to stack damage mods. and they dont have enough eHP to survive getting instapopped, but that ok IMO because missile are the counter to armor. what we need are lasers to counter shields.

also we could rebalance damage control modules to be more effective( if we can bring them back). perhaps an active variant that gives an additional 50% damage reduction for 3-5 seconds? just enough time to survive the initial volley and react to the threat?

the vehicle landscape has always been incomplete. even if we brought back every module and tank variant, we would still have gaping holes of missing content. we either balance with the goal of having the missing content in the form of placeholders, or we balance with the idea that we wont be ever getting the missing content.

Well I'd argue that AVers currently have too much to deal with in terms of shield eHP but that is also largely in part due to lack of proper anti shield weapons aside from my beloved Plasma Cannon. Regardless I see the point you're getting at.

Also going to give you a resounding NO on buffing damage modules. All that will do is bring back glass cannon rail tanks that drop Proto-fit HAVs in 2 shots. I'm fine with Glass Cannons but even the 30% damage mod was extremely stupid in its effectiveness, 50% would be ridiculous.

As for missing content did you happen to take a look at the Community Document we've been working on? I know I posted it earlier, but: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16DwpratAsrJ1zbxry8VFqoeAMdFGuc-IsHNSPULZK6M/edit?usp=sharing

Feedback on it would be appreciated.

oh no, not a damage mods. damage "controls". they are different. high slot module that works like a hardener and gave 10% damage reduction with no stacking penalty. it was basically a back up hardener for armor tanks

i read that document last night. i want to read it again a few more times though. it was a very good read. i just want to make sure i understand it all first

As I've said before, simply adding PG and CPU to the Madrugar wont do much to help it. They will still need to fit 1 Repper, 1 Plate, and 1 Hardener. Even if all of those are maxed to proto, the eHP simply wont stack up against a Gunnlogi running 2 Hardeners and 1 Extender. And yes you're correct that shields in Dust typically have much faster regen rate than armor, *however* nearly all shield fits will fall short of comparable armor fits in terms HP, which is not the case for vehicles. Shield Vehicles enjoy both high HP as well as great regen, and they should need to pick between one or the other.

Lets just assume we stick with the 3/2 and 2/3 slot system for now. So you have 3 slots you can work with. Every HAV requires at least 1 hardener and 1 HP extender (You can argue that 2 hardeners will work as well, but regardless) and then the means to regenerate HP. Armor wont regen on its own so it's 3rd slot innately gets consumed by an armor repairer.

Armor
1 Hardener
1 Plate
1 Repper

While this is...extremely boring, it's the bare minimum needed for an armor vehicle to survive.

Shields on the other hand dont have to fit a repper since they get their regen back much faster.

Shield
1 Hardener
1 Extender
--Free Slot--

Currently they can fill that free slot with another extender or hardener, keeping high HP regen and pushing eHP even higher. This is problematic, there is no tradeoff. So lets say you decreased the natural shield regen rate by X% and then offered a module to increase it by X%. This would mean to maintain the same level of shield recharge, that Free Slot would need to be filled with a Recharger of sorts. OR they could accept the lower regen and put in a hardener/extender to maintain the same high eHP they're capable of now, but with longer regen times. I think this is the basic outline we need to consider when looking at shield vehicles.

what about increasing armor plate hp values?

again, current av vs vehicles is fairly balanced. is reducing shield tanking hp necessary because it's OP, or because armor plates are too weak?


also, its a very strange thing to note, that armor is superior to shields PASSIVELY. a passive tanked shield tank is not as good as a passive tanked armor tank. but an active tanked shield tank is better than a active tanked armor tank. active shield modules have much shorter duration than active armor modules.

do you think that perhaps we should flip things around? make shields much more rep focused, and armor more hp focused? what about damage mods? arent they supposed to narrow the eHP gap between armor tanks and shield tanks?

I feel that they are enough anti shield mechanics in place that we dont need to nerf shields, just yet. id be interested in seeing how the new warbarge strikes do in future meta.

lower shield recharge makes sense, but nothing extremely low like 40hp/s. Shield recharge delay and depleted shield recharge delays still apply. 4sec/10sec respectively. (164hp/s to 82hp/s is very reasonable)
1. passive armor reps need to go.
2. multi pulse boosters need to come back, stronger than active armor reps but fewer pulses.
3. passive shield regen modules need to come back, significantly weaker than active armor reps.
4. PDUs need to come back as well.
5. return poly 180mm