P.S. - If this becomes another bandwidth-whine thread, I'm out. I am not going to attempt to educate you on bandwidth any longer.

P.S.S. - "Sniper" isn't a role. It's someone who just happens to be fitting a sniper rifle.

The sentinel would be attempting to use something that is outside of his role's purview. He is still fitting a point-defense dropsuit, but using a weapon that doesn't compliment his role well.

Remember the parallel in Eve Online? The battleship CAN fit a web and warp scrambler, but it is not a good fit for that ship. A sentinel CAN fit a sniper rifle, it's just not a good fit for that dropsuit. In fact, you are saccing one of the sentinel's bonuses to do it: the ability to fit heavy weapons.

I described the scout as an ambush slayer. The sniper rifle is, in a sense, an ambush weapon. A merc is walking along when suddenly either A.) massive damage or B.) instant death. Kind of sounds like a nova knife or shotgun kill, doesn't it? This is why I believe the sniper rifle should be fitted to a scout; it compliments their role. The sniper rifle also gives you the ability to zoom in on a location visually using your scope; providing another form of recon to your squad.

I don't have the client in front of me, but some dropsuit descriptions hint at what I am talking about. In Eve, a role is pretty clearly defined thanks to the ISIS (INTERBUS SHIP IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM) and the mastery system*

A key difference in Eve vs. Dust 514 is the T1 vs. T2 system.

In Eve, T2 ships have very specialized command bonuses, fewer slots, but much more CPU/PG. In other words, CCP wants you to do X thing in this ship and if you deviate from that you are either exploiting a poor balancing decision or an idiot.

T2 ships have more slots, fewer command bonuses, and less CPU/PG. You can fit them with greater variety, but they excel at fewer things. They allow a bit more customization, but if you put a T1 attack frigate against a T2 attack frigate (all other things being equal) the T2 attack frigate will wreck the T1 with a quickness.

This is the way I wish dropsuits were in Dust. The basic suits would get more slots, less CPU/PG, and no bonuses (or maybe one small bonus). The logi, assault, scout, sentinel, and commando would get a handful of slots, more CPU/PG, and two or more command bonuses.

*: a series of suggested skills for a ship, as suggested by CCP. In my previous example, the mastery for the interceptor point to toward the Propulsion Jamming Systems skills to trigger the player's "Ah ha! This ship is meant to web/scram other ships".

Because there are variations of modules to accomplish the X thing they want you do to do.

Just examining shield tanking alone. There are modules to increase passive shield recharge rates, boost shields instantly, provide resistances to each of the four damage types, provide resistances to all four damage types at once, and increase maximum shield HP.

The customization comes from the fact that you as the player get to decide how you want your shield tank to look. I could stack passive regeneration modules and just have my shields perpetually regen through combat (a la how armor repair modules work in DUST 514). I could just as easily stack resistance modules to the brim, or do a combination of both.

There are modules whose sole purpose is to assist in a mini-profession too. Salvaging requires a salvager, which is a high slot module. I could sac a weapon for the ability to fit a salvager which will increase my ISK gained... but I have lost some offensive power to do so.

What Dust 514 lacks is module variety. The customization should come from the different ways you can fit your dropsuit to do the X thing CCP wants, not being able to do 4 roles at once.

Having something similar to rigging in Dust 514 would be a start. Rigging in Eve allows you to accept a bonus to one specific aspect of your ship by sacrificing something else. The shield tanking rigs give you bonuses to certain aspects of shield tanking, but increase your sig radius (which makes you easier to target by other players and NPCs). There is a skill which reduces the penalty a bit.

It allows for a lot of "tuning" your ship to achieve the X thing CCP wants in a manner that you enjoy/are comfortable with.

And that probably wasn't intended, but I don't access to CCP's design documents so I can't comment on that.

Can you cite where CCP said that? The original APEX dropsuits were designed to be sub-par on purpose so as to prevent them from competing with ISK variants.

I'm kind of confused here. What is the intent of this thread? Develope roles? With such a deep & rich skill tree, trying to pigeon-hole dropsuit & weapon combo's into "roles" seems counter intuitive.