Been advocating some version of this for months now. Granted some of whether this is viable comes down to the numbers, but I support the general concept. Those logi currently running with full slots shouldn't have their fittings constrained further but taking steps to prevent "equipment free" fittings seems very worth while.

Dear players,

as part of a Logi and Commando review, and my own rational hatred of irrational things, we will be aligning speeds across the board in an imminent hotfix. Consider this initiative only a part of the changes.

I believe this will give Commandos and Logis a real buff, as they will be more mobile, even if stacking hitpoints, and will be a needed reduction in the Assault class overall, with the outliers of Minmatar Assault overwhelming moblity, and Amarr Assault hp stacked fits.

A picture says more than a thousand words, so please take a look. I am also constructing the brick version of this chart to see how that pans out. My assumption is that Commandos will need at least an extra slot to be able to tank comparably o other Roles.

In a conflict do your advance your supply lies faster than your main combat troops? Nope? I didn't think so.

The value of the Logisitcs role is in its capacity to support the efforts of other suit not its own combat potential. You are force multiplying by establishing uplinks, nanohives, repairs, revives etc.

You should be staying with your squad or the main body of your team to support them not running off to establish equipment is remote positions. That bleeds into the role of scouting. As such there is no need to be able to move faster than your front line combat troops.

If we are talking about roles then we should do so logically. As a role the Logistics essentially fills the "Support/Healer" role. This typically is denoted by lesser health, a wide variety of support/heal abilities, and certainly is NOT characterised by excessive speed more so than say the "DPS" role (AKA the Assault).

Would this put undue strain on early career Logis? Thinking about Cloak and early career Scouts; they usually can't fit it until Level 4. And Cloak isn't as instrumental to Scouting as EQ is to Logi'ing.

I mean something to consider... The old slayer logis were problematic because they had so much HP from bonuses. It stands to reason that Rattati wanted to avoid this issue by buffing speed instead of HP in order to bring up survivability while avoiding huge buffer like we used to have.

My biggest concern as stated above somewhere is speed penalties to plates not being significant enough on Scouts and Logis. We don't need either to be better at slaying than Assaults.

[
While I woild love for Scouts to be more involved in the role of laying EQ it is clear from the BW changes that that is a minor role for scouts at best.

As a result that needs to be taken into consideration as well.

And if you look at Assault speeds vs the other combat oriented roles of Sentinel and Commando, they are still faster. Not to mention they have all those fitting slots with which to fit KinCats and Cardiac Regs.

My biggest concern as stated above somewhere is speed penalties to plates not being significant enough on Scouts and Logis. We don't need either to be better at slaying than Assaults.

Agreed. Sometime back (HF Delta?) Rattati implemented an armor-plate strafe penalty specifically targeting Scouts. If this is possible, then it stands to reason that greater/lesser penalties could be assigned by frame type.

While I agree with that statement it seems illogical to have logistics players advancing faster than your assault units.

I don't see a need to differentiate their speeds. Asssault dropsuits are primarily aggression and weapons focused while logistics are support and equipment focused.

Logi players shouldn't want to be outrunning their team mates, on the other hand, assaults should want to be in the enemy teams face all the time.

Why not instead buff Logistics speed up to that of Assaults so that they get what they want however do not drag down another class to do it.

If it fits the HP/speed curve, sure.

Well the idea is to have a HP to speed curve, so equal speed would mean Logis would have equal HP too, which I don't think people want.

If not equal, then one needs to be superior one way or another. Logis would have either more HP and less speed, or more speed and less HP.

That's what I mean: logis are too squishy for their role

I don't have math, but I do have logic. You're ignoring a huge factor when just balancing speed vs HP in regards to assaults and logistics.

If the assaults' HP is countered by the lack of speed, and vice versa for the logistics, then the these factors are balanced against each other (no net advantage or disadvantage), and thus assaults and logistics are equal when comparing net speed/HP advantages and disadvantages.

If that is the case, then the logistics comes out on top because with speed and HP being balanced with the assaults, that leaves logistics with a very large advantage with no counterbalance: the 3-4 equipment slots while assaults only have 1.

If the speed and HP advantages and disadvantages of assaults and logistics cancel out against each other when the 2 suit types are compared with one another, and the logistics gets a ton more equipment slots, what does the assault have to balance against that? just a sidearm? It doesn't seem fair. Sure assaults get fitting bonuses to weapons to allow for fitting better weapons, but logis get fitting bonuses to equipment, and the savings from the equipment fitting bonus can be used to equip better weapons also.

In light of this, I don't think assaults should get a speed nerf. Also, assaults are meant to be the frontline fighters that rush to objectives and clear areas. Reducing speed conflicts with their intended purpose, as it makes it harder for them to rush objectives.

In short, I suggest keeping assault speeds intact.

While I understand the point you're making, I feel like many people are undervaluing the Assault Bonuses themselves.

An Amarr Logistics will not be able to make use of Laser Weapons nearly as well as an Amarr Assault. So if we go under the assumption you made that the speed/hp ratio effectively cancels each other out, would that not place the suits at similar survivability, with the Assault being better at killing due to their Assault bonus, and then the Logistics better at supporting with more equipment and bonuses to support it?

Part of this may stem back to the time old issue of Assaults vs Commandos, and partially to the fact that many weapons perform very well, even without Assault Bonuses. I wonder if we did something like put a +1% Racial Damage/lvl bonus on the Assault (5% total) and then reduce damage of light weapons by 5%? Or something to more clearly solidify an Assault's advantage in terms of killing over other suits.

Or equivalent speed, less HP, and more equipment slots. The logistics class could use more speed to function in their role however this does not necessary mean they need more speed than frontline aggressive combat suits only and equivalent amount. You also do not need more HP to function in a support role.

Better EWAR could serve the Logi well if they don't already have it, etc.

Perhaps instead of a speed to HP curve, its speed to mobility curve, where mobility is defined as a function of speed and stamina? You could then vary speed for logistics to maintain the proper mobility by throttling stamina as your independent variable?

I think it's rapidly becoming clear that the debate on this topic is going to come down to whether it's possible within the proposed "speed vs eHP" trade off paradigm to make additional changes that result in balance.

The issue here is that we have these knobs to turn where suit balance is concerned:

- Fitting (PG/CPU)
- Role+Racial bonuses
- Speed and speed related statistics (the idea of messing with the sprint modifier is novel)
- Slot layout
- Base HP and other HP related statistics (EG repair rate and shield delay)

Of all these, speed and HP are probably the least discrete. What I mean by a "discrete" variable is that even the smallest change in that variable has a high potential to change balance. Slot layout, in particular, is extremely discrete just based on the evidence that the different suit classes provide.

By tying HP and speed together in a firm relationship, we lose a "knob" from the above list. We can still twist the twin HP-speed subsystem knob, but they can't really be twisted independently. The ensuing discussion has focused around the other knobs: Slot layout. suit bonuses, and combinations of those.

Here's my question that I don't really have the answer to because it's hard, but really needs to be considered: Is it possible to achieve a reasonable state of balance after adopting the HP-speed tie-together given the highly discrete nature of slot layouts and to a lesser extent suit bonuses? It's possible that the answer is no, which puts us in Kage's camp. In that case we can still tie speed and HP together in the proposed way, but tune that combined "knob" to a different position.

On a different note, I think it's important to note that speed doesn't affect survivability exclusively. Speed is also a substantial contributor to aggression potential. I think that's one of the reasons I'm a bit afraid of the "killer bees" returning. From an anecdotal perspective, I run ferroscale plates as opposed to regular ones. It's not that the speed necessarily just keeps me alive more than the HP bonus, it's that I can also choose to take fights and chase down fleeing opponents more readily.

While I agree with that statement it seems illogical to have logistics players advancing faster than your assault units.

I don't see a need to differentiate their speeds. Asssault dropsuits are primarily aggression and weapons focused while logistics are support and equipment focused.

Logi players shouldn't want to be outrunning their team mates, on the other hand, assaults should want to be in the enemy teams face all the time.

Why not instead buff Logistics speed up to that of Assaults so that they get what they want however do not drag down another class to do it.

Rattati wasnt around long enough to remember. The real vets still have scars from the numerous stings. I believe rattati mentioned something about cal logis being punished for old sins. Well the sin was it was the only suit that could have 600 shielding with room to spare.

Well personally I was more a fan of more HP, less speed, better stamina for logi vs assault. But that's just me

Placing equipment, staying out of lines of fire, and repairing other suits....requires large quantities of HP? I don't think so.

What do you mean by "polish" in this case, Cross, and what specifically do you have in mind?

I agree that CA and GA Assault bonuses need improvement, but I'm inclined to disagree that Commando racial skills are lacking. Bonuses to damage and reload speed make the Minmando an exceptional Swarmer. The same can be said for the Calmando as a Sniper. What could possibly be of greater value to these units than +damage and +reload? 100% in favor increasing the Commando's slot count and fitting its mobility to the speed/eHP curve ... but I don't see how their racial bonuses are lacking. What am I missing here?

All I am saying is that I fundamentally disagree with the premise of the Speed vs HP curve.

One one end of the spectrum you have your Fast, Low Hp Scouts, on the other your have the Commando and Sentinels Slow and with high HP values.

In the middle I am convinced it would be better to have the standardised Medium Frames of the Assault and Logi with similar speeds one having more HP, the other having lower HP in exchange for 3x Equipment Slots and better EWAR.

And we totally get that. If you will check the 100+ pages between the Logi threads Cross started, you would know that the intention is not to make Logis more appealing than Assaults to slayers. That is why Cross and Pokey and many others are saying, nerf Logi CPU/PG, increase Equipment fitting cost, and give Logis a better fitting bonus to equipment. This will leave TryHard slayer logi fits gimp in comparison to a good Assault fit.

Also reworking the 2 crappy Assault bonuses will go a long ways.

In addition to keeping the Logistics and Assaults similar, with similar slot layouts, but differentiate between the roles: The Logi should have better eWar capabilities and better regen than the Assault counterpart. As well as a tad lower CPU/PG on the Logi but higher fitting capability on the suit itself. This way it would be an intermediate between Scout eWar and Assault offensive capabilities.

Sorry if I was unclear. I meant that if this proposal goes through, that the overall survivability of the suits would be the same.

My question for you is, what would need to happen (assuming the speed chamges) to the Assault bonus so that you would feel assault and logistics are of equal worth (including bonuses and equipment) overall?

^Yes, all of this.