poster said kinetic, but i think they meant to say making swarms launcher a rail type damage weapon, amirite?

I am excited for this.

Quick translation: Goon Style

For those of you who cannot speak Spreadsheets in Spaes, and Nerditonics, here is a quick translation guide.

EM= Electromagnetic Damage, AKA Pew Pew Lasers. Not f**king hard to understand, right?

Thermal= Plasma. Buy your Freedom Fries at the nearest Hypocrite Recruitment Station (Gallente Militia Recruiter)

Kinetic= Rails. Seriously, if any of you nitwits cannot comprehend hitting a solid thing with another solid thing, there's no goddamn hope for any of you.

Explosive= Mass Drivers, REs and other party favors you share with friends in large groups.

Projectile= This is what you get when you segregate the minmatar damage types. Now we have to get a goddamn hearing on how projectile users feel marginalized by things that go Boom. This is also technically Kinetic for the Physics inept.

I just wonder why CCP chose to call them "Commandos". From what I can tell (at least from a British perspective) is that Commandos specialise in coastal / amphibious deployment. Working behind enemy lines / occupied territory, in extreme environments and to specialise in key roles.

Now that last part "Specialise" does sort of apply to Commandos in DUST 514 however the rest does not. One could also argue that DUST 514 commandos do not really specialise all that much into anything. I consider suits like the Amarr Assault a more specialised role (in terms of speccing laser tech) or even suits such as the Min scout for speccing hacking speed.

In an ideal world do we rename (and re-imagine?) Commandos or do we change their stats and roles to become true Commandos?

And here be the problem of using the EVE damage system style without all of its intricacies.

As I am sure you well know, in EVE projectile ammo comes in different flavours each dealing a different mix of damage type. (Some kinetic, some explosive, some thermal, even EM)

I will finally see if that doesn't make the Caldari Commando competitive and reduces the AV threat a little from the Minmando.

Whats your proof that the Cal Commando is not competitive? (I completely agree with you, Im just wondering what data (if any) is telling you this since the last I saw they had absurdly good kills per spawn due to their constant use as a sniper platform)

It's not competitive as anything BUT a sniper. and even then it's not the most favored fit for sniping.

I would like to see the calmando K/D ratio if you eliminated all sniper rifle kills from it's setup

I will finally see if that doesn't make the Caldari Commando competitive and reduces the AV threat a little from the Minmando.

Absolutely:

So just start with the Medium. For the sake of the argument the Standard Basic-M Dropsuits all have differing PG/CPU because they are supposed to fit their races weapons and gear, and the gear is meant to represent that by either having high PG or CPU.

This is madness to balance, because you are balancing three moving pieces. The Skill bonus of the Dropsuits,the cost of the gear and the Capacity of the Dropsuit.

If we were to say all of them have the same PG/CPU, make AM weapons high PG, and then give you a fitting bonus to AM weapons, it's much more intuitive and easier to author/fact check.

Then, you keep the same PG/CPU for Assault and Logistics, while again, giving them fitting bonuses to Weapons on one side, and Equipment the other. The Skill bonus should be so good that you want to run GA weapons on GA suits, but not better than AM weapons on AM suits. If you want, again, we can give Faciton fitting bonuses to stress the point.

Then it actually becomes meaningful to change PG/CPU costs of gear, to balance and not just power.