Vehicles in general seem to be more of a liability rather than a beneficiary to the team.

I can tell you that I have been tanking since the first week of playing dust. I know I'm basically beating the already beaten carcass of the dead horse but pre 1.7 was THE most level playing field for HAVs and AV users. But once I get back on and give it the once over, I'll tell Kirk my opinion on it. If you need it, I'll be your tank guinea pig. And I view through the lens of someone who seen symbiotic teamwork with infantry and tanks and who seen mavericks chasing kills while I'm stuck sacrifing myself to protect an objective that will get hacked regardless.

I don't see armor tank or large blaster rebalance.

Large blasters need a range nerf. Their optimal is 75m and falloff reaches 100. I personally have been able to snipe infantry from the redline on certain maps, as well as been on the receiving end in a shield tank.

Armor tanks are very over powered now, and the small buffs to shield tanks, while appreciated and necessary, won't bring them to balance. Mainly they need their speed nerfed; even played armor tanks can accelerate on a whim to full speed. Bring them more inline with shield tanks, and buff their turn speed to compensate (I've never understood why an armor tank is so much faster than a shield tank).

Heavy reps could use a change too, rep+hardener fits are neigh unkillable except from a breach or rail turret. My suggestion is increase the rep time for heavy reps to 3-5s, but keep the hp/s the same (eg from 100hp/s to 300hp/3s). This allows some openings for AV to kill rep fits and hopefully give shield tanks an edge as well.

PS Also nerf large blaster installations by giving them bullet spread. Those things can snipe for miles.

Anything for the new player experience? Bringing the tutorial back?

EDIT: On topic, great list and thanks for communicating what's been going on behind the scenes, showing all of the responses of what can and can't be done. Thank you and well done. o7

The shield module ideas are pretty good. Please look into the lower tier rechargers, energisers and regulators. The progression from militia to complex is pretty poor.

*edited out the rest. I think I see the CPM's perspective on regulators now. Fitting costs have been balanced here without consideration of regulators. I thought this was a problem, but when I think of the regen delay changes, I see that regulators are being relegated to a minor module to help shield tanking, rather than a main tanking module.

Due to the regulator's ability to discourage dual tanking, I think it's a bit of a shame to reduce it's importance. However I can see how it is easier to balance things in a world where regulators are less significant.
I guess the idea then would be that kincats are the shield tanker's equivalent of damage mods, as an assault module that can be fitted without sacrificing tank, to discourage dual tanking.

With this in mind, I like the numbers presented here for modules, having looked at both the regen penalties on reinforced extenders and the new CPU and PG stats for basic and reinforced extenders.

I do wonder though whether the regen penalty on the reinforced extender is enough. Have you considered adding a profile penalty? As well as increasing the sacrifice on all suits for getting the extra hp, it would particularly discourage scouts from using them, who otherwise may get a disproportionately high benefit from them. Don't shields increase profile in EVE?

I think the CPU/PG of flux extenders should be similar to normal extenders, in the same way that reactive plates are similar to ferroscale. For example, a reinforced extender and a fiux extender together give more hp, better regen and a shorter delay than fitting two regular extenders, and costs less PG.

I think you should have a look at some slightly lower hp configurations. Such as 2 rep 3 ferro, or 3 extender 2 energiser. All the examples are pretty high up in the hp scale. It would also be interesting to see the figures using the hotfix regen numbers. Perhaps I'll have a look myself.

Actually current extenders cost 11 pg rather than 8. By my calculations reinforced shields should be about 56 cpu 9pg.

Perhaps if they were 54cpu 11pg like current ones that would be fine.

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I do think it's important to maintain the comparatively high fitting costs of hp mods though, to promote fitting variety and interesting gameplay.

On the idea of taking officer weapons away from warbarges:

That cuts down on a huge amount of meta gameplay, and definitly hurts player trade. You still need to invest some time and resources to produce officer gear. I like the idea that everyone who has saved thier own resources can produce something valuable. The only reason to trade officer weapons is that you dont have to worry about them becoming so rare that you are better off skilling into that weapon rather than trading them.

Personally, that would wreck my own meta, since i trade officer weapons for suits and skins. Strongbox drops just dont cut it.


Rattati's premise that officer gear should be for top PC corps:

Just, no. Instead of officer weapons being spread out according to the free market, what that entails is creating a marketplace bottleneck where only a relative few well have acess to large amounts OP gear.

That would drag PC's back into its elitist state, where up and commers will have alot of trouble going against a vet PC corp with bons's running about. And those same corps will turn around and stop the crap out of pubs. They have acess and nobody else does. Recipe for disaster that.

^

I know you disagree Breakin, I'm glad you are listening though, and that we've been able to have this discussion. Perhaps some of the other CPM, or CCP will see things a bit my way. If any of these issues are addressed at any point. I don't really see it as a priority to be honest (other than medium frame base stat buffs).