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

This depends entirely on which lens you are viewing vehicles through.

I find LAVs to be useful as transport. More would require that the LAV turrets work properly, which is something we are pushing (and more importantly to me, I am supporting).

Dropships are something Darth is better at commenting on than I am, so I'll let him address those.

HAVs are often the elephant in the room for one reason or another. We'll see how the new changes to weakpoints play out. I'm hoping that it puts a brake on some HAV shenanigans, without basically making them look like black cat firecrackers all popping in sequence.

We'll try to keep you posted if we start going deep on vehicles.

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.

Beat the carcass all you want, if people want a major vehicle overhaul to follow up what's going on here, this is the place to (hopefully politely) say so.

My opinion (not the CPM's policy) is that vehicles should be powerful and sustainable, but still fit in as a "disposable" asset. I'll acknowledge that a 150k LAV, or 1.4 mil ISK HAV is not exactly what one would call "sustainable" at any level. But if the losses weren't so agonizing to the wallet, the losses wouldn't feel so frustrating.

That's my take, I know some others vehemently disagree with me. I know some agree.

But let's see how the HAV weakpoints play out. Like I said, the one thing I'm worried about is the tanks dying TOO easily. I'm desperately hoping that isn't the case.

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.

Can I say that I am surprised and relieved to see this topic. I am seeing a large uptick in full officer fittings in public contracts and that does not bode well. It's like I was telling my corpmates a week or two again: Officer gear does not need to be the new proto.

Can you explain what is meant by "Lore fixes/additions"? It's a bit vague. Do you mean updating some of the 'Show Info' descriptions of things?

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.

the credit for the reinforced and Flux extenders also goes to ripley Riley and Cat Merc. They were the primary instigators who got me on the idea (several months ago) and contributed as much as I did to the idea. But we deliberately rigged the reinforced extender to do significant harm to shield regen. To the point where three reinforced extenders on a calsent absolutely requires a shield energizer to get back up to the baseline shield regen.

Putting reinforced Extenders on an Armor suit is going to pretty much be the definition of headache-inducing.

The problem with regulators is they MANDATED a presence in the low slots of a serious shield tanker. They weren't really optional. That's an issue in and of itself. That won't change the fact that they're still going to be one of the most useful options. The caldari sentinel's 4/1 delay (which doesn't change in the hotfix) may be tiny on the depleted side by that doesn't change the fact that a large number of calsent players fell that the shield regulator is the best use of their one low slot.

I think the Flux Extender Option will appeal to scouts more. It would increase their ability to pop in and out of combat rapidly. The Reinforced means they would have to retreat and hide for extended periods.

Finally we looked at the profile thing. For most suits that's not a sacrifice. Especially not since the galassault and minassault are proving (with shotguns) that speed > all and screw ewar. exchanging the regen penalty for a profile one won't even make people who want it as a fast-attack-murdersuit even blink.

reducing recovery rates sharply? That actually will make most people think.

actually if you look the reinforced use the current extender costs, and we reduced the regular extenders.

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.

Oh that's right, we were looking at the fact that Shields were proportionally huge in fitting cost for very little comparative benefit to armor.

The caldari sentinel's 4/1 delay (which doesn't change in the hotfix) may be tiny on the depleted side by that doesn't change the fact that a large number of calsent players fell that the shield regulator is the best use of their one low slot.

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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.