That is correct.

Firmware obviously offers some variety, but I imagine that future expansion of the system would yield new classes, rather than variations of existing ones.

The suit is tied specifically to an NPC corps/manufacturer. That manufacturer likely has a race it is tied to (Boundless Minmatar, Creodron Gallente, ect.)

Don't take those bonuses to mean much. Literally pulled them out of my ass at 2am when I was writing this. They were purely to present and easily understandable example, and not a finalized design.

And only 4 assault suits in Dust made much more sense?

Besides, what you're seeing are different corporations takes on the same ideas.

Corp A says "We want a suit that's well rounded with food speed, defense, and damage output" so they make the Assault suit

Corp B says "We want an offensive suit with lots of flexibility and hp even if it costs us some speed" so they make the Vanguard (which is like the heavy assault)

Corp C says "we want an offensive suit that's agile and stealthy, good for assassinations and covert kills" so they make the Infiltrator (which is like the light Assault)

In the future you may get Corp D that says "We want an offer some suit that specializes in sapping enemy capacitor to fuel his active offensive abilities" and create their own take on the idea of "Assault"

Or Corp E that says "we want an offensive suit that specializes in indirect damage with lots of bonuses to grenades and aoe weapons" and create their own take on "Assault"

Well people are locked into the idea that all assault suits need to be called "Assault". What if he just look at the types of roles in two very broad categories.

Assault - These are your primary damage dealers, the ones kicking the doors in, doing the most damage, and focusing on killing the enemy.

Support - These are the force multipliers. The roles that fill in the gaps and perform more specialist roles. They're the ones providing cover fire, healing allies, and picking off long range targets.

So now if we think in these broad terms, now let's say you have 6 corporations each making their own version of a suit that fits into one of those broad categories.

So corporation A-C builds their version an Assault Dropsuit. Corporations D-F builds their version of a Support dropsuit.

A builds a Vanguard
B builds a Frontline
C builds an infiltrator

D builds a Sentinel
E builds a Logistics
F builds a marksman

Does that make sense?

You're too focused on "what race". The real question is "who is the base manufacturer?".

Each of the 6 base classes has 1 manufacturer. So the base suits design is based off of that manufacturers design specs. Now, that company may belong to a certain race, so those design specs may resemble that race in general.

So the Core Logistics will probably look Minmatar since Core is a Minmatar company.

If Sisters of EVE made a dropsuit, it would probably look like a Sisters of EVE ship, since they're same manufacturer.

The company may or may not be tied to a specific race, so stop focusing on "what race". Focus on the manufacturersGÇï.

Again, we are trying our best to translate the soul. What makes EVE and DUST so great, and where can we improvise without compromising the essence of New Eden.

I get you byte. It can be hard to break a deeply engrained perception of how things are from what you're used to.

It's like biting into an apple expecting it to taste like an apple, but it actually tastes like an orange. Not what you were expecting, but you may end up really liking the new taste anyways.

IDK. Since posting last, I did some serious thinking to wrap my head around all the info provided about Nova so far without any context to EVE or DUST. After doing so, I realized what I ended up with sounded like another game I played before. The game had in game class leveling for what you're playing, ability to easily switch between classes, weapon customization, in game weapon leveling, and had Factions you can pledge allegiance to where you can earn Reputation to buy Faction specific gear.
Someone please tell me I am horribly off base here as I shan't even say the game's name I am referring to.

What's kind of a problem is that Rattati isn't acknowledging that manufacturers design everything differently from each other. Sure four of them may produce a vanguard suit, but they would all be made with tweaked base stats and totally different bonuses.

Globally, they follow the theme of racial affiliation, so Amarr manufacturers will still always produce dropsuits that offer superior armor HP compared to caldari, gallente, minmatar manufacturers.

Rattati wants to move away from simply having Caldari, Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar suits, and focus on the the corps that actually produce the suits. But I'm not sure he realizes is actually like this:

Caldari > Ishokune, Lai Dai, Kaalakiota, Wiyrkomi.

Amarr > Khanid Kingdom, Viziam, Carthum, Ammatar


This race establishes a baseline, the manufacturers offer variants of it. No matter what Rattati does, it's always going to be caldari, Amarr, gallente, minmatar at the end of the day. The manufacturers simply produce a variation of a baseline that belongs to a race. I've never understood how Rattati thinks Nova will can only focus on particular manufacturers as if they don't all share a common baseline. Perhaps he's just explains things in way that not clear and he actually does intend to follow the established hierarchy. I just don't get that impression.

I means there was lore to back all this stuff up too at some point. Caldari focus on shields because they don't have the same material resources as gallente when they went independent.

amarr has thick armor because they pillaged resources through minmatar slave labor, which is why minmatar don't have high amounts of armor or shielding.