yep just got out of a match where the only tactic that mattered was rolling around in a giant mob with AR assaults with damage mods, anything else melted in seconds so any other tactic was useless. so my squad rolled an AR assault with damage mods, unfortunately the other team had more so it didn't matter.

In a fight with other set ups you can use MDs or grenades, use an LR/sniper to scatter the mob, you can flank the mob, or just out capture them so they die out and lose support. This is not the case with AR assaults they kill so fast all that matters is who pulls the trigger first, so all you have to do in a fight like that is run a mob and kill every thing, and you win. Its a fine strategy but a game breaking one.

Im not saying team work is op Im saying the mob is OP, teamwork requires a strategy other then Zerg rushing. And the reason the MOB is OP is because damage scales up so drastically, that support rolls, defensive modules, Tactics, and other "gimmicks" become liabilities not force multipliers.

That's a long way of pointing out DPS grows faster, and for cheaper, than EHP. Right now gank and alpha is the way to spec.

That's effectively what i am saying, but i did so with a little self provided number crunching to back up my claim.

HMG's inherent potential and niche is the clip size. Realistically, unless anything drastic happens, dust will boil down to single "ideal" gun choice for a role, like CS did in its day: ak and m4 were pretty much the only used weapons along awp.

The ideal gun for heavies, frankly, is not HMG. Balac's ar is the most likely candidate for me. Comparison of heavies with hmg (which is built to suppress fire) and ar (which is built to quick kill) is, to me, a waste of time. Heavy ar vs. Assault ar is the more logical choice, if you want to get a feel of the end game as it's shaping up atm.

Forgot to say I added +1. Once people start realizing this we can start discussing if this is okay. I dislike it immensely, personally.

Nerf ar damage and limit damage mods to 1 per suit

wait, people still use damage mods? i dropped those a long time ago, you MIGHT kill someone 1 or 2 bullets sooner AT THE VERY MOST

extra shields are much more valuable in my opinion.

That's your opinion, and its not a bad one. However most in the high end would disagree. if you peel off those shield extenders and threw on 2 damage mods i guarantee you will be the more viable in combat. That's 21% more damage on a weapon that does a complex shield extender's worth of damage in less then .2 of a second.

there's supposed to be a stacking penalty so you can't do things like that. I'll try throwing 2 complex mods in my advanced suit and see what happens, maybe my 4.1 KDR will jump into the 5s.

Now on to why i did this. First I wanted a table with which to make reference to current damage of weapons. Second I wanted to point out how grossly inadequate endgame EHP is compared to endgame damage potential.

With that out of the way I can make a "ideal scenario" for a Proto AR assault Vs similarly fit Proto HMG Heavy. This will allow me to give a comparative efficiency rate, (isk/Time to Live(TTL)) for both weapon platforms.

Heavy VK.1 (246,800)
Weapon-Boundless HMG/ none (118,040)
High- AUR Complex Heavy Damage Mod X2, Complex Shield Extender (7920, 80)
Low- Enhanced Armor Rep, Enhanced Shield Regulator (10,880)
Gr- AV (1,920)
Eq- N/A

Dam(DPS/DPS missing1/3 @ 15m)- 25.696( 856.533/ 573.877)
S/A(EHP)- 482/527.5(1009.5)
Price isk/ AUR- 385560 / 80 (We'll just call this 420,000 for the sake of simplicity)
TTL- 1.8025 seconds
isk/TTL- 233009.7isk per second



Assault VK.1 (91,200)
Weapon- Duvolle/ none (53,840)
High- Complex Light Damage Mod X2, Complex Shield Extender X2 ( 18,520)
Low- Complex CPU Extention, Complex Shield Regulator, Basic Armor Rep ( 36,560)
Gr- AV (1,920)
Eq- None (0)

Dam(DPS/DPS missing 1/10 @ 15m)- 49.781( 622.2625/ 560.03625)
S/A(EHP)- 446.25/131.25(577.5)
Price isk/ AUR- 202,040 / 0
TTL- 1.0063 seconds
isk/TTL- 200775.1 isk per second

Not sure if someone said this already but 1.8 sec survivability vs 1.0 something according to the author's calculation is a huge difference in favor of the heavy. in FPS 0.8 seconds is far from trivial. I think, although, he made an excellent post and put a lot of work into the calcs I think his math defeats his thesis. I'd say I favor the performance of the Heavy based on his numbers. As far as the cost is concerned I think it's great to keep things unbalanced for the meta game of territorial control when that actually becomes available. This will give an incentive to ppl to risk more isk (more expensive suit) even for a marginal combat advantage if this means that your corp in the end is able to accomplish an imprortant conquest.

Lastly, I do think that both EHP progression and weapon damage progression have been nerfed too much to not make it worthwhile to buy more expensive stuff. I will say though that even though the suits all have the same hp (approx) as the base model, extra slots are an effective incentive for suit advancement. With weapons though, proto are about the same as militia making them superfluous. I think CCP takes huge swings to and from nerfs instead of little tweaks which makes no sense to me. In the past duvole AR was ridiculously OP compared to base AR, but now it's not at all different. I think there is gotta be a middle ground - I am thinking that advanced weapons should be 12-15% more powerful than militia, and proto 20-25% more powerful than militia - this would probably land things in a reasonable balance

Your math makes a lot of assumptions.The first one being that the AR user only misses 1/10 of his bullets....ok people miss more than that and because of your mobility as a heavy you feel that but scouts and other assaults are a different matter.
15m? really ?so your argument is that the HMG should be a long range weapon.
Put down the part where every thing between you and 15 meters gets melted...instantly.Example turn a corner and boom Hmg heavy...melted.You example is if the heavy is out in the open....which he shouldnt be.Hevies should be in the objectives not out in the open.

Being a closed beta tester I have had the opportunity to see alot of good tactics and alot of chicanery.But the best are when people use there suit as intended..

Scouts cross the field and drop a uplink near the objective letter and before you know it 4 heavies spawn in and its murder time.I would also like to point out that....CHICAGOCUBSFOREVER,HowdthatTaste,BlondieRoads,ExmapleCore,Aldin Kan......All way up on the leaderboards, and all are Heavies.HMG melts people in the short range.

I was one of the people that actually helped to get the Hwss a little better for heavies and reduce the heat build up for HMG's and I dont even play a heavy....but yer not happy with that.People just want to keep on complaining.

This thread hides under the guise that its scientific with scewed/misleading math.This thread in now way draws comparison between the HMG magazine size and the AR's Mag size.

This is just the age old argument of HMG versus AR'S in every shooter.....

Why cant my LMG have the same accuracy,range and weapon handling as the AR?
because you have a larger magazine capacity thats why .....

That's a long way of pointing out DPS grows faster, and for cheaper, than EHP. Right now gank and alpha is the way to spec.

Very true. One of the first things i tell new players is 'Gank grows faster than tank.'

Makes skill training decisions a lot clearer.

And then .8 build rolls out and all this speculation is made moot.

I agree 200%

Volgair, Let's acknowledge this:

1. You wanted to boil some factors down, and come up with some basic metrics whereby you could compare basic EHP vs. DPS figures between suits, and you poured a lot of time and effort into that.

2. In order to do so, you needed to make many assumptions to come up with the numbers with which we could compare, as well as leaving out many other factors in order to focus on just some basic stats. Those assumptions and factors included/not included are up for debate, which everyone is doing a surprisingly civil job of doing

2. (a) my 2 cents, is that different fitting configurations, as well as tactical play, honesty do throw your simplified calculations out of the window....

***************************

I think your point about Assault suits doing the job of killing the most efficiently, in the majority of situations, is correct. Feature Working As IntendedGäó

However, DUST will not just be about KDR, even though if you want to play it like that, go ahead. Many EVE players only play for the killboards.

But in both EVE and DUST, the gameplay is much larger, and a central part of the game will revolve around winning matches for your team, and the other suits, weapons, and playstyles act as force-multipliers which are hugely important for carrying your team to victory. I personally quite like the non-traditional styles of play myself, but realize they are meant to be a compliment to my more effectively-deadly teammates.

Which by no means is conducive to the supposedly unique thought driven game play that dust was supposed to provide.

Out of curiosity, ISK aside, what is the time-to-death in COD? sounds like it's a fraction of the fraction of a second you're talking about, Volgair.

And same question for BF3.

And maybe most illuminating, in HALO?