I would like to see each suit get a skill based bonus starting at standard with two bonuses at advanced and two bonuses and a role bonus for proto. Militia gear would have a static bounus just enough to make it a viable suit to wear. I am using Gallante medium frame as a reference.

Mitlitia suits would have a 10% bonus in one area that is not dependent on skill level. A skill that would encourage putting SP into a skill and starting a specialization that is race specific. Gal would get a 10% armor increase or something similar.

Standard would have a 3% bonus per level instead of a static 10%. The standard level could offer a few differnt suits for each race. 3% to total armor, 2% to rep rate and 1% to hybrid weapon damage are three Gallente suits that offer different tanks.

Advanced would continue the specialization path and offer two bonuses per level. One suit could offer 2% total armor and 5% reduction in PG demand for armor plates while another suit could offer 2% rep rate and 2% range bonus per level.

Proto suits would have 2 level based bonuses and one static role bonus. 2% rep rate per level, 1% damage per level and 10% total armor. The last bonus would be the role bonus and stay static.

This progression from basic to proto would allow for different tank types for all four races across all the drop suit frames. The numbers and actual bonuses would need to be worked out by someone smarter than me. One militia suit with a static race specific bonus, three standard, four advanced and five proto suits per race all with different SP based bonuses that are balanced and race specific.

The basic isn't a failure to my eye.

You should not want to got back to basic model anyway once you got the upper tier.

You find them useless because you have skilled directly to the Assault or Logi, breazing through the basic medium.

Don't you think the guy which have 3 Millions Sp wont be happy to spend less for a Proto suit.

Thing is, that Basic proto definately need to be worst in some points (like bonus) so players want to spend the 10X sp to get into some T2 variant.

If you get to more benefit for the basic so that you want to use them even though you skilled in T2, pretty sure you wont see so many people spend 2M Sp to get a yellow suit with about the same advantages.

It is a progression, don't forget that.

They want us to skill into Heavy?

(I TRIED TO RESIST BUT COULDN'T THERE IS NO EXCUSE)

Well The way everything fell right now is : the more SP you invest in a branch, the better outcome you get.

I agree they want us to get "wider" at some point, but they want us to feel we don't invest lot of SP to get the same thing, just a little differents. Because if this wasn't a "getting taller" mindset, you wouldn't see militia --->proto progression in guns, suit and everything else.

So it is a bit of each.

When you specialize in Assault over the medium basic, What do you get for your huge SP investment? Some bonus and some more slots in higher lvls. You will still probably use the medium basic Proto until you actually hit lvl4 or 5 in assault specialization.

Maybe it is just me, but if the item isn't better for the investment, I just wont skill into it.

By the way, when did specialization was the same as getting a more diversified "wider" field of expertise? Except the TAR.