Gun off the field?

No.

Logi's have their place and their Rep tool is just as good.
They can equip rifles as well and aggress the target, just as anyone else.

SUPPORT is necessary.

Run without it, and you will complain about the mechanic.

Those without support, fail. Horribly.

We've considered this, but the problem is that right now there is no good feedback for damage resistance in the game. Adding this without all the necessary UI improvements would likely just end up with the majority of players thinking their weapons suck instead of understanding they're just less effective against certain targets. The current target intel is a very barebones implementation. It needs to be a lot better.

Why not have a visual indicator to represent efficiency on the weapon radial indicator, as in next to the ammo count or something. As you point different targets it would fill-up or empty based on your target's efficiency rating.

Just gonna throw a random thought out there, but what if the downsides to shield extenders were that they actually reduced shield recharge rate as well? (can be done alongside other changes for balance)

As is, in my armor tanked suits, my shields restore to full effortlessly. Adding a few hundred HP to shields and it's still not a huge time to wait for them to restore, unlike armor which can take quite a seriously long time. But if the more shield buffer you put onto a ship, the less HP/sec your shields would restore, and I think that may be a step in the right direction?

At the very least, it gives shield tanking a noticeable drawback similar to how armor tanking noticeably reduces speed.

We've considered this, but the problem is that right now there is no good feedback for damage resistance in the game. Adding this without all the necessary UI improvements would likely just end up with the majority of players thinking their weapons suck instead of understanding they're just less effective against certain targets. The current target intel is a very barebones implementation. It needs to be a lot better.

Hrm. I don't think this would work, as it would probably be an even harsher penalty than armour.
Proportionally, you do recharge slower if you stack shield extenders. I think the recharge rate of shields is fine as is - armour repairs aren't okay, though.

You don't actually recharge any slower though. You just have a lot more HP to charge (and proportionally, it still takes shields pretty much no time at all to fill up to maximum compared to armor) You also have modules and skills that affect shield regenerative abilities, which creates a bit of diversity with playstyles and fittings and skillpoint allocation (depending on if pure buffer or regenerative abilities are more important to you)

This also plays out better with Caldari/Matari differences, where Caldari would prefer shield buffers and Matari prefer shield regeneration.

I think keeping shields and armor distinct should be done. making one function like the other is undesirable

This is true. But combining it with a penalty means that shields take a ludicrously long time to recharge fully, similar to what we have with armour. I don't think that's a solution.

Well then this is a point where we disagree! We're both after the same thing, balance, but it seems we are looking at different ways to accomplish the same thing. Allow me to continue my efforts:

For starters, know that part of my basis for this argument does come from the EVE universe (in EVE, passive regeneration is very slow but can made very powerful by dedicating nearly every slot to it, and it never stops passively regenerating even if empty). That alone is probably enough to make a DEV skip over it without offering any consideration to it (Hey, can we get that EVE logo on top of the DUST 514 logo gone as well? We don't want EVE influencing our totally unrelated game, right?) /rant

Okay for comparison's sake here I'm just going to compare Gallente and Caldari equipment at the prototype level.

• Proto Caldari Assault ck.0:
• 210 Shields @ 25hp/s
• 120 Armor
• Delay: 5.0s (8.0 depleted)


• Proto Gallente Assault gk.0:
• 120 Shields @ 20hp/s
• 210 Armor
• Delay: 7.0s (10.0 depleted)

So we see here it will take a maximum of 16.4 seconds for the Caldari Assault to return to full shields before any modules or skills are factored in. It will take the Gallente suit a maximum of 16 seconds to return to full shields before any modules or skills are factored in. So at this level, the Caldari suit is less than half a second slower to full shields, but is getting a bonus of 90 extra hp in that time (that's not really small).

But we know that the Gallente isn't shield tanking so if we move to armor modules we see the Complex repairs 5hp/s. Most fits that I know of tend to use 2 to mitigate the speed penalty and to allow for better field sustainability (in small scale firefights). So at 10hp/s with a maximum of 209 armor to fill (210 would result in death of course) means it takes the Gallente suit 20.9 (rounds to 21) seconds to take its "tank" from empty to full. Nearly 5 seconds longer than the Caldari suit takes, but it has to use two modules to do it and invest a heavy amount of SP.

So let's throw some Complex Shield extenders on the Caldari suit. We'll go all out and throw 4 on for the sake of pure math goodness. That's (4*66) + 210 = 474 shield HP. Once shields start regenerating, that means it will take 18.96 seconds (round to 19) +8 delay (27s total) for the Caldari tank to go from empty to full. That's 6 seconds slower than the Gallente suit, but a total of 264 extra HP restored. And at no cost to the shield tank. It doesn't have to think twice about stacking shield extenders because there is no penalty. If we start adding armor plating to the Gallente suit, we not only have to consider how much longer it's now going to take us to get our tank back to full power, but also how much slower we'll be moving.

So let's say that Complex shield extender reduces shield recharge rate by -1 per extender. That gives it a 21hp/s recharge rate with 4 extenders (still higher than Gallente shield recharge by 1 and over 2x as much as a Gallente using 2 complex armor reps). It extends the time required to go from 0 tank to full 474 hp only slightly. Originally the time was 27 seconds, now it would be 30.5. Not a huge margin in my opinion, but enough to make a shield tanker consider taking a shield recharge module instead of an extra extender.

Is it a perfect idea? I wouldn't say so. But I do think it might be worth considering. And if I missed any important points here please feel free to present them, I deal more with vehicles than dropsuits!

It's worth noting that the Caldari shield tanker, if this change were to go through, could experience something like this:

3 Extenders + 1 Recharger

He'd be sacrificing one extender so his sHP would drop from 474 to 408. In return, however, his Passive Regen would improve from 22sHP/s (25 - 3) to 31sHP/s (22 * 1.42 = 31.24). This would give him a zero-to-full recharge time of ~21 seconds (408/31) + 8 = 21.16. That's about the same timeframe it takes the Gallente suit with 2 complex armor repairers just to get to 210 HP, and he's getting 408 out of it.

So again, I'm not going to say it's an end all perfect fix (or that it's even remotely close), but we have more armor modules coming out that could help narrow the gap, and the point is that this gives shield extenders an actual drawback where they currently have none.

This also accomplishes the effect of varying shield tanks. Do you go for the extra buffer to give yourself the edge in small combat? Or do you go for the improved sustainability/reliability of quicker regeneration? Again, these ideas could be integrated into the Caldari/Minmatar dropsuits (respectively) to give them slightly increased racial flavor and is a throwback to EVE lore and mechanics as well, without being an exact copy.

I don't know if your asking to buff shields or not

Adding more information to weapons and dropsuits is not a bad idea either. Labeling weapons as "Hybrid", "Laser", "Projectile", and "Explosive" in game would go a long way. Adding damage and resistance indicators is also not a bad idea. It doesn't have to be exactly like EVE, but some way for people to learn "Okay, my Precision Rifle (Projectile) with the standard ammo will do well against armor tanks (gallente/amarr suits) but not so well against the shield tanks (caldari/matari)."

They would be able to take this information with them into battle and notice the difference in performance as well.

Actually, if we already have the bars floating over enemy players' heads, it might make more sense to have resistance profiles on these bars rather than native to a weapon HUD, or in the quick-info text (current location). You could have a third bar above or below the current health bars that somehow mimics damage rates vs armor and shield.

I'm thinking a bar with a line in the center with the shield rating corresponding to the length of the left side of the bar, and armor the length of the right. A 50% full shield side would mean that your weapon does 100% damage to shield and vice versa. So when a new player would see 2 really short bars hovering above a HAV when their AR is equipped, they would know not to give away their position and shoot at it.

You do realize that shields are currently capable of this without adding a passive regeneration penalty to extenders? I mean, I have no idea if 3 complex extenders and a complex recharger even fit on a Caldari Assault Suit (I'd guess they don't considering huge CPU requirements) but it's just for a mathematical example. To provide what the same situation would be WITHOUT my proposed change:

Caldari Full Buff (Pre):
Shields: 474 @ 25 hp/s = 27 seconds to full

Caldari Full Buff (Post):
Shields: 474 @ 21 hp/s = 30.57 seconds to full

So with the added drawback it'd take an extra ~4 seconds for Caldari shields to regen.

Caldari Buffergen (Pre):
Shields 408 @ 35.5 hp/s = 19.49 seconds to full

Caldari Buffergen (Post):
Shields 408 @ 31 hp/s = 21.16 seconds to full

So there is an extra ~2 seconds for the shields to regen.

Not a huge nerf in the slightest, just something that sort of helps "bring it in line". Like I said we've got new armor modules incoming and CCP is aware that there is a slight discrepancy between the two so we may see a slight armor buff in the future. I am more trying to make it so shields aren't as much "free hp at no cost". In EVE shield extenders increase your signature radius making you a much easier target to track and hit. Armor plates increase your mass, which reduce your BOOSTED speed, making it more difficult for you to control the range of your engagement. Both have drawbacks to consider, and some may be less desirable in certain times than others.

Sorry if I wasn't making it quite clear, but I am not trying to suggest a shield tank buff.

Ah! I was not exactly meaning to imply the information be relative to the HUD, but rather:

1) The Weapon information/stats details
2) The dropsuit information/stats details
3) The dropsuit fitting window

Sorry about that. As for your idea, would you mind making a quick mockup in MSPaint or something? I am not sure I am getting the image you are trying to draw.

Here's a quick MS paint mockup.

Top bar: relative damage of current weapon on target. Current weapon is a laser rifle, it is showing much better damage to shield.

Middile/bottom bar: Shield/armor health. The target has 2x more shield than armor, but with the current intel, you wouldn't know this from the health bars. Much larger length on top shows that we are looking at a shield tank. Player then can know, "Okay, I can expect my weapon will take longer to go through the top bar rather than the bottom."

Numbers are better than bars :)

1. I think that a larger hitbox partially balances itself out when it's not visible. It's a significant penalty, sure, but you can't see it, which lets you land more shots when you're shooting at an open target but it doesn't let you splat them behind cover very well. I'm not really sure a shield penalty is the way to go, though, honestly.

Putting a signature radius penalty on shields and balancing assuming that's significant doesn't work. At all.
Here's why:
Passive scanning is bad right now, except on scouts. The vast, vast majority of dots on your tacnet come from people tagging them.
Active scanning picks up everything right now, except profile dampened suits and scouts. Basically, as it still picks up the armour suits, having a shield penalty to detectability wouldn't do anything in practice.


2/3. Good that you agree with this, but... you basically just nerfed armour plates with those numbers, and that's not very good.
Basic plates aren't 45. Those are militia plates, and that's another imbalance I commented on - militia plates are worse than basic plates in HP gain, militia shield extenders aren't worse than basic shield extenders in HP gain.

Increasing the speed penalty isn't a good way to go. Assuming ferroscale plates aren't laughable, normal plates would become unused. With those numbers, you've reduced the HP gain vs the speed penalty further, which is the main issue with the complex plate right now and the reason nobody uses them.

Nerfing armour tanking at the basic level, if anything, should ABSOLUTELY NOT be done. Basic armour tanking is much, much worse off than the higher tier armour tanking due to the repair rates - a basic armour tanker can take over two minutes to repair their armour to full, which is ridiculous, and they still get lower HP than shields.

Relying on a racial bonus to reduce the movement penalty makes armour tanking reliant on significant SP investment to use properly. A role bonus would be more doable, but it would be better not to do it at all tbh.
Shield tankers are probably going to put on a reactive plate anyway, and if we're looking at shield tankers putting on armour modules then we start to get into dual tanking, which is less of a problem.

4. I covered some of this in the previous point.

Agreed with bonuses needing a total revamp. The current ones don't work very well and make a significant imbalance.

I'm not sure about your proposed suit bonuses, for example.

The sentinel HP buff seems a bit soft for what it is. I know resistances are a very strong buff, but I genuinely think that a 3% resistance bonus would work for them.

Assault I think I'm okay with, but it increases problems with short ranged weapons being outranged - it would hurt the heavy more, for example.

Scout... You essentially just suggested a 10m/s speed increase to scouts. That's insane, completely insane. Scouts would run faster than a full speed LAV would drive. Continued in next post.

You mean you'd rather scan the screen and read numbers and do the math to think about your weapons damage than have a color coded hueristic to more intuitively understand you and your target's relative strengths? I think numbers being better is debateable (at least on the infantry level). Also with some players, screen resolution becomes a design challenge.

So your suggesting that 14% Shield reduction for a 10 decrease increase in regen, which makes them.... better? Also your leaving it to choice for the Caldari to sacrifice a Complex mod for a recharger, most people would rather get the HP increase.
Honestly I am just really confused at what you're suggesting.

I dislike bars because they trick the mind into thinking that whenever you make a change, nothing happens. For example lets say you have 100 HP, and you add 20 HP, a bar will not show this change. With weapon damage it is far worse, because in Dust 514 guns can do over 100% damage, so how would you display that with a bar?

2/3) There i feel you misunderstood me. Like a lot. The whole point, the main idea of my previous reply is to enhance the efficiency of armor oriented suits to use armor modules. And same goes with shield.

Regarding base HP of the plates. I merely use a roughly x2 multiplier compared to what shield module gives you at the same tier. So yes, i lowered the std one so it would suit that idea.

And regarding the penalty, this suggestion only applies with the other suggestion to add specific bonuses to the basic frame skills depending on the race. (copy pasting here)

- Gallente racial bonus : 10% reduction to armor penalties per level. (You would reach 6% penalty for a complex plate.)
- Amarr racial bonus : 5% reduction to armor penalties per level and 5% reduction to heat build up per level (9% penalty)

So in the end, gallente, the most armor oriented suit gets a way lower penalty that it does now (6% for complex) and with more base HP. 6% penalty for 148 HP. How does that make armor tanking worse ?

Regarding ferroplates now. when i said they shouldnt give much armor, it was in the same idea. If a complex ferroscale gives 90 HP without any kind of penalty ? What do you think shield tanker will do ? Both shield and armor tank. And in my opinion, buffing HP with a defense type that isnt originally the suits purpose should either bring you a very limited advantage, or come with a bigger penalty than the specialized suit. eg, minmatar assault using plates. It happens often in EVE.