Zeylon Rho
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
793
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Posted - 2013.06.16 01:41:00 -
[1] - Quote
Here's an idea: I'd suggest that the profile shift from shields be percentage-based on max-shield. The modifier would be multiplied by your suits signature. It makes rational sense as your shields are projecting an energy field beyond your suit.
While it would seem that this would get overly large, we have a current problem in the game where people tend not to be detected till they're right in front of us anyway.
To explain:
Say your suit has 100 shields with all your passives and shield extenders (presumably, you're not using them I guess). Your max shield value in that suit is 100 then - this translates to 100%. Multiply that by your profile (effectively x 1, or no change). This means scout suits (who have very low shields) effectively keep low signatures.
A suit with 200 shields has 200%, or a doubled profile. If you have some Cal logi shield block, you effectively have someone lit up like a christmas tree with a ton power going to shields... you might have a crazy modifier like 6x. The current heavies (Amarr only) have large signatures by default as well, at 4x or 5x with no modules, but heavies are supposed to have large signatures as well.
You also could conceivably put a variable on all shield mods that acts as a flat +X to profile (raw value, not percentage) to represent the increased power output going on when strapping something like a regenerator or regulator to your suit. So, a person that elected to fill 5 high slots with shield regenerators would get whatever the +X to signature is x5, and whatever that value is multiplied by their max-shield based percentage.
A Cal logi (to use a popular example) could try fitting all their low slots with profile dampeners to compensate, but those would still be subject to a stacking penalty of course. It's a question of how "bad" or serious you think visibility is. To some degree, suit EHP already seems to figure directly into speed and signature, so it's possible they might want to adjust the base suit values if they gave the shields this kind of multiplicative effect (i.e. - if a Heavy has 400 (4x) and a Scout has 70 (.7) base modifier... they might not need to have the current signature disparity).
The only problem with this is impacting other suits signature won't necessarily make them much more detectable. The larger issue with our current profile-scan system is that all suits have a very short range (to make scanners useful perhaps). This shield "fix" doesn't impact the existing gimpy scan radius of all suits (part of that seems to be that the meters in game don't seem to be actual meters...) because the scan radius is a property of your own suit, not your opponents'. |