If there were a sprint bug fix, and that delay to post decloak item usage what would you guys suggest regarding armor plate penalties?

If the stats suggest that HP-tanked Scouts are OP, I'd recommend:

* Increasing movement penalties for plates when equipped by Scouts.
* Increasing stacking penalties for shield extenders when equipped by Scouts.

I'm hesitant to get behind percentage changes to HP modules without first seeing the numbers.

As Llast said, once you made that change every suit would need adjusting. Once the numbers (base numbers) were set up proper it would take care of itself.

I'm tinkering with a spreadsheet and the numbers I'm seeing are pretty scary. If all things are held constant for Heavies, we'd end up with Complex Plates running at around +20% of base HP. At that value, a Scout would need 4 complex plates to achieve the equivalent of today's 1. And that doesn't even account for stacking penalties.

The heavy's base HP is roughly 4x ours ... that gulf gets nasty fast when working with percentages.

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So yes, we'd have to rework everyone's base numbers. That's a big deal balance wise and would entail alot of work on Rattati's part ... all because of hp-tanked scouts?

well what did i miss? any new scouts come?

Buff the alpha damage weapons along side nerfing the EHP?

The problem in my eyes is the combination of Dampened Scout, Cloak, plus Shotgun, that has 360 always on shared wallhacks.

Big problem: The Scanning System.

Pressure point: Remember back in chromo before weapons had falloff? That is how the scanning system works in Dust.

Related problem: Scouts have great scanning capabilities (that aren't hampered by being cloaked), reducing passive scans to only display results, no direction arrow btw only a blip, on the mini-map (and not the HUD) ought to be part of the solution. And remove shared passive scans...

Solution:
* Scan Precision falloff.
* Active Cloak hampers passive scans. (Maybe blurr out the mini-map with static?)
* No directional arrows on the mini-map, only blips.
* No target markers on the HUD.
* Removed shared passive scans.

(Oh and remove aim assistance. You know just in general... )

Also, They should really tier matches to Mil/BAS/ADV/PRO.

Wanna play in a basic match? Enforce basic weapons/dropsuits.

Same for all levels of weapon/dropsuit. You can always go down, but not beyond the class of the match. Plenty of people have suggested this, and tied it to EVE security ratings.

That right there would solve so many issues.

Also, They should really tier matches to Mil/BAS/ADV/PRO.

Wanna play in a basic match? Enforce basic weapons/dropsuits.

Same for all levels of weapon/dropsuit. You can always go down, but not beyond the class of the match. Plenty of people have suggested this, and tied it to EVE security ratings.

That right there would solve so many issues.

It should be like tabletop games, where your armies have point limits based on the competition.
Tiered game modes should have a cap on all the items on your suit, based on average meta lvl of your fitting

1.0 meta 0
0.9 - 0.7 meta 3
0.6 - 0.4 meta 5
0.3-0.1 meta 8
0.0/WH/Pirate no cap

Let's you still customize your fit while still limiting.
average for meta values were random, the concept and not the n umbers is the point.

Would love this but I feel the STD gal scout is OP vs the other STD dropsuits. IMO

It should be like tabletop games, where your armies have point limits based on the competition.
Tiered game modes should have a cap on all the items on your suit, based on average meta lvl of your fitting

1.0 meta 0
0.9 - 0.7 meta 3
0.6 - 0.4 meta 5
0.3-0.1 meta 8
0.0/WH/Pirate no cap

Let's you still customize your fit while still limiting.
average for meta values were random, the concept and not the n umbers is the point.

A system like this would be a good way to compare tier vs tier. This way CCP could balance both within tiers and across them.

In the same way that basic scouts have an advantage over standard logis.

@ Cross

I'm backpedaling on Haerr's idea. At the moment, at least :-)

One Eye made excellent points about hacking and uplink duty. Also, we've always preached that fixes should be as focused as possible on the target issue. If the target issue were Cloaked Scouts are too good in general, then Haerr's idea would be fit nicely. But that isn't the issue; the issue is limited to Cloak+Shotgun+Scout+HP. Or so we think.

While Haerr's idea would likely solve Shotgun+Scout, it would potentially create new problems elsewhere. Such is the nature of overly broad adjustments : /

:: pours another drink ::
:: puts on thinking cap ::

But it would certainly be nice to know if such an idea were possible :-)

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For the purpose of reference only, could any of the following be accomplished via Hotfix?

1) Append or replace cloak's profile dampening bonus with another ewar metric.
2) Increase a given weapon's "raise time" such that when drawn it takes a moment before becoming available.
3) Increase the volume of cloaking / decloaking sound effects.
4) Replace "directional" infantry minimap markers with circles, as to occlude unit orientation.

@ Cross

It would be kind of difficult to address other issues given the hypothetical situation, simply because a lot of times changes have unintended consequences and may actually play differently than we think.

That being said, I don't know that all of those changes would be necessary if even one of those changes take place, particularly if Haerr's cloak penalties were in place. I think the effects would be overly burdensome, and would negate the need for other changes.

I also think that if other changes were in place, they would negate the need for additional cloak penalties, and would most likely not overly diminish scoutly roles other than slaying.

As someone who has played with 200EHP for long stretches of time, I think we should address the EHP problem vs the shotgun (which clearly has issues) or the cloak (which IMHO sucks anyways). Touching the cloak or shotgun because of a gallente scout problem once again screws the other scouts.

I like LLast's idea the most because it addresses the problem, and it, on face value w/o maths, sets everyone up for role success.

The reason everyone got shamed off the forum every time they asked for a minja knife nerf is because of how silly they sounded.

Make the gallente EHP in line with the minjas, and buff the shotty.

Just like a minja has low EHP and a high alpha damage weapon.

If you keep thinking of the cloak as an offensive weapon, maybe it's time to split cloaks into defensive/offensive variants (if possible).

I think a bigger problem than Gal shotty scouts is the heavy LAV issue. That is clearly role breaking, yet whatever? I used to role around as a proto heavy in my BPO LAV and wreck people just so more people would see the problem. fuckin crickets on that though.

All of this would only make me HP tank with cloak and shotgun even more.
I would prefer fixing the shotgun cloak problem not F-ing over all scouts for the shotgun+cloak problem.
Your wanting to take away all scouts eyes because cloak+shotgun scouts are OP.

This logic is like replacing a motor in a car to fix a flat tire. In the end the tire is still flat (shotgun+cloak is still the problem but now all scouts are blind)

It should be like tabletop games, where your armies have point limits based on the competition.
Tiered game modes should have a cap on all the items on your suit, based on average meta lvl of your fitting

1.0 meta 0
0.9 - 0.7 meta 3
0.6 - 0.4 meta 5
0.3-0.1 meta 8
0.0/WH/Pirate no cap

Let's you still customize your fit while still limiting.
average for meta values were random, the concept and not the n umbers is the point.

I know it's hard to remember life more than a year ago but seriously, new-scout life is more brutal than a Swedish death metal band.

Makes sense.

Also, to be clear, the "other changes" I was talking about would be buffs in this case considering that the alteration to cloak scan range, weapon use from decloak et al are nerfs my hypothetical was simply posed as a "if scouts would enjoy that cloak change, what buffs would be required to keep things in a good spot balance wise".

But as you say that is a lot of hypothetical X factors to account for.

Cheers,
Cross

True that. I've gotten a bunch of my friends to try Dust and I always end up convincing them to spec into Minjas. I feel like a siren luring them onto the rocks. They tend to go about 0-15 every match, and they've played video games all their lives. >:L

What do you guys think about just nerfing the shotgun? I hate to do it, really, but it seems like the only commonality with regards to the balance problem we're discussing. Cloaks aren't the problem, scouts aren't the problem, tanked scouts aren't the problem, but the shotgun is the focal point of it all. Nerfing any of the others would have too much of a ripple effect on other roles. I don't think the shotgun is the problem itself, but nerfing it seems like the fastest and least intrusive way of eliminating the problem.

All this ends justify means stuff makes me feel icky though :( Balancing Dust is hard

Maybe reduce the shotgun's clip size? I can't think of a reason why an alpha damage weapon should do almost 4000 damage per clip.