Ever since the days of JamesW's videos and the hp buff of years ago, passive tanking has become the norm and generally more powerful way to tank ships in eve. I have read a few posts and tried to think of ways that we may be able to give active tanking a little boost (pardon the pun) without completely braking the balance or game mechanics.

Ultimately I think this is the best way to do it, again without completely braking everything. We are not proposing stronger boosters / reps / or less cap used with active mods. Nothing of the sort. Instead we focused on the old saying that "Cap is life in EVE". So we propose that the only thing that changes is the amount all cap boosters take in the cargo hold. If we reduce the amount of space needed, everyone can carry more. This can be beneficial to both active and passive tanks, all turrets that require energy...... (hellcat pos bashers) ect.

Giving people a little bit more breathing room in terms of cap can alleviate a lot of issues or fears when using mods that require cap to function.


I guess Im asking what you all think. Is this a reasonable idea? Is it too much?

Thanks,

WildCat

The problem I see with this is that buffing Cap Booster modules/charges will also buff RR (and a lot of other activities), which, in a lot of opinions, is a bit over-the-top already.

If you want to buff active tanking, buffing the active tanking modules or mechanics themselves is probably the more sensible idea. I believe the advent of buffer tanking in PvP came with the massive lag of fleet fights back in the day. By the time people noticed they were primaried and hit their active tanking modules, they wouldn't activate in time. It wasn't just because of huge alpha, although that has also played its part. Now that we have time dilation, that particular disadvantage of active tanking in fleet fights has been eliminated.

Ever since the days of JamesW's videos and the hp buff of years ago, passive tanking has become the norm and generally more powerful way to tank ships in eve. I have read a few posts and tried to think of ways that we may be able to give active tanking a little boost (pardon the pun) without completely braking the balance or game mechanics.

Ultimately I think this is the best way to do it, again without completely braking everything. We are not proposing stronger boosters / reps / or less cap used with active mods. Nothing of the sort. Instead we focused on the old saying that "Cap is life in EVE". So we propose that the only thing that changes is the amount all cap boosters take in the cargo hold. If we reduce the amount of space needed, everyone can carry more. This can be beneficial to both active and passive tanks, all turrets that require energy...... (hellcat pos bashers) ect.

Giving people a little bit more breathing room in terms of cap can alleviate a lot of issues or fears when using mods that require cap to function.


I guess Im asking what you all think. Is this a reasonable idea? Is it too much?

Thanks,

WildCat

Ever since the days of JamesW's videos and the hp buff of years ago, passive tanking has become the norm and generally more powerful way to tank ships in eve. I have read a few posts and tried to think of ways that we may be able to give active tanking a little boost (pardon the pun) without completely braking the balance or game mechanics.

Ultimately I think this is the best way to do it, again without completely braking everything. We are not proposing stronger boosters / reps / or less cap used with active mods. Nothing of the sort. Instead we focused on the old saying that "Cap is life in EVE". So we propose that the only thing that changes is the amount all cap boosters take in the cargo hold. If we reduce the amount of space needed, everyone can carry more. This can be beneficial to both active and passive tanks, all turrets that require energy...... (hellcat pos bashers) ect.

Giving people a little bit more breathing room in terms of cap can alleviate a lot of issues or fears when using mods that require cap to function.


I guess Im asking what you all think. Is this a reasonable idea? Is it too much?

Thanks,

WildCat

Imagine if CCP were to add a region or two of "lost" space with old, low-tech gates that had a low mass limit which quickly regenerated, allowing a small gang to move around, but hobbling and restricting larger ones. Unstable gas clouds that explode when too many ships are on grid. Magnetic anomalies that reduce targetting range and lock speed as more ships are in proximity.

1. Fix active armor tank rigs so they have a penalty besides speed. The problem with active tanking now (where you should be more nimble because you have less buffer) is that the rigs sap your speed too. Passive armor rigs should keep the speed penalty.

2. Ship bonuses on ships that have them should be buffed to 10% instead of 7.5%. Perhaps the new incursus is a hint that this is coming.

3. Reduce the overheating damage caused/taken and/or module hit points for subcap reppers. For something that is supposed to give you longevity, they burn out too fast.

4. Reduce fitting requirements on armor reps. You need 2 to compete with shield reps, but on Gal ships it makes you downgrade guns to electrons usually. Just do it slightly so you can at least fit ions or other medium guns.

Ultimately what we need is an environment that won't support med+ gangs (ie: gangs with more than 10-12 members). W-space is an example of the kind of environmental restriction that's needed, as wormholes have a mass limit. But that mass limit is still way over what's needed to favour the buffer/logi fleet model.

Imagine if CCP were to add a region or two of "lost" space with old, low-tech gates that had a low mass limit which quickly regenerated, allowing a small gang to move around, but hobbling and restricting larger ones. Unstable gas clouds that explode when too many ships are on grid. Magnetic anomalies that reduce targetting range and lock speed as more ships are in proximity.

Tanking in general is a very powerful ability. It doesn't matter what the ship itself does on a battlefield or how it's affected by other stuff, but it still dies by taking damage. One's ability to tank that damage is to come with proper cost. At the moment active tanking comes with: high CPU and grid requirements, high capacitor usage. On the other hand, current buffer tanking, while being very potent and popular (yet again, numbers speak for themselves), is hardly associated with any significant penalties. That is especially true for shield tanking, where increase of signature radius is simply a (bad) joke.

There's a great number of ways we can improve buffer tanking (so that it becomes balanced), but the idea of decreasing mobility for using HP modules is something hardly anyone will argue with. Decreased mobility should be there no matter whether you go for shield or armour. Wanna move fast(er)? Go for active tanking then. What is really cool, it's the fact this change hardly affects fleet warfare: the difference between everyone going at 1km/s and say 700-800 is pretty much non-existent. Great Nano Fix reduced velocity values by about the same margin, yet people still blob just fine.

I'm surely perfectly fine with CCP introducing instead some other proper penalties for buffer tanking, but these changes should then come in significant shifts - you can not just increase PG usage of pesky Large Shield Extenders by 20 MWs and consider it done. Nothing will change.

As for repairing/boosting values, these are fine as they are. Increasing them will just ruin small-scale PvP. We don't want to meet unbreakable monsters on each gate. The game is meant to be fun and dynamic, so the stuff must explode. Increasing tanking values just forces people to bring bigger numbers with them and that's it.

I don't think this is a bad change, but I also don't think it will do enough to make active tanking a more viable option over buffer tanking. I think making both shield and armor buffer tank modules (armor plates and shield extenders) decrease speed is a more viable option.

CCP proposed that idea and it died. It has 2 issues. One is it makes all tanks the same. Its nice to have some variety in the drawbacks of the tank styles. For say a lok pilot, it adds complexity to flying it as on armour roams his loki is a completely different ship from when run on shield roams Second issues is it doesn't really solve much.

System as now (with thronw out numbers since cba to eft actual ones.)

Plated armour vanilla buffer/passive fit top speed is 800 m/s. Already has his plate speed reduction
Shield tanked vanilla MSE/LSE, CDFE or resist rigs top speed 950 m/s


System where shield rigs dont do sig drawback but do speed reduction:

Plate armour takes a speed hit, probably more so since the same.
Shield tanker is going slower....but still faster than the armour plate boat, and keeps agility.

Your system (and one ccp was thinking about) , end resutl is the shield tanker kiter is still kiting. jsut at reduced speed. Bunch of code rewrites, in house balance tesitng, final testing on sisi and end of the day......that jaguar and that shield cane is still kitng.

I just think shield buffer tanking needs a bit more of a draw back than it currently has.

EHP setups are preferred because of huge DPS numbers. The EHP of an active tanking ship increases the long it is fighting and tanking damage. The more dps you are receiving, the less time you're repping, the lower your EHP gained from reps.

Long story short you can alpha strike active setups with only a few ships - whereas a buffer setup will survive a few extra volley's, which is enough normally to get out of range and cut effective DPS to nothing, or for remote reps to land on them.

The best way to buff active tanking is to substantially buff the base HP of all ships without touching the HP gained from buffer modules. Perhaps lowering rig/implant bonuses to make sure they dont take advantage of this would bea good idea also.

here's an example:

Brutix, twin rep, all resists at 55% on armor, 2x rep amount rig, 1x rep cycle rig (lowest resist).
37k basic EHP
2 reps bc5 = 140 HP/s * 1.55 = 217 EHP/s
No free low slots

Brutis, no rep, all resists 55% on armor, 3x trimark (lowest resist)
65.4k Basic EHP
1 free low slot

So it takes (65400 - 37000) / 217 = 130 seconds for the active tank to actually prove better than a passive. Take into account how much cap this is using compared to a passive tank, the fact that both of them move at the same speed and that the passive tank still has a free low slot and still only uses 120 more PG... you really need to think that repping just doesn't cut it these days.

And all this is on a lvl5 battlecruiser with a bonus to active tanking. on other ships it's much worse.

Trolling, right?

In general I think fitting of armor repairers need to be ALMOST HALVED on PG and shield ones must decrease like 25% on both CPU and PG.

Once again: it's better to increase those for passive tank mods instead.

There's no point in having game concepts of CPU and PG if they don't limit you in a slightest. Having to make choices and compromises - speaking of fitting, that's exactly what makes this game interesting.