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[Shaalira]

Fozzie's Jan 10 Q&A Post

One of his more vague answers may have the deepest repercussions.

Q: What about armor tanking? The imbalances caused by the mass of plates, the speed penalty on armor rigs and the weakness of armor reps in pvp situations are a problem that becomes more pronounced for these ships than for any of the smaller classes and should be fixed as soon as possible!

A: I completely agree. ~Working on it~. However since we want to be very careful about what we promise and when that's all I can say at this exact moment.

Well, finally some details.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2496241&

Is my title pretentious enough?

We've got the resources all properly committed so I'm now ready to share with you all our initial plan to fix some of the biggest problems that face armor tanking in this game. Sorry for the extended period of teasing, hopefully the happy ending will make it all worthwhile.

I was going to go into this big spiel about all the problems with armor tanking in general and active armor tanking in particular, but you all know this so I'll jump straight to the interesting bits.

Here's what we're looking for feedback on:

Armor Rigs

• New rig called the Nanobot Overcharger that increased the overheat bonus on your local armor reps by 30% (40% for T2). So with one of the T1 rigs overheating gives the rep 13% more rep amount and 19.5% faster rate of fire instead of the default 10% and 15% respectively. This effect is stacking penalized and gives no bonus when the reps are not overheated. Same calibration and build costs as a Aux Nano or Nanobot Acc rig.
• Change the penalty on all active armor rigs (Aux Nano Pump, Nanobot Accelerator, and the new Nanobot Overcharger) to increase the powergrid use of local armor reps by 10% instead of reducing ship velocity.

Plates

• Add a new skill to the game called Armor Upgrades. This skill reduces the mass penalty of all armor plates by 5% per level. (Int/Mem, rank 3, requires Mechanics 3) This skill affects all plates and is unconnected to the stat change listed below.
• Reduce the base mass penalty on all 800mm, 200mm and 50mm plates by 20%

Ancillary Armor Repairer

• Not the same mechanic as the ASB, please read to the end.
• Always uses the same cap as a normal (T1/T2/Named) Armor Repper
• When not loaded with a cap booster, has 3/4 the rep amount as a T1 Armor Repairer
• Loaded cap boosters triple rep amount (so reps 2.25x a T1 repairer when loaded)
• Same cycle time as T1 reps
• Same capacity, charge restrictions and reload time as an ASB, but the longer cycle time of armor reps means it goes longer between reloads
• Limited to one per ship

Quick Q&A about the AAR:
Why limited to one per ship?
The longer time between reloads is a big part of the playstyle we wanted to give the AAR, but that with multiple copies would completely negate the burst tanking ideal. In addition, there is more of a tradition of lowslot tanking modules restricted to one per ship so I made the call that in this case the restriction would be worthwhile. The ASB debate is a separate issue unconnected. Please note that nothing is preventing current dual or triple rep fits from swapping one of their reps into an AAR.
Why keep the cap use consistent?
The elimination of cap consumption when loaded is a huge advantage of ASBs, but we decided with the AAR to build the strengths in another direction, focusing on greater stability instead. In addition, one downside of the ASB's zero cap use is the inability of one player to influence the tank of another through neuts. This works ok for the ASB but I am not inclined to expand that mechanic further.
Why not just buff all armor reps?
One of the aspects I really like about the ASB is that it allowed CCP to decouple burst tanking from sustained tanking in a new and interesting way. Burst tanking is key for most PVP active tank scenarios while sustained tanking is more common for PVE. We wanted to carry that aspect over to armor tanking, allowing us to create new burst tanking gameplay without making current sustained tanking gameplay overpowered.

So we are very interested in hearing your feedback on this proposal. Expect at least most of these changes to make it into the next Sisi build for playtesting (the AARs might not catch this upcoming build but they should at least be in the one after that).

[kalaratiri]

We've posted the same thing at the same time, in different threads http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=3990.msg64018#msg64018

Mods, feel free to merge/remove/etc my post.

[Saede Riordan]

Fozzie's Jan 10 Q&A Post

One of his more vague answers may have the deepest repercussions.

Q: What about armor tanking? The imbalances caused by the mass of plates, the speed penalty on armor rigs and the weakness of armor reps in pvp situations are a problem that becomes more pronounced for these ships than for any of the smaller classes and should be fixed as soon as possible!

A: I completely agree. ~Working on it~. However since we want to be very careful about what we promise and when that's all I can say at this exact moment.

Well, finally some details.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2496241&

Is my title pretentious enough?

We've got the resources all properly committed so I'm now ready to share with you all our initial plan to fix some of the biggest problems that face armor tanking in this game. Sorry for the extended period of teasing, hopefully the happy ending will make it all worthwhile.

I was going to go into this big spiel about all the problems with armor tanking in general and active armor tanking in particular, but you all know this so I'll jump straight to the interesting bits.

Here's what we're looking for feedback on:

Armor Rigs

• New rig called the Nanobot Overcharger that increased the overheat bonus on your local armor reps by 30% (40% for T2). So with one of the T1 rigs overheating gives the rep 13% more rep amount and 19.5% faster rate of fire instead of the default 10% and 15% respectively. This effect is stacking penalized and gives no bonus when the reps are not overheated. Same calibration and build costs as a Aux Nano or Nanobot Acc rig.
• Change the penalty on all active armor rigs (Aux Nano Pump, Nanobot Accelerator, and the new Nanobot Overcharger) to increase the powergrid use of local armor reps by 10% instead of reducing ship velocity.

Plates

• Add a new skill to the game called Armor Upgrades. This skill reduces the mass penalty of all armor plates by 5% per level. (Int/Mem, rank 3, requires Mechanics 3) This skill affects all plates and is unconnected to the stat change listed below.
• Reduce the base mass penalty on all 800mm, 200mm and 50mm plates by 20%

Ancillary Armor Repairer

• Not the same mechanic as the ASB, please read to the end.
• Always uses the same cap as a normal (T1/T2/Named) Armor Repper
• When not loaded with a cap booster, has 3/4 the rep amount as a T1 Armor Repairer
• Loaded cap boosters triple rep amount (so reps 2.25x a T1 repairer when loaded)
• Same cycle time as T1 reps
• Same capacity, charge restrictions and reload time as an ASB, but the longer cycle time of armor reps means it goes longer between reloads
• Limited to one per ship

Quick Q&A about the AAR:
Why limited to one per ship?
The longer time between reloads is a big part of the playstyle we wanted to give the AAR, but that with multiple copies would completely negate the burst tanking ideal. In addition, there is more of a tradition of lowslot tanking modules restricted to one per ship so I made the call that in this case the restriction would be worthwhile. The ASB debate is a separate issue unconnected. Please note that nothing is preventing current dual or triple rep fits from swapping one of their reps into an AAR.
Why keep the cap use consistent?
The elimination of cap consumption when loaded is a huge advantage of ASBs, but we decided with the AAR to build the strengths in another direction, focusing on greater stability instead. In addition, one downside of the ASB's zero cap use is the inability of one player to influence the tank of another through neuts. This works ok for the ASB but I am not inclined to expand that mechanic further.
Why not just buff all armor reps?
One of the aspects I really like about the ASB is that it allowed CCP to decouple burst tanking from sustained tanking in a new and interesting way. Burst tanking is key for most PVP active tank scenarios while sustained tanking is more common for PVE. We wanted to carry that aspect over to armor tanking, allowing us to create new burst tanking gameplay without making current sustained tanking gameplay overpowered.

So we are very interested in hearing your feedback on this proposal. Expect at least most of these changes to make it into the next Sisi build for playtesting (the AARs might not catch this upcoming build but they should at least be in the one after that).

seeeeex

[Shaalira]

We've posted the same thing at the same time, in different threads http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=3990.msg64018#msg64018

Mods, feel free to merge/remove/etc my post.

Hah!  I guess excitement over the change to armor tanking runs rampant.  I'm fairly interested in seeing what this will do to the meta.

seeeeex

QFT.

I might have to stop being so dismissive of the active armor tanking bonuses of the Brutix, Myrm, and Hyperion.