Combat Revisited - Increased Defenses
We're doing a lot of stuff these days and I figured we should tell you about one of the projects. Combat revisited, as can be seen in the In Development section, is now well underway. We're not doing all of what is in there, but this is the start and we wanted to begin with increased defenses.
Active Shield and Armor Hardeners now have Passive Hardening in Inactive States
There are 8 new skills which enable this Passive Hardening. 4 skills for Shield and 4 for Armor, one for each damage type. Each level of this skill trained gives you a passive resistance of 3% up to a cumulative 15% for each damage type. This only applies when the module is inactive, if it is activated, it gives its standard resistance bonus.
Passive Shield and Armor Hardeners resistances by skills
The same 8 skills mentioned above increase resistances on Passive Hardeners by 3% per level, increasing the total resist to 32,5% maxing out at 42,625% at level 5.
The skills only add resistances to these modules to further emphasize the defensive abilities of a tank setups vs. a damage only setup. Applying the resistances to the ship itself would have favored both the tank and damage setups, effectively achieving nothing.
The bigger benefit to passive hardeners is also to increase defenses of ships lacking capacitor to run active hardeners.
Shield Extenders and Armor Plates further improved
Shield Extenders and Armor Plates have been further improved. However, to balance this increase and to prevent too much of a benefit for ships fitting oversized, Extenders now increase your signature radius and Plates increase mass.
Damage Controls are now useful!
We've made one of the most bastard modules useful by giving it a small resistance to all damage types in shield and armor and a huge resist to the hull. However, only one can be fitted at any time. This should represent it's name quite well, where it is giving a general benefit to a number of defensive areas.
Reinforced Bulkheads
It's gotten more usefull but not overly so. It increases structure for pilots that say structure tanking is "4tw" (Molle?). Therefore we are considering adding Remote Hull Repairers too. This is however mostly for away fleets, where a pilot can get hull damage before warping out. He can now be healed by a fellow support pilot after the engagement. It also doesn't make your ship sluggish anymore.
Decreased volume of Capacitor Booster Charges
The Capacitor Booster module capacity has likewise been reduced, the aim here it so be able to have more Capacitor Charges in your cargohold, not put more inside the Booster.
This is needed since increased defenses in general means that your cap means far more than before and should in many cases require you to think more about what you have running active at any given time.
New module available to decrease Signature Radius
We uhm ... have a ... new module available to decrease Signature Radius. Title ruined that one for me. Anyways, it's a bit dangerous since Signature Radius affects a lot of things so by all means go and check it out, we need good feedback on it.
All ships will be tested with flat 25% more Hitpoints
This is a considerable increase when taking into consideration all the other increased defense measures, so the end result is more than 25%. As a result, this 25% addition might be reverted or changed (up or down) depending on testing of it. This increase might vary between ship classes or tech levels.
Stacking Penalty has been changed
This is one of the most important of all the changes. The Stacking now gives less penalty for the first 2 modules on top of the first, the third is almost the same, slight decreased penalty compared to today. Anything more than 4 modules of same type gets practically useless. This benefits tanking more, since you usually only fit about 2 of each type and now get a bigger increase while a damage output ships fits 4-8, which is no longer practical. We might nudge the formula a bit, but fitting 2 damage mods in general is a good bang for the bucks now.
We have some other stuff which is not done yet under the Combat Revisited project but this is where we are today. This is should all be hitting Singularity over the next weeks.