Regens, and specifically nanobots have been subject to countless discussions over the years, with each individual or group proposing their own unique way of dealing with it. While the general point of view on the subject differs, the majority (if not all) of the past and present playerbase have shared the opinion that using nanobots is not skill-based at all, and applying appropriate adjustments to make it so would make PvP (mainly snubcraft PvP) far more interesting.

Here's one option that was brought up recently, and is currently being actually considered for implementation:


For the sake of example, let's say each nanobot can repair 5,000 hull, and the hypothetical Guardian which had 68 nanobots before, now can only hold 9. This would mean during a fight, if the Guardian pilot decides to repair the hull, 1 nanobot will be used for any damage of 5,000 or lower (which means 1 nanobot will be used even if the ship only has 100 hitpoints less than full hull). In practice, this would result in pilots having to pick between the risk of getting insta-killed by a mine or a torpedo to use nanobots efficiently or wasting a good chunk of their "total repair" if they decide to play it safe and repair before reaching the "insta-kill line".

Considering the impact this change would have on general snubcraft PvP, even though the balance team is in favor of this change, it was decided to post it for community discussion before actual implementation. Considering the multiple drastic changes snubcraft PvP has already undergone with 4.87, this change would fit perfectly with rest of the changes, but since it's basically picking between two functional alternatives, the option that wins community support would be the one implemented.

P.S: Yes, this thread has a poll cause apparently polls are the new cool. We'll be monitoring it for alt accounts, and if any is spotted, none of the votes from the owner of the account would count, so only vote with your main account.

(03-10-2014, 11:32 AM)Treewyrm Wrote: rather that going with polls and publicity trends I'd say make a few ships, gather a focus group, do preliminary testing and have a glimpse at how it would perform in practice.

It was already discussed with a focus group (consisting of not only snub pilots, but also transport and cap pilots), and they generally seemed to be in favor of this change, which is why the subject is up for community input now. Unfortunately, actual ingame testing with a focus group is not that doable of an option at the moment since we had to take down the official test server due to budget cuts and whatnot. If anyone with a good enough net is willing to host a server for a few days to do proper test runs on this though, it'd be more than appreciated.