Modular Equipment System

[Reeves]

This is going to be a little messy, pun intended, mostly because I just thought it up.

So I've flown snubs primarily over the time I've been here and I've looked back over the screenshots of my ships that I have from then till now and one thing that has never changed was the fact that my ships always seemed to follow a common set-up in regards to mines. I would always have a CD, CM and a nuke mine, there was no point doing anything else due to obvious draw-backs. But what if we had these drawbacks while still allowing people who largely fly alone a little versatility with some tactical disadvantages?

Give me a small amount of your patience and consider these examples:

1) Duelists, they exist and usually engage in small-scale skirmishes with one or two hostile fighters. This is a legitimate choice in play style but it can have drawbacks under the MES. A duelist, say one who flies an Avenger or any other duel oriented ship can mount a combination of an MR/Maxim/Missile(only one of these, obviously), CD and Nuke mine, but they accomplish this at the cost of CMs. Meaning if this big stronk man finds himself in a group fight and has missiles actively pursuing his posterior, he's probably going to die without serious help. They aren't feasible for extended group combat this way, though there's no way for me to formulate around exceptional skill if someone's able to consistently dodge missiles.

2) The supportive group fighter or chaser, both of which are seen in larger scale and even mixed ship-class fights. We're going to use the beautiful Guardian as the benchmark example here, not to say any other ship of the VHF class would be unable to accomplish this if set up right. The chaser Guardian would be set up as follows, a missile to make sure that even fancy flying doesn't negate damage output, a CD to make sure their target can't flee and a CM to make sure they don't take missile damage themselves or get CD'd while firing their missiles. But they do this at the cost of having mines, which does two things, it eliminates a unique damage aspect and it also lessens the risk of a chaser nuking their own team-mates.

This is mainly to give people who want a little freedom in how they equip their ships that exact fundamental liberty, but without giving them perfect choice. The previous iteration of a similar system was the Auxiliary system, which allowed load-outs like MR, CD, CM and nukes to exist on one ship. While I think the concept behind that system was rather creative, it wasn't balanced. A craft should only be able to mount so many utility systems before the chassis says "Bruh!".

Jokes aside, I'm interested to know what the dev-feedback and user thoughts would be like on a system that both empowers and counter-balances your effectiveness like this.

EDIT: I imagine this would work best using the old method of auxiliary weapon mounting, just to avoid the awkwardness of having an MR that faces backwards because it's being mounted on the CM slot or something funny.
Essentially, this would work using a set of equipment values, via FL Hook. You have 3 slots, so three coded slots, mounting an MR in place counts as 1/3, a CD as 2/3 and a nuke mine as 3/3, meaning FL Hook would not allow you to mount a CM. I'm unsure of the technical side of how this would work, but I hope something along these lines is possible with current development methods.

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[Traxit]

Yes.

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[Kyoi]

Duelists are kinda useless outside conn. There's no way to help someone dodge missiles. You have to try and CD the missiles but there isn't going to only be 1 player with missiles.
Also seems like a chaser will always beat a duelist even in 1v1 because he can't dodge missiles, but dodging mines and cd'ing them is very easy.

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[Reeves]

A duelist against a chaser would not be certain victory for the chaser, because he'd be playing to the duelist's strengths and fighting him head-on, meaning his missiles could easily be CD-blocked. However, were a duelist to run from a chaser or turn his back on them for too long, then yes, the tide would turn as their styles and gear would suggest, because then he'd be allowing the chaser to play to his own strengths.

This is really just a suggestion so as to cultivate a little diversity in snub load-outs, rather than the same old static gear and otherwise redundant options.

[Karlotta]

Splitting it into "duelist" and "chaser" will just add more rock-paper-scissor balancing in which the win depends more on your choice of ship/setup than on skill or IRP tactical cleverness. When caught alone a chaser is more screwed, when a duelist is caught by several people he's more screwed.

The aux slot was fine before PvP balance was ruined even more than it was before by first adding a stupidly OP sidewinder and subsequently making missiles CD-slot only. You could choose anti-cap/trans, "chaser" or, "duelist" by choosing the aux slot mount without getting screwed too much by additional weaknesses like no CD or no mine.

What you're proposing here is not really diversity, its just more rock-scissor-paper balancing which will make you wish you were in your other ship lots of times, and force you to make more and more ships you'll want to jump between.

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[Reeves]

I do want to mention that calling things chasers and duelists is just an example, I'm not advocating for a certain fixed ship equipment type here, but rather that instead of having to either go for a CD or an additional utility weapon, like an MR or Maxim, why not give someone the ability to have both, with a drawback of having to give up something else of their choice. As it stands there is rarely ever any reason to not mount a CD in place of any of the existing weaponry that previously occupied the auxiliary slot.(The above examples citing categories such as duelist and chaser were mere illustrations based on observations of how certain people actively fly their ships in-game. And they are exactly that, examples. Needless to say that people can always choose to fly and fill a different purpose and trying to be versatile under a system such as this would be possible, there'd be nothing stopping someone from using a more traditional load-out, with a CD, CM and Mine.)

I do suppose that this does have its own set of drawbacks, but I believe that some drawbacks are necessary because auxiliary slots came with absolutely none, all they did was make heavy fighters redundant. My objective with this suggestion is to make Very Heavy Fighters seem more user configurable and perhaps even more purpose-fitting. But you have raised the point of people being forced to hop ships and things coming down to a matter of rock-paper-scissors, and while I can't comment on the latter, the only thing I have to say to the former is that why should any one load-out be able to fill every role there is to be filled?

An additional reasoning behind bringing about some form of a system like this has to be the fact that CD's are simply too useful, let's just be honest on this one little subject. They are used in not only stopping someone, but detonating mines, popping missiles, disrupting an E.K, etc. It is severely crippling for any fighter to not have one given how the mechanics seem to have shaped themselves over time. So in the face of such an issue, would it really be problematic to allow someone to play around their own strengths and inability to find wingmen, by granting them the freedom of perhaps using a Maxim along with their CD and mine? While obviously having to forego the CM in that instance.