In Dust, prototype gear is for the most part the only thing you want to use in a slot if you can manage it. The most extreme cases of this are with high slots. Advanced damage mods jump from a 5% damage increase per slot to a 10% damage increase with the prototype counterpart. Shield extenders double from a 33 bonus to shield health, to a 66 bonus. This leads people to ignore advanced versions of some modules because of how little benefit they give. It's far more beneficial to simply blaze the path to certain prototype modules, an advanced or prototype weapon and base what's left of your fit to support that.
There's also issues of the reverse happening. Basic armour plates are so good because of poor drawback scaling, that it's rare to see anyone going for higher tiers of plates. Having more health pales in comparison to being able to move around effectively and a 3% slowdown isn't huge.
The end result of this is that some modules are leaps and bounds ahead of everything else to the point of making certain modules worthless. This becomes a problem because the gap between tiers becomes wider the higher you go, a stark contrast to EVE and a balanced system in general.
If you look at how EVE does scaling by comparison, it's strange to see this issue coming up when they had such a good base to work from. In EVE, gear scales fairly evenly between each tier from a power perspective. However, the cost goes up exponentially with every upgrade. Lets take a look at the different ranks of Magnetic Field Stabilizers.
Sheet1
Data taken from Dodixie.
As you can see, the differences in cost between each meta level (basic modules are a bit different) jumps in leaps and bounds. The differences in benefit however are much smaller, at around a 20% increase per meta level. Compare this to damage modules which go 3->3->5->10 in bonuses with a similar cost pattern. In EVE, a newer player can fit some meta 3 modules and not be at such a disadvantage in terms of ship strength. But in Dust, you're looking at 100% boost between ranks in some cases. This leaves new players at a bigger disadvantage than is necessary and forces grinds towards certain skills. It also makes certain advanced modules somewhat redundant. Why use 2 advanced damage mods when you could use a complex and save a high slot?
The differences in ranks should really be brought closer together while keeping a reasonable gap between ranks. 3/5/7/9 sounds better than 3/3/5/10 (damage mod/armour plate drawback) and 20/33/46/60 sounds better than 22/22/33/66 (shield extenders). Prototype would still be king, but more affordable fittings should actually be viable.
update: Someone on the feedback thread on the forums pointed out that with percentage based scaling, the shield extenders would give something like 22/27/32/39 or 34/42/53/66.
There's also issues of the reverse happening. Basic armour plates are so good because of poor drawback scaling, that it's rare to see anyone going for higher tiers of plates. Having more health pales in comparison to being able to move around effectively and a 3% slowdown isn't huge.
The end result of this is that some modules are leaps and bounds ahead of everything else to the point of making certain modules worthless. This becomes a problem because the gap between tiers becomes wider the higher you go, a stark contrast to EVE and a balanced system in general.
If you look at how EVE does scaling by comparison, it's strange to see this issue coming up when they had such a good base to work from. In EVE, gear scales fairly evenly between each tier from a power perspective. However, the cost goes up exponentially with every upgrade. Lets take a look at the different ranks of Magnetic Field Stabilizers.
.
| Meta Level | Damage Multiplier | Rate of Fire Bonus | CPU Fitting | Cost (ISK) |
.
| 0 | 1.07 | 7.5% | 30 | 140000 |
.
| 1 | 1.077 | 8.25% | 31 | 78500 |
.
| 2 | 1.084 | 9% | 32 | 88000 |
.
| 3 | 1.091 | 9.75% | 33 | 166500 |
.
| 4 | 1.098 | 10.5% | 34 | 390000 |
.
| 5 | 1.1 | 10.5% | 30 | 880000 |
.
| 6 | 1.09 | 10% | 27 | 38000000 |
.
| 6 | 1.1 | 10.5% | 24 | 85000000 |
.
| 8 | 1.125 | 10.5% | 20 | 101200000 |
.
| 8 | 1.125 | 10.5% | 20 | 106000000 |
.
| 11 | 1.1325 | 10.5% | 22 | 800000000 |
.
| 12 | 1.1375 | 10.5 | 24 | 1180000000 |
As you can see, the differences in cost between each meta level (basic modules are a bit different) jumps in leaps and bounds. The differences in benefit however are much smaller, at around a 20% increase per meta level. Compare this to damage modules which go 3->3->5->10 in bonuses with a similar cost pattern. In EVE, a newer player can fit some meta 3 modules and not be at such a disadvantage in terms of ship strength. But in Dust, you're looking at 100% boost between ranks in some cases. This leaves new players at a bigger disadvantage than is necessary and forces grinds towards certain skills. It also makes certain advanced modules somewhat redundant. Why use 2 advanced damage mods when you could use a complex and save a high slot?
The differences in ranks should really be brought closer together while keeping a reasonable gap between ranks. 3/5/7/9 sounds better than 3/3/5/10 (damage mod/armour plate drawback) and 20/33/46/60 sounds better than 22/22/33/66 (shield extenders). Prototype would still be king, but more affordable fittings should actually be viable.
update: Someone on the feedback thread on the forums pointed out that with percentage based scaling, the shield extenders would give something like 22/27/32/39 or 34/42/53/66.
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