Reading through the Assault Ship thread here in GD, several posters discussed that one thing that could help assault frigates is to change the mechanics of MWDs and Afterburners to make Afterburners more viable in PvP. Currently, the drawbacks of using a MWD (signature radius, max capacity) are not enough to discourage people from using them due to the impressive bonus to speed. Afterburners, however, are not used because the speed advantage it provides is extremely unimpressive compared to a MWD.

Basically, Afterburners are Civilian MWDs that happen to work in deadspace complexes. This is not good.


1. Bring MWDs and ABs Closer Together
First of all, we need to bring MWDs and ABs a bit closer in general - reduce the speed bonus of MWDs from 550% to 450%, and increase the speed bonus of ABs from 135% to 250-300%.

Now don't freak out yet over the MWD nerfing, I'm not done explaining how this will work. Patience!

Currently both MWDs and Afterburners can have their speed bonus altered by the ratio of their thrust attribute to the fitting ships' mass attribute. As in lighter ships will get a bigger boost, heavy ships get less. This leads me to my second and third points.

2. Make Afterburners More Effective on Heavier Ships
There needs to be a scenario where fitting an Afterburner in PvP is more effective than fitting a MWD - as it stands, the capacitor penalty is not nearly enough when considering the huge difference in speed bonus.

Afterburners need to function well where ships are too heavy to benefit terribly well from an MWD (after the MWD speed nerf described in #1). They need to receive their full bonus even if a ship is 20% heavier than average.

3. Make MWDs More Effective on Lighter Ships
Microwarp drives follow the same thrust/mass rules as MWDs, but they need to have greater benefits for being fit on lighter ships. This has two effects: Light ships like interceptors maintain their previous speeds, while heavier ships receive less of a bonus.

Combining points 1-3, heavy ships fitting a MWD will be no faster or only marginally faster than if they fit an AB. Fitting a MWD would also incur the penalty to maximum capacitor and signature radius.

Light ships, however, would take better advantage of MWDs due to their smaller mass and maintain their speed advantage relative to MWDs.

What do you guys think? Would this create more variety in PvP, or would it just make using a MWD more of a pain in the ass and still leave ABs in the dust? Support your answers, preferably.

UPDATE:
I didn't realize how much my proposed change could screw over close range ships such as blaster and autocannon boats, since getting into very close range quickly is extremely important. This change may be better suited than my original suggestion:

1. Increase the speed bonus of Afterburners from 135% to approximately 300-350%
2. Remove the cap penalty from MWDs, but make them incur a significant penalty to agility and maneuverability, no lower than 50% and as high as 80%
3. Interceptors would have a role bonus either to the speed bonus gained through Afterburners (something like 50%) or a role bonus that reduces or removes the agility penalty incurred from fitting Afterburners.

well you know what they say about the boy who cried (boost the) wolf.

i think the altering how the mass/thrust thing works is innovate, could work, only I'd like to see 2 people with a T2 100mn MWD/AB bpo debate about this (it seems that MWD would become very unfavorable on larger ships?)

Just... LOL.