Dear CCP,
As a lowsec FC I cannot in good faith not voice a well thought out opinion in the face of such looming changes that overwhelmingly cripple us. My issue is not with the increased damage coming from short range weapons and only mildly with the resist nerfs. No the meat and potatoes of our plight lies with the not very well thought out change to limitation of 1 Capacitor Booster to a fax.
We will begin with the technical details of why this is total folly. No active fax in the game can currently run either its local tank or its remote repairs on 1 capacitor booster alone. Even a buffer fax cannot effectively run its reppers off of the capacitor coming from 1 booster. Compounded by the fact that jumping into combat you begin with less than half your capacitor in the first place. If the enemy even breathes a hint of energy neuts onto you, you are useless to your fleet and are essentially a glorified paper weight. Currently the extreme pressure of incoming dps and incoming neuts can be offset by a technique called inject repping. For those unfamiliar it is basically fighting from zero cap. By injecting boosters from 1 or more injectors and immediately running a module. Relegating faxes to only 1 capacitor booster of any type effectively disables all buffer and active faxes that do not wish to use their slots for capacitor regen.
This circles us back to the old triage fits of CCC rigs, Cap rechargers, and power relays. Shield faxes are practically destroyed with those fits due to the shield booster penalty power relays bestow upon you. Armor faxes become crippled to the point of uselessness for the purpose they were meant to fill. Our current fax fits are capable of tanking structures and work in pairs to tank the structure or the fleet depending on who is primaried. The Cap Regen fits sacrifice far too much to tank what is required in the new engagements one must fight through in EVE and will fold up like paper under the pressure that will come their way. If you implement this change in the manner you have outlined, faxes will be a dead ship. They will have no purpose because they will be so utterly and completely broken and useless in the current game mechanics. IE. Citadel fighting.
You should not go through this change. Faxes are well balanced right now and have hard counters. You can either drop dreads on them, perfect the art of spearfishing to boosh large parts of the enemy fleet off the fax and kill many of them, or you can bring alpha based comps that ignore the immense repping power faxes bring to the table.
Now onto the non-technical reasons why fax change is horrendous. As lowsec entities we rely on the enormous power of fax reps coupled with our quality based doctrines to be the tip of our spear when we MUST win fights. As we bring fewer pilots to the table to often do battle with much larger entities on a regular basis we cannot afford to spare the manpower necessary to bring such a large number of subcap logis nor can we afford to bleed ships in the same manner as larger entities who have dozens of pilots to replace anyone they lose during the battle. Simple math for you, if Wangs has 50 arty machs in fleet and I bleed 10 of them, depending on who and what I am fighting I no longer have the critical mass I need to kill what I need.
This is the lowsec way of war on structure fights. If you implement this change to faxes you will cripple our entire ability to effectively resist larger entities altogether. You cannot tank the enormous firepower brought to bare against us by these groups with subcap logi. You can bring all of the guardians you want, 100 feroxes will annihilate them. Understand that we frequently take these fights with about 10 active faxes on turbo max I need everyone dudes ping. Frequently we find ourselves going into battle with no more than three at a time. They are the battering rams which we rely on to effectively siege large structures such as fortizars and azbels. This is because subcap logi in the numbers we pull are wholly inadequate to the task of tanking both the structure, the enemy fleet, and keeping our own ships alive. Any subcap logi we may bring is meant only as a last ditch effort should horrible circumstances befall upon our faxes. Without this battering ram, we will not be able to take fights or create the content our people desire.
There will undoubtedly be people who say adapt or die and get good, but to you I say this would be the equivalent of CCP stating that Fleet limits for everyone including null blocs are capped at only 20 pilots. RIP movement and fire coordination. Please understand this is such fundamental damage to the only available option we have to fight against overwhelming numbers that we will be absolutely hamstrung to do anything major.
In addition to this capital escalations altogether will drop dramatically. Faxes entering the battlefield are usually to the que to begin a limited escalation of dreads to pressure the faxes which in turn leads to steady escalation that results in all out dread brawls as the battle takes shape. Without trigger why should anyone feel the need to drop dreads?
If this change is implemented in its current iteration you will completely cripple the pirate way of war. We will never be able to creatively defeat the N+1 tactics our enemies employ and our entire quality of life all throughout lowsec will be severely diminished. I humbly ask that you take more time to re-evaluate that portion of the patch and please talk to the leaders of lowsec about this matter directly. Thank you.