With the fuss of brawling and kiting being brought back to the light for some peculiar reason with this coming patch, I have a slight alternative suggestion away from the factors of damage or tank. I propose simply changing the MWD module itself.
Leave the speed where it is all minor factors as they are.
However, I have two propositions to add, and basically they revolve around not being able to leave the MWD running permanently;
Give the MWD module a cooldown, and make it so that it can only be cycled once. You can do two alternative MWD lines from this. One that increases duration if you overheat the module and one that increases speed if you overheat the module.
The alternative concept is very much the same, however instead it is given the need of fuel to continue cycling. Like that of a cap charge to keep the module running before incurring a cool down. The nice bit about this concept is though a little ship will outrun a much larger one, the cargo bay of the later will eventually allow them to catch up assuming a smaller ship remains on the field.
The idea is that proper manipulation and piloting with said module on either kiting or brawling ships will decide the victor.
You want to completely change gameplay just to address what are essentially calibration issues? This would completely and totally wreck solo/fleet PVE/PVP from low to high end.
Even if T2 Interceptors/Talwar/HAFs/HACs/certain T3C propulsion subsystems were given exceptions, this would not be acceptable.
Cargohold space is already scarce - this would make a bad situation worse.
And there it is! The red warning flag that showcases a terrible and poorly thought out idea! The word “Interesting!”
It says, “I didn’t actually put much thought into it, but this is my knee jerk reaction to something that I don’t know anything about, but have strong opinions of!”
Don’t take it personally kid, it’s not even your idea.
Don’t make it a habit of getting offended for someone else.
Simply saying “it could be interesting” is absolutely trash reasoning for proposing a change to an game mechanic. You know what else could be interesting? Wiping everyone’s wallet right now. That could be “interesting”. But it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
When an MWD deactivates after one cycle or quickly exhausts precious limited cargospace to fuel it (almost as if it needs something like GJ from a capacitor to give it energy), it’s not exactly kiting anymore.
This isn’t a matter of whether or not MWDs are OP (they’re not), or whether there is a general imbalance between brawling and kiting (there isn’t in general - not to the extent that MWD need to categorically change since counters readily exist even outside of NS). OP raised a non-existent problem and proposed a bad solution for it. The end result would be a change in gameplay that does not enhance the game nor make it more interesting; to the contrary it eliminates the fun and interesting kiting meta for which, again, there are plenty of counters for. The extent to which the upcoming patch may bring imbalanced require simple calibration, not redesign.
it is already done properly: you can overheat MWD to “catch up” to target (and overheat is a limited resource per fight, especially on ceptors). That and MWD is not friendly to capacitor.
No. Swings balance too far in the way of brawlers. Kiting is a strong meta but it’s still a fun way to play, it shouldn’t be deleted off the face of the game.
A stronger bonus to overheated prop mods gives brawlers a better chance of catching kiters without re-writing half the pvp meta.