The latest patch introduced new critical stats during mining.
There are also implant set bonuses.
The various ships belong to different corporations, and equipment from their respective “lineage/faction” is available.
Why not implement one or more equipment bonuses when a faction ship—for example, a faction Caldari ship —is fully fitted with Caldari Navy gear, with equivalent bonuses for other races (speed/range/targeting, etc.)?
I don’t really like such ‘set bonuses’.
While it works in a game as World of Warcraft where set bonuses are a popular mechanic as it allows players to grind for yet another set of equipment for the promise of not only the usual improved stats, but nice set bonuses as well for grinding all pieces, I don’t see this work in a game like EVE.
Sets in EVE aren’t some aspirational goal you grind for, or something you replace every expansion. Ship modules aren’t something you play for weeks for to put one of the set in every gear slot. Instead in EVE you just simulate a fit, press ‘buy all’ in the market and have fit your ship whenever the previous ship faced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
So the main reasons sets exist in WoW don’t apply here.
The only remaining reason to have sets is that the game would want to encourage you to fit multiple modules together, like you would fit heat sinks with lasers, scan strength modules with a probe launcher, strip miners with mining upgrades or ewar strength rigs with ewar mid slots.
In fact now that I mention those combinations EVE already has a lot of such bonuses to fit multiple mods together to enhance each other’s effects. Are these ‘set bonuses’?
Of course you could push it further and limit the bonuses not to an entire class of similar modules but only one variation.
For example a new small hybrid blaster ‘X’ which adds extra web range if you equip webifier ‘Y’, which in turn gives you extra rate of fire on blaster X when equipped.
I’m not a fan of such bonuses. It’s hard to find a middle ground where the set bonus is strong enough not to be neglected but also not too strong to make the set bonus mandatory if you ever for example equip small blasters. I that last case it would reduce player choice by adding an extra contraint: if you ever fly small blasters you’ve got to equip a web and use the full set or you’re handicapping yourself.
If you ask me EVE ship fitting has enough complexity already without introducing yet another mechanic, one that isn’t even designed for a game like EVE.