I'm calculating dps increase in % factoring given variables using mathematics taught in schools.

According resistances:
9.09% vs 60% is enough of a difference worst to best without modificators. I agree with the fact that faction ammo is best in most scenarios with some rare exceptions. But the culprit here is ammo damage with all standard ammo having more than half of it as its racial type. This also makes pvp more of a rock-paper-scissors unfortunately.

oh,
and just to answer:
Such diminishing returns are also with plates, number of weapons and various other factors that dont need additional mechanics as standard math facts are enough here.
Accumulator rechargers are calculated exponentialy true that. But do they have exponential returns? Lets check!:
0 T4 accumulator rechargers = 504s recharge time
1 = 415
2 = 343
3 = 283
4 = 233
5 = 192
415 / 343 = 1.21
343 / 283 = 1.21
283 / 233 = 1.21
233 / 192 = 1.21

Well pvp is not completely rock-paper-scissors but when 1v1 in pure combat bots one is at a disadvantage. Not a big disadvantage but it is present, the fewer of it the better. If standard ammo types got their dmg types rebalanced a bit - going for somewhere around 20-30% of racial damage instead of over half of it then it should help with the issue of need to change ammo type. As it is now even for PvE I never used anything other than chemical ammo - difference is too insignifficant to bother. If it isn't good enough for PvE then I doubt it will ever get used for PvP.

Further to what the op has pointed out, I would like to add that I find it very peculiar that in order to fight an NPC spawn, usually the rock-paper-scissors foundations does not work.

This game is supposed to be build upon the idea that;

Nuimqol are strong against Pellistal but weak to Thelodica
Pellistal are strong against Thelodica but weak to Nuimqol
Thelodica are strong against Nuimqol but weak to Pellistal

which in short would be normally referred to as BLUE > GREEN > YELLOW.

The way resistances and armor hardeners (against npcs) work is different from assault and below to mechs and above.

Let's take a new player starting in Attalica fighting in his little arbalest as an example. He would follow the above advice and he pops over to hershfield to seek harder green bots that are naturally his arch enemies. He would use kinetic slugs and see that he is dealing good damage while his bot is naturally tuned against these enemies. So far so good. Then he upgrades to his mesmer and tries out some T3 mech-Heavy mech spawns armed with his composite core slugs (pure kinetic) and he soon notices that liquidcore (kinetic+seismic) does more damage, but then he realises that chemo ammo is probably the best damage dealer all round since it provides a little bit more damage and is better vs industrial npc that pops up once in a while.

This story would have been all nice and dandy until one realises that the best robot overall against NPCs is actually the Seth Mk2! Yes an all around robot that overshadows all other races in almost every possible way. Let me explain this a little bit in detail below as per my findings;

Against Green spawns the best is Seth Mk2 with Machinegun chemo bullet and second Gropho Mk2 with sonic missiles. (no Mesmer here!)

Against Yellow Spawns the best is Seth Mk2 with Thermal LCL lazors and second Gropho Mk2 with chemo missiles. (should be Gropho the best no?)

Against Blue Spawns the best is Seth MK2 with Machinegun chemo bullet and second is Mesmer Mk2 with composite slugs (still mesmer tank and accumulator is a bit flimsy)

The above is taken with max skill t4 fits. Now this has been the case even before the tuning rebalance and has been tested these last days. I might be missing some details so in that case please point them out. While I point out that I do not know the coded npc resistance profiles the fits scanned from the npcs and the damage applied to them seem to tally.

My proposed solution:
Fit NPCs with the following: No armor plates - 1 Univ Armor - 2 Univ Armors.

This way the resistance profiles would follow something like this:
No Plates (assaults and below) - This is already the case with lots of assault and light bots.
1 Universal plate - Mechs and above (T2/T3)
2 Universal plates - Elite mechs and above (T4/T5)

And the percentages should look something like this:
Example on Yellow npcs (artemis / seth / zenith)

No resistance plates     - 23.08     60    9.09    31.03
1 universal plate.....    - 37.5     64.29    28.57   42.86   
2 universal plates...    - 54.55     70.59    50    57.45

Where the profile follow Chemo - Kinetic - Seismic - Thermal

If this is a good solution, would it be hard/take too much time to implement? To spice thing up, you can also keep the current (or even secret) damage profiles on Rare Npcs (like mighty arbitrer / observers) so that players have to explore and find out new things.

Ps. Something else needs to be done to tackle the fact that most pvp/chemo ammo is straight out the best against everything
PPS. I would like to see the devs create more NPC content as there are potentially more players that are interested in PVE and might find the situation in Perpetuum quite a bit grindy and rigid in terms of going through the mission levels. I am not sure about the tap situation, but it seems they are not much used in their current state.
PPPS. The game is great, just need some more ppl

Lets focus on one of them:

10p = 9.09%
45p = 28.57%  (+19.48) = 1 universal hardener
80p = 50%       (+21.43) = 2 hardeners

The % is increasing rather than decreasing - idk if theres any pattern to that increase but lets take best case scenario that % stop increasing:

3 hardeners = 71.43%
4 hardeners = 92.86%
5 hardeners = 114.29%

Are you supposed to be healed by damage in the resistance hole after equipping 5 universal hardeners?

I'm gonna put some numbers that are in the game atm for comparison:

10 points = 9.09%
45 points = 31.03% (+21.94)       
80 points = 44.44% (+13.41)
115 points= 53.49% (+9.05)

Notice the diminishing returns on % of resistance here.

Lets get some facts out of the way for anyone who doesn't know:
0 to 20% increase is proportionally same as 50 to 60% increase despite it being half of the raw % difference. 20% is one fifth of full 100% damage and 10% is also one fifth of the remaining 50% damage.

And now for the extreme!
Seth mk2, lvl10 skills, 5 kinetic activated hardeners =  920 points = 90.2% resistance
Seth mk2, lvl10 skills, 6 kinetic activated hardeners = 1070points = 91.45% resistance

Remaining 9.8% is reduced to 8.55% (thats 14.62% increase of remaining resistance pattern)
6800 armor becomes 79532 effective hit points in that resistance!

Resistances are very well balanced. No point changing that.

halt there
THATS basicly whats wrong with the overall balancing attempt do beginn with.
its good that you think, T3 should be the balance point,
but the execution is exactly the wrong way round.

1. T4 needs to have best impact but poor efficiency, or else its T4 or f* off
2. T3 equals
3. T2 needs to have best efficiency, but overally, less impact
3. T1 could be then same impact as

if you do not change to something like this for your overall balance, you will still have fitting ingame that only consist of T4 -> or you change the fitting costs accordingly

removing cycletime bonuses is a good idea, but IMHO you should put a cycletime differences into variants of the weapons.

I like the direction of these changes.

However to balance Anni's concerns: it looks like T1 is not just "less good" for accum/dps, it looks just plain "bad".
For example: there exists the possibility that on some bot B, fit with quantity N T1 tunings will be unstable and have lower dps, than the Same bot B with same quantity N T4 tunings where this fit would be stable and have superior dps to the T1 fit.
I argue that lower tier goods should not be bad in both factors, but should be just considerably weaker in all factors.
Ideally: Using the same number of T1's vs T4's should not have a worse accum penalty and worse dps.  I would argue that both just become some fractional amount of total effect of the other.

Explanation
Perhaps the way to bring this in-line is to make them fractions of the same Overall Effect of the other higher tier tunings.
Let's suppose a new balance where we see fitting 4 T1's is ~= 1 T4.  Same overall accum performance cost (that's total, not the accum % modifier divided by 4) and dps total % the same. 

So let's use your new T4 as the benchmark on the weapon tuning:

With 1 T4 tuning; that is 1.12x accumulator cost, 1.16x dps.
With 4 T1 tunings; the same _overall effect_. (1.12x accum; 1.16xdps)
1 T1 tuning then would be: 1.03~ (because 1.03^4 ~= 1.12) for accum; 1.04x for dmg

We can now argue about how many T1s should equal a T4, T2 or T3 etc.. But this at least begins to talk about how effectively slot real-estate gets used, and higher tech levels should make more use of them.
Now this may turn out a head full of T1s is STABLE but a head full of T4's is NOT.  However the critical point here is that the T4 in fewer modules will out perform the T1s. 
Then we get another point here:
By using T4's you can't fill all your slots or risk accum instability (or energy transfer logi..) either way there is a tradeoff.
So this encourages fit diversification like we have seen recently with pvp since the last balance which, in most cases, has been GOOD for shaking up the pvp meta.

Now this gives you a tool to target an ideal number of tunings at a T4 fit bot.
You can see where what accum % modifier with some ideal number of tunings begins to adversely affect the accum stability on that bot (Note: weapon types' cycle and accum cost will make this different per bot).  Yes you can make it stable with larger numbers of lower tier tunings, but the overall dps will be best with that number of T4 modules.
The effect of this would then be: T4's would be used for their performance increase, but will prevent all slots from being used all the time, forcing head slots to open up for other modules.  New players or those without access to T4 can equip lower tier modules, achieve performance increase, but not kill their accum faster than they would with the same number of T4's.

Just some crazy thought - what if stacking the tunings of same type will also cause interference? Higher the tier, more interference stacking would add

Not that full head of t4 would make you blind to death, rather it's not even cross the line. Instead, it will make you more vulnerable to interference both being in blob or under effect of interference emitters, or TP-anomalies, or whatever.

So you have to diversificate not just your personal fittings, but a whole fleet composition.

Optional: Stacking tuners would also increase the amount of interference your robot emits.

Making lower tiers more efficient is a good point, and I also widened the tier gap for weapon tunings, so here are the revised numbers:

(Note: The efficiency ratio columns in my previous post were accidentally shown using 4 tunings, so it could have been a bit misleading regarding differences. Ratios are now shown using 1 tuning module here.)

ARMOR REPAIR TUNINGS

CURRENT

TIER	Acc MOD		Repair MOD	Cycle MOD
T0	1.3		1.1		0.97
T1	1.3		1.3		0.95
T2	1.3		1.3		0.95
T2+	1.3		1.35		0.95
T3-	1.3		1.4		0.92
T3	1.3		1.4		0.92
T4	1.3		1.5		0.9
T4+	1.3		1.55		0.9

NEW

TIER	Acc MOD		Repair MOD	Cycle MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4		1.1		1		0.79
T1	1.2		1.2		1		1
T2	1.1		1.2		1		1.09
T2+	1.15		1.3		1		1.13
T3-	1.4		1.4		1		1
T3	1.4		1.4		1		1
T4	1.6		1.45		1		0.91
T4+	1.7		1.55		1		0.91

INDUSTRIAL TUNINGS

CURRENT

TIER	Acc MOD		Gather MOD
T0	1.3		1.1
T1	1.3		1.3
T2	1.3		1.3
T2+	1.3		1.35
T3-	1.3		1.4
T3	1.3		1.4
T4	1.3		1.5
T4+	1.3		1.55

NEW

TIER	Acc MOD		Gather MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4		1.1		0.79
T1	1.2		1.2		1
T2	1.1		1.2		1.09
T2+	1.15		1.3		1.13
T3-	1.4		1.4		1
T3	1.4		1.4		1
T4	1.6		1.45		0.91
T4+	1.7		1.55		0.91

EnWAR TUNINGS

• Only T3 and T4 have diminishing returns now, for T1 and T2 accumulator usage and drain/neut modification scale uniformly.

CURRENT

TIER	Acc MOD		Drain MOD	Neut MOD
T1	1.1		1.1		1.2
T2	1.1		1.1		1.2
T3	1.1		1.13		1.23
T4	1.1		1.15		1.25

NEW

TIER	Acc MOD		Drain MOD	Neut MOD	Ratio
T1	1.1		1.1		1.1		1
T2	1.1		1.1		1.1		1
T3	1.2		1.13		1.13		0.94
T4	1.3		1.15		1.15		0.88

WEAPON TUNINGS

CURRENT

TIER	Acc MOD		Damage MOD	Cycle MOD
T0	1.5		1.03		0.97
T1	1.5		1.05		0.95
T2	1.5		1.05		0.95
T2+	1.5		1.055		0.95
T3-	1.5		1.075		0.95
T3	1.5		1.075		0.95
T4	1.5		1.075		0.925
T4+	1.5		1.085		0.925

NEW

TIER	Acc MOD		Damage MOD	Cycle MOD	Ratio
T0	1.4		1.05		1		0.75
T1	1.1		1.1		1		1
T2	1.05		1.1		1		1.05
T2+	1.05		1.2		1		1.14
T3-	1.3		1.3		1		1
T3	1.3		1.3		1		1
T4	1.55		1.4		1		0.9
T4+	1.7		1.5		1		0.88

The point in turning around tier efficiency was to give usefulness to lower tiers too. Higher tiers DO perform better (as in: provide higher damage modifiers) but this happens at the cost of efficiency.

If your goal is pure damage and can handle the penalty, you go for higher tiers. If you are concerned about accumulator stability, you go for T3 or T2, or a mix of them.

"stability" is not primary balance factor in PvP, neither is it in a multiplayer centric pve enviroment.

its kinda right to ask for loot tables to be looked at as primary work after this was implemented, but after questioning why "stability" does matter in PVE at all. (what do you GRIND npcs for?)

tbh,
armor repair, and accumulator recharge should be linked to combat status. make accumulator recharge and self repair efficiency higher when out of combat. something that makes a seth with 8k accumulator not have to wait 8 minutes to be ready to repair itself, and then wait another 8 minutes to be repaired, and then another 8 minutes to wait for the accumulator to recover from the repairers drain.

We have that nice "in combat" status blinking for everytime something starts shooting us, but only to prevent the ultra frequent event of someone destryoing his cargo content or log off while beeing chased by someone who is actually only interested in epeen killboard entry. (the thing could have been solved like they do in elite dangerous - you can't magically destroy cargo, you have to dump it into space).

about DEV Zoom's number regarding the weapon tunings:
1xT4 tuning equals 1xT2 + 1xT3 in damage increase.

not only do you need only 1 slot for it, in production you also pay one less t1 and t2 module.

I think diversyfiing between t1-t4 is a great idea! It made me scratch my work that I had ready to post prior to reading it and redo it but I think it was worth it.

First lets get some facts out of the way.
1. 20% increase to the power of 6 (6 modules equipped) is 2.985 or basically almost ideally 3 times increase.
2. T4 is harder to make than T3. T3 is harder to make than T2.

Now for my proposition:
T0 = terrible tunings, might be considered better than nothing but thats about it
T1 = Increase in effectiveness but not efficiency
T2 = Identical to T1 but with lower fitting requirements. (basically as they are now - lets not mess up fits we all love to use shall we?)
T3 = Same increase in effectiveness as t1/t2 but better efficiency.
T2+ = Stats of T3 with fitting requirements of T2 (easiest solutions = best solutions)
T3- = Stats of T3 but higher fitting requirements
T4 = Best increase in effectiveness, slight increase in efficiency (but not as high as T3)
T4+ = Better increase in effectiveness and almost as good in efficiency as T3.

Basically if lacking TF and PG = fit T2 , accumulator = T3, power = T4

T4 is still best if you can afford both fitting and accumulator requirements (it is most expensive and difficult to build right?)
T3 will help you stable accumulator greatly.
T2 when you are missing TF or PG or need mre velocity.
T1 is not as good - but hey its cheap and infinite.

Now for numbers:
-It doesnt take rate of fire into factor - I absolutely agree on eliminating too many variables.
-Im going to call repaired/gathered/drained ammount and damage as power.
-Repair, Industrial, Enwar and Weapon tunings have identical increase in power and accumulator becouse above.

Tier 0
Power = 6% increase
Accumulator = 12% increase

Tier 1 and Tier 2
Power = 12% increase
Accumulator = 12% increase

Tier 2+, Tier 3, Tier 3-
Power = 12% increase
Accumulator = 5% increase

Tier 4
Power = 18% increase
Accumulator = 15% increase

Tier 4+
Power = 20% increase
Accumulator = 14% increase

Now to make other propositions easier for anyone not willing to do the mathematics here is a link to those values calculated into number of modules and accumulator efficiency associated with it. Copy it , change only values with yellow background, observe how values change and post your counter propositions if You have them.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … sp=sharing

(EDIT: its T3- not T3+)