Ships & Modules

I'm just curious how you guys think faction battlecruisers would fit in to the current lineup of ships? Tier 1 and 2 ones in peticular.

I'm personally thinking they could fill a nice niche allowing newer players to access to high powered medium/high pricetag ships working well for low-SP pilots. And their price tag and lack of GTFO ability and speed deterring widespread use in PVP.

Yeah, pretty much, but for new pilots in need of a "Go-to" ship they could be pretty awesome. Unlike a T2 Cruiser you could likely step in to a faction meta 4 fit Brutix, Cane or Drake with about a week or two worth of training, go out and rock the world. Without directly competing with more skill intensive ships like T2-T3 cruisers / battlecruisers.

This is what I'm wondering about though, using the Drake as an example, imagining that you added a Caldari Navy Drake with one extra mid and low. Possibly one extra launcher but I think that would be a bad idea.

Given the Battlecruisers beeing somewhat slow by design, and having less defense / offense then a battleship but with better damage projection vs different sizes of targets. Would an experienced pilot use this over a Tengu or a Raven / CNR?

Then take the Myrmidion, add 25 MB Drone Bandwidth, 50 m3 Drone Capacity and a low slot. It would still be a relatively low ship, it would have less Drone Bandwidth then an Ishtar or Domi, and lower defenses then a Proteus. Thereby providing an alternative without directly competing with either.

Take the Cane, add an extra Turret Hardpoint (goes at the expense of a Neut or Missile launcher so this should be okey), and add a low or mid slot. Would an experienced pilot fly one over a Sleipnir or Loki?

Amarr I don't really know so can't speak about it, but as far as I can see, faction Battlecruisers could be an exception to Malcanis' Law because they're designed to be a part of a numbers game. Adding a faction variant would increase performance, but you'd still have better alternatives if you were a high-SP experienced pilot, so it wouldn't nessecarily screw anyone over. And their role as Cannon fodder wouldn't really change.

PS: CS's is a story for themselves, they're generally in need of a buff or two. But a 2 week or 2 month pilot won't be able to use one anyhow so even if you place the faction BC's below them in power it wouldn't really be a problem as long as it allows that pilot to be in a ship closer to the T2 counterparts performance.

What about keeping the layout the same, but give them better powerfgrid, cpu, and slightly better hp? Perhaps I'm a bit short sighted, but the only battlecruiser I see this being an issue with would be the Drake.

If there were to be another bunch of BC's introduced it would probably be better to use the models that don't already have advanced varients.

ie Myrm, Drake etc.

Not just Navy Faction versions, but Pirate Faction versions of those hulls would be nice to see in game aswell.

Regular BCs are already pretty high-powered. If you want even higher powered, higher price tag, just add bling. Can't put T2 HMLs on your Drake? Use CN HMLs. (Reminds me of when I lost a Drake fitted this way by taking a shortcut through lowsec ... luckily, I was only a day away from T2 launchers).

The thought of a faction brutix makes seriously moist

I mean, I would love another Hurricane hull, because it is the best looking hull in game (and on par with T2 Rifter hulls for pure style), and even if it were overpriced, cost-ineffective or even utterly rubbish I'd own and occasionally fly one.

That said: Adding (expensive) power level +1 ships which outclass their T1 counterparts is really only to the benefit of old and wealthy players, and further robbing the new and poor of competitive options. Which is bad; if competitive PVP (by which I mean, flying something in which you can fight a good amount of the ships you see in space with, with a decent hope of success) requires a Tier 2 BC which costs to lose maybe 50-ish million but drops about 15 million on death, it's something which is largely attainable for a pilot which is reasonably new and entices PVP and actual :good fights:.

On the other hand, if high-grade implants*, 1B ships and loki booster alts** are required for competitive PVP, then it is not conductive to actual interesting PVP at all and is very "closed" to newcomers, but is largely conductive to ganking (for which we have better tools now then we used to, for some reason), and people shy away from actual reasonable fights under such a system. This is something which is flat out overlooked by the proponents of shiny "new toys", but undock and compare and contrast to say two years ago, you'll find a lot less people willing to actually fight unless they have or think they have an overwhelming (not some - which is to be expected - but overwhelming) advantage.

I don't expect CCP to understand that, however - they're thinking about how to fix this or that minor imbalance without thinking about how will the players adapt to it, and finally, is the way the players will adapt to it in the "right" direction for the game. Everyone is excited about Tiericide, of course, because if done right, a good number of T1 ships might actually have a reason to exist which they previously didn't - and that is a good thing.

In the last few years, the introduction of badly-thought out and ill-advised T3s, then the (overdone) Tier 3s, boosting warfare links, introducing ASBs - the general direction of the changes, ever since (and including) the nano-nerfs, isn't in the direction of "more fun and attainable PVP".

* Which I have and are largely too damn good.
** Even a normal covops alt - which I didn't bother to resubscribe because I hate dual-boxing nonsense - gives you 10% to some very important stats which you could not have otherwise. Having a cloaking probing boosting loki alt (which used to be unprobeable, to make things better) is just... sick. And that particular evil was brought to us by T3s.

I'd rather have something like a sansha battlecrusier. One that doesn't suck like the succ and phantasm.

faction talos please :D

some how get 9 guns on it, thanks