Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The more dps part is intended to only be effectively applied to large targets like other battleships, structures and caps. More dps can be gained through rate of fire without affecting alpha. The larger guns shouldn't be useable to hit cruisers in missions and ratting without special attention. Maybe with CCP's sig radius and tracking equations that isn't easy to achieve, but that's the theory.

Sure, someone will find a way to triple web, double-target paint and over tracking-enhance one of these things on a gate camp to kill a cruiser, but at that point, it's overkill and could've been done with smaller guns and fewer ships anyway.

The announced changes to TE are enough of a NERF to the Talos as is. Leave it alone.

So I got to thinking, instead of giving gallente a boost to armor reps for there "tanking" bonus how about giving them a bonus that reflects there preferred form of tanking, hull tanking, give gallente a 5% per level to the resistances of Damage Controls.

Hull is the squishy inner part of the ship were the people are...

Might as well call it meat tanking. Like duct taping people to the side of a Tank to stop RPG's. Human Wave tactics now in 3D. Body Armor has a whole new meaning. They're Gallente so they can just pretend they're just forming a picket line around that Dominix, save the Space Whales. If they stuff their shirts with copies of the Geneva Convention it should provide extra layer of protection. I can see why drones and socialized medicine are so popular in the Federation.

I think I have reinforced the fact that I tell these jokes in bulk, a head for them I'd say. I would go on cracking these hull jokes all day but my funny bone is losing structure fast. This post might give me a rep for awesome puns but the truth is I'm kind of slow on the delivery. I guess I should walk this all back and maybe do some Damage Control too.

Thank you I'll be here all weak. Catch my weekend routine on alarm street. I don't know the name of the bar but you can't miss it, it's the third one down.

I make and sell Armor Plates...

Don't worry, I think my Industry is safe.

Attack Battlecruisers:

I've come to dislike tier 3 battlecruiser balance for a few reasons, however CCP introduced some very usefull tools to the players and revamping an actually usefull sniper ship. They also gave the ships some cool attributes, however they also gave the ships some really stupid advantages that really screws over other ship classes. In my opinion these ships should be focused mostly for their sniping potential without making short range dps support difficult. A rough polish to make them usefull at a role and not nearly as usefull for FOTM I-win button players...

My first concern is 8 guns and all of them having a damage bonus. This outright places the attack battlecruisers as the subcapitals capable of the most dps even more than most battleships. These ships would make so much more sense with only 6 or 7 guns as their alpha and dps would still be super competitive.

Secondly I have a huge concern about ships fitting LARGE weaponry, however still able to lock up other ships much faster than other battlecruisers. To make a good sniper ship these ships need longer lock range than other battlecruisers, but lock speed should be equal to or slower. Especially considering their special signature making every other ship taking longer time to lock back.

Third thing is their speed and agility. These ships should have faster warp speeds and should be fairly easy for aligning and getting into and out of warp - However they should not be able to fit battleship weapons and at the same time fly faster than other battlecruisers. At the most the 2 things should cancel out eachother and the speed reduced to normal battlecruiser speed. I've seen those ships burn away so fast the transversal on T2 interceptors dropped enough kill them with a few volleys. Give the attack battlecruisers tactical warp speeds and agility rather than straight up velocity. I am sure the dev team has at least 1 person able to tell story after story about their Talos surviving camp after camp against the odds saved by sheer velocity, small signature and perhaps that horrible misplaced Talos dronebay full of ec-300?

Also being able to burn 400km before running out of cap often getting free from tackle when going out of grid. Perhaps that will be sorted mostly from a lowered velocity, but I'd give an extra good look towards the capacitor. A real sniper shouldn't HAVE to fit MWD anyway though I know people demand it.

TL:DR

• Attack Battlecruisers should do more dps than Combat Battlecruisers but not outright outperform most battleships no matter how "fragile" they are...
• Lock time should be reduced to match Combat Battlecruisers while keeping their advanced lock range.
• Velocity should be reduced to match Combat Battlecruisers while instead keeping a high agility and getting a tactical warp speed between 3-6au
• Make sure the ships capactiors doesn't support MWD'ing for too long

Battleships:

Scorpion has a distinct ewar role, but could really be a nice ship with the option for 6/6 launchers/guns. Ecm is in an everlasting progress of getting nerfed and this ship is rarely used outside any huge scale fleet warfare. Without any damage bonus Im not even sure this would be enough to make it an attractive ship so why not give it a go making it a really good fleet ship.

Raven has a good role, but without a tanking bonus really need more native hitpoints and/or a 7th medslot. You can easily take away one of the two utility slots as the ship doesn't have the fitting to properly utilize them anyway.

Rokh really need to change out that optimal bonus for a real damage bonus. Railguns have a pathetic alpha (Yes PL use them but they also have the numbers to compensate for ****** alpha) and who need an optimal bonus when they already have the longest ranging gunnery system in the game. Yes, it's nice to sling antimatter to extreme ranges but then why do we have all those useless ammotypes? This won't fix railguns ofcourse but long range weaponry and range of engagement is another topic all by itself...

Dominix, Megathron and Hyperion are all good ships with different roles. I would love to see an experiemental slot layout swap between Megathron and Hyperion and perhaps giving the Megathron a RoF bonus in exchange for losing a little drone bay but none of the ships look like they need huge overhaul. I just wish all active reps would get a proper boost rather than a silly attempt to introduce more modules...

The Amarr gunboat need more distinct roles to make them more attactive. The Geddon is a super nice gunboat. The Abaddon has about the same role however with a tanking bonus it is like a bigger brother. This is sort of bad, but making the Geddon more mobile while having the bigger drone bay could be enough. Just the Apocalypse should be attempted to a get a super uniquie role other than lasers. Perhaps the Apoc should be a drone boat with armor resistance and the Abaddon should have the damage bonus and a tracking bonus....

Typhoon would settle nicely as an armor tanked torpedo ship with medslots enough to feature a thin shield tank as well. The Tempest and Maelstrohm seems fine however the latter need better mobility and a stronger buffer.

All of them basically need a reduction in materials it take to build and a tiny bit more ehp (structure mostly and some buffer for active rep ships). Eve doesn't need more dps with the amount of people available, but a decent tank should enable battleships to take the battle vs 2-3 battlecruisers without melting instantly.

Pinky

INTERCEPTORS! PLEASE! THEYRE SO BAD IT HURTS TO LOOK AT THEM!

Don't forget to rebalance the pirate frigates, the Worm needs some love.

t3 bc's : they have totally obsoleted hacs
why?
range: they have lots
targeting range
decent overall tanking ability, see naga
they're fast
dps: way more
they cannot kill frigs, only weakness

they have obsoleted tier 2 bc's
range: they have lots
targeting range
decent overall tanking ability, see naga
they're fast
dps: way more
they cannot kill frigs, only weakness

they have almost completely obsoleted tier 1 bc's except:
they don't have the amazing tank of t1 bc's, only downside

You can literally fit out a talos with 2 medium neuts, and it will still be more useful then a ham fit cyclone for just about anything. This is how totally broken the ship class is.

Tracking has never been the problem. They are highly susceptible to any kind of tracking related issues, ie td's or frigs. This is important to understand that tracking is their weakness, and not a strength: nerfing the talos's tracking bonus will be counter-productive. Removing drone bays will also not have the desired change. It is their ability to project massive dps at high speeds with excellent range that makes them so utterly broken. TE change will not fix any of this. In fact, it will make it worse, with lesser ship classes feeling their already bad range being limited even harder, while the range limitations being put on t3 bc's will be easily accepted, and will probably force people into them more.

And yes, they are broken as hell.

edit: if you want a good balance, remove them.

I’d like to remind those who already have, or the next person to propose, the idea of ‘EW Battleships’ as to why multispec ECM was nerfed into the ground: because everyone was fitting them to Battleships, worst offender was the Nosferatu/ECM Dominix of the 2005-6 era, because EW on BS level HP's, with BS level weaponry, with BS slot layouts = solopwnmobile.

Extra EW Battleships are not needed, don’t fulfil any role that isn't already adequately covered by specialised cruiser classes, and would put balance back to the crap heap it was in when every single Battleship you came up against had EW up the wazoo. The Scorpion is an oddity, because way way back, it got it's railgun focus shifted to ECM, but that was fine, as this was long before any specialised cruiser EW, or indeed true 'racial' EW was formalised. You could argue it's time to roll that back, but then, it does have it's niche as a unique 'oddity'.

So, focus on the damage projection role of Battleships, possibly along attack/combat lines, keep the diversity and distinction between racial doctrines, and leave EW in general to the smaller support classes.

Ultimately, Battleships as a whole probably only need tweaks, as the class as a whole is reasonably well balanced.