Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What I would like to hear from you about is:

a) Do you think battleships should be upgraded to capitals or downgraded to be more effective against subcapitals?

b) If battleships were upgraded, give an example of how they would fit into the capital hierarchy (standard drones, fighters, ehp, jump or non jump drive)

c) Any comments that you can back up with data or logic. Try to refrain from personal attacks or derailing the thread with bitternesss. Single word answers like No and Yes are welcome but what would be more welcome is a properly thought out idea or explanation as to why you say yes or no.

Yeah.

But is there really not mid area between say a BS 200k EHP and 1k DPS and a Dreadnaughts x Millions EHP and 10 thousand of DPS?

Likewise is there no middle ground between a Doms 150k EHP and 5 sentries and a Carriers x millions EHP and 15 sentries?

I think you have a point.

I'd like to see 10-20% more dps, 25% more ehp and a gallente and minmatar EW boat (damps and TPs would be good to leave the recon specialisms for tackling intact).

I like battleships where they are. I think your view of them being a "poor mans capital" is an extremely negative view of their role. Battleships provide cost efficiency compared to capitals, while still bringing the punch of large guns and respectable tank. Yes, they are slower and less maneuverable (and admittedly the scan res on some of them is insane, I don't think it should ever take 45s to lock a frigate because your not running sebos; however the validity of such a point could be debated at length) but they still provide an important middle-class between smaller subcaps (i.e. battlecruisers/cruisers) and capitals.

I think battleships have a good role as the backbone of a fleet, and provide good use in terms of attacking structures (which is currently the one of the few ways to contest "ownership" in EvE). Turning them into capitals would simply provide role overlap in that class, and making them more like battlecruisers would defeat the point of such a ship, you may as well remove it. E-war can counter their weaknesses in things like tracking, and saying that it's a battleships weakness that missiles only apply damage fully to ships of their size is a falsity; the problem there is inherent with missiles, not their targets. As for battleships being the largest subcap target for capitals, you are correct. But I would argue that the battleships counter to this is their cost efficiency, allowing for larger fleets of them to go head to head with capitals. If there is a ship whose role is blobbing in fleet warfare, it's the battleship. Finally, for their mobility, you are correct in saying it's bad. But that's OK. I think battleships simply stand to benefit more from the force projection provided by supercap support (Titans, specifically) more then others*.

*Force projection in EvE is really its own thread, since it is kind of in a situation where you can't live with it and you can't live without it, but I digress.


-Final Thoughts/TL;DR

I'm firmly of the opinion that the battleships role lies in fleet warfare, both large and small (small here refers to, for example, a 25 man POS/POCO bash, not roams) whether your going head to head with the enemy or simply shooting structures. They benefit strongly from e-war/logi support as well as large numbers which befits their role as the backbone of fleets and strategic operations. If there are questions to be raised here I don't think they doubt the battleships role per-se, but rather would be more along the lines of:

- "Are battleships capable of performing their given role, within reason, with well managed support; or are they under-performing in their field due to an outside mechanic (or mechanics) or weakness in some specific hulls?"

or perhaps

-"Are other ships, such as capitals, overshadowing the battleships role; and how do we bring them into line with their role?"

or even something like

-"Do battleships need improved mobility for the sake of seeing more of them in small-gang roams (the 5-10 man kind)?"

And while I don't have the answer to those, CCP did rather recently do a battleship rebalance, and I would take that as meaning they are happy with where battleships are. It would be interesting though to hear peoples thoughts on the matter however.

I hadn't looked at it like that but you do make a good point.

Edit:

I guess massed battleships do make a formidable force but then if you look at the alternatives, lets say 10 Ishtars (9000 dps) vs 10 Megathrons (11000 dps) vs 10 thoraxes (6000 dps) vs 10 Naga (9000 dps).

The mega's do get an extra 2k dps but only against BS and caps but they lose mobility, sig radius, tracking, scan res, range dictation and cost wise. Against smaller ships the other alternative while having less paper dps output more real dps than the megas.

I mean 20 cruisers against 10 naga's or 10 battleships you're probably looking at dead battleships since tracking and mobility against large guns is likely going to win the day. Its hard to say since it depends on the tactics, speed and range of the engagement and those will surely be dictated by the faster more mobile ships, the cruisers.

Whats most important to me is that the battleships are put into one of the roles of capital ship or sub-captial ship, ie they are subcapitals that can operate with other subcapitals, or they are small capitals that can operate with capital ships.

At the moment I see them as mostly capital type ships but lacking a jump drive and EHP, but that are substandard against sub-capitals due to their capital ship negatives.

Ideas:

Increase in EHP to take them to around 1/3 of a capital - 500k EHP (remember T2 ehp rigs cost around 250 mill for 3).
Increase in build cost and time.
Capital sized turret options, bonused so that they're only able to fit the equivalent of a dread (the equivalent of the attack BC to the BS, but instead the attack version of a battleship to a dread).
Possibly a microjumpdrive that would allow a jump into an adjacent system at a random celestial. No focused hotdropping.

These are just ideas, and not specifically what I want, what I want is some uniqueness and ability to the class. Im a die-hard battleship fan. I want to see them viable as something other than disposable capital ship fodder.

I don't see any problem with battleships in general. They are only separate from other sub-caps if you purposely exclude them. They are just as far from cruisers as cruisers are from frigates. Battleships are far less vulnerable to dreadnought fire than cruisers are to battleship fire. A dreadnought can snipe a battleship at long range when the battleship is preoccupied, immobilized, and has several target painters on it. However, a battleship can snipe a frigate that has the same, albeit it is easier for the battleship to hit the frigate.

I once was flying a maelstrom and struck a perfect blow with 1400mm artillery against a frigate which was orbiting another craft about 20km away and moving across my field of view. I turned on my microwarpdrive and pushed my maelstrom in the direction the frigate was about to be going, then fired when we matched velocities. I didn't even use a target painter.

I have flown a wide variety of battleships in a wide variety of situations, and I have to say there is no need to change them significantly. The only change I would make to tem is to make them bigger. They do not follow the same trend of increasing size that other ships do; battleships are not as much bigger than cruisers as cruisers are bigger than frigates. I would increase battleship sig radius and EHP a bit, and decrease their agility and speed a bit. I would leave their damage and mass where it is, because those are in-line with other ship types. I would reduce their tracking a little bit to compensate for the increase in sig radius and decrease in mobility, but I would leave their range where it is because it is in line. Battleships are a bit too easy to move aroound. They are supposed to be a big ship, but they are almost as mobile as a battlecruiser sometimes.

Battleships already have much more HP than battlecruisers, deal substantially greater damage, generate capacitor quite a bit faster than battlecruisers, and have weapons with twice the range. I think that attack battlecruisers are overpowered and should not be able to fit battleship weapons, but instead should use medium weapons with a 50% reduction in powergrid cost. With 8 medium turrets and two skill bonuses to weapons, they will pack a stronger punch than any combat battlecruiser, around as powerful as some battleships in fact. They are also more agile and mobile than combat battlecruisers. The way they are now is too powerful.

There is something that battleships lack, and that is HP-boosting modules at their size. Battleships could really use one more size of armor plate, and two more sizes of shield extender. There is a reason CCP doesn't want to give larger shield extenders: because boosting shield HP also boosts regen rate. This can be solved in a variety of ways, such as make shield extenders increase recharge time accordingly, give them a penalty to shield regen, or just give the bigger ones too high of a powergrid cost to be fit reasonably on a battlecruiser. But it's not uncommon for me to fit a battleship with over 5000 MW of powergrid remaining and nothing to spend it on except weapon rigs that I don't want.

I would like to see some size variety among battleships. The old "tier 1" battleships (armageddon, scorpion, dominix, typhoon) already have smaller fittings than other battleships. They should just move and align significantly faster and have more scan resolution. They kind of are this way, but I'd like to see the differences accentuated. As it stands, a typhoon wouldn't really be an effective tool for chasing down a tempest, for instance.

I'd also like to see more disruption battleships. I'm really happy that the armageddon was transformed into a disruption battleship, and now I'd like to see the dominix take its focus off hybrid turrets and put it into sensor dampeners. After that, could probably turn the typhoon into some sort of web/painter ship which would mesh well with its launchers.

Remove sentrydrones as a whole from the game and battleships will again be usefull in various situasions. Problem now is that sentrys does what all other weaponsystem does, but waaay better.. I.e hitting bort small things, long range, alpha, you name it they do it.

If they go and the geddon and domi along with normal drones get a pass the system will be stable again