Ships & Modules

I think that BCs are fine where they are. They are more like Heavy Cruisers - 1 v 1 most BCs will beat most cruisers, but now will handily lose a 2v1 against almost any 2 cruisers.

BC's have been marginal since their inception.

The only notable ones, being the cane but more notably the drake. Cane was never really that good, as it lacks any type of damage projection or application. This is mostly due in part to the fact that it uses AC's- which are a horrible weapon system. The drake on the other hand, had some decent projection, decent application, a nice tank and ok speed. The thing that made BC's actually viable for PvP at the time was simply a symptom of them having the largest engagement profile of ships at the time. Cruisers were easy pickings (they were quite slow, had no DPS, or tank, not nearly enough slots to be a threat) and BS had nowhere near the moblity needed to catch the BC's. Because of the large engagement profile, BC's (ie. Cane but mostly Drake) were supreme.

Then the ABC's came out. And the day they did, all of the BC's were immediately made useless. ABC's do everything the BC's do but better. They have jaw dropping DPS, amazing mobility, and a great speed tank. It was them that now posessed the large engagement profile. They chewed t1 frigs, dessies, cruisers up with 1/2 volleys- and could easily kite and kill BC's and BS much more readily. The Oracle being the leader by far (Talos a close second) in this regard. After the ABC's BCs could be relegated to some types of super brawl / heavy point duties, but the hay day was over at this point.

Cue the HML nerf, and the drake falls off the face of the planet (as do all missile ships) because it now becomes impossible to apply any noticable DPS from a missile platform. That was the BC's last hurrah.

Then the new cruiser buff happened and that really threw the nail in the coffin for the BC's. Now the ABC's had a ship that could keep up with them providing anti tackle / additonal points in fleet. Cruiesrs had the agility to avoid ABC's and the ability to kite and kill the now neutered BC's. No BC could match the speed / damage projection of the Omen / RLM 3X LSE caracal- so they were killed quite easily.

After that the TE nerf happened, throwing the already sub par AC boats even further into obscurity. Hurricane, and navy cane useless. Along with all of the AC cruiser boats. At that point- ABCs cruisers really had a nice time because again- BC's had even less projection, coupled with their abysmal speed.

Cue the meta of today, post RLM nerf- and TD buff, EAF buff, and warp speed changes and you are looking at an environment that is very hostile to smaller gangs, and solo players- and even more so to large hulls. BS/ BC don't have nearly the warp speed, or the lock speed to deal with a larger gang employing fast movers (read intys, frigs, EAFs) So what are you left wth? ABC's got hit hard from the TE nerf, which knocks out the talos as a viable choice. The oracle, linked, snaked, quafed and dual nano'd is not nearly fast enough to keep up with Navy cruisers / HAC's and it now lacks the ability to warp from dangeroius fast movers. So that too is relegated to MEH

The BC's are an even worse position, because they have horrible warp speed, horrible sub warp speed, no projection. They can't run from anything, and if they are found by a roaming blob- will die.

So that basically leaves the cruisers. Nomen, Omen, Rail Rax, Rail Diemos, Rail Vigilant, Navy Aug, Zealot, Pulse legion. Excluding those- the Dictors also recieved a nice buff, and post RLM nerf the heretic currently resides as the 'most optimal' solo / small gang ship. It provides the best package of speed (in and sub warp) with DPS and projection. Of course, frigs are still fine for PvP especially the intys.

So that about wraps it up. BC's are a symptom of power creep. They have been eclipsed by the ABCs, hampered by the TE nerf, and completely outclassed as support ships in the wake of the cruisers buffs.

And that pretty much wraps it up.

No- Gang links on a BC is a waste. Get a T3, so you can probe, scout, and quad like with bonuses for your fleet. I promise your fleet mates will like it much, much better.

Can't quite deny the above, wouldn't see battlecruisers that strongly obsoleted. Artycane is still nice, a bunch of rookies are still probably better off with feroxes as compared to moas or railraxes in a wormholebrawl and a lot of other situations will occur where a battlecruiser can actually shine. Like a Gnosis, no one knows what this one will do.

I can't see anything wrong with using BCs as ganglinks. Not everyone is particularily keen on managing/caring about an OGB. If the ships at your proposal are two ruptures and a hurricane, would totally get me a rapid deployment in that 7th high. Same reasoning you'd pop a blue pill for, 20% more.

Tried a triplelink-Gnosis aswell. Was crap.

I wish CCP would read this. Too bad they probably don't read this forum.

Chessur hit the nail on the head.

Cruisers are now the go-to workhorse for most small-gang and soloists. Before the tiericide holocaust the mantra for just about every new pilot (myself included) was to train HML II's and a Drake or AC's and a 'Cane. Re-Sebo Insta-lock Hurricane gate-camps were dumb as hell. Up until the HML nerf, Drakes were pretty much used by everyone, everywhere, to do everything. CCP nerfed HML's instead of addressing the Drake's real problem which was it's battleship sized tank.

So HML's got the nerfbat... "to bring them in line with other long range weapons...". And then CCP buffed Beams, Rails, and Arty just a couple months after they gutted HML's damage and projection.

So the Drake was neutered via weapons nerf. The Hurricane PG/CPU was nerfed several times on top of the TE nerf.

Tier 3 ABC's now the jobs that CBC's used to do, only better and for a little more ISK per hull.

T1 CBC's pretty much exist as training wheels for new pilots.

Im sorry but you can't suddenly 'imagine' or 'come up with' some new and brazen idea for a class of ships that are horrible. Numbers don't lie, and you can't cheat them. When you load up ships into EFT BC's fall behind in every single aspect when compared to other Ships. They have no redeeming qualities, or ability other than their cost (which is quite cheap now) but that is hardly worth discussing, and certainly not worth another thread. To most of the Meta level PvPers in game, BC's have been dead for a LONG, LONG time now. This has been nothing new to us. As I said before, the day ABC"s came out- I never flew another CBC. Dust in the wind.

People seem to forget that the cruisers in eve were ALWAYS designed to be the most numerous, most used and most useful class of ships.

This has been stated in eve lore and dev posts since the closing of the eve gate. But for a while there they were just outclassed by other ship classes (i.e BC) so now they once again have been transformed into what is the most useful class in game.

Balance is once again achieved.

double or triple the EHP, 30-50% more fire power, about twice the cap, 50-70% of the speed. They're fine but rather than a hard counter to something they're more or less decently ok everywhere. That might make it difficult to fit it into s specific scenario or counter but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them, all that means is that since fleets and blobs (generally) don't want versatility they don't perform there. Which is fine.

About a third/half of the cost maybe? And the engageability??

So you're comparing Faction vs normal T1 ships and use that as reasoning as to why said T1 ship doesn't perform? On top of that, generally, BC would still have all the advantages I mentioned but you now specifically mention ONE faction cruiser who is aimed at having massive HP so it nullifies one of the advantages :P

Faction cruisers also don't insure very well, yes they can be awesome but that doesn't somehow make BC bad or useless, also they're sluggish kiters and easily caught out.