Player Features and Ideas Discussion

To be fair whilst I agree with many of your posts baltec - I don't think it's entirely fair to assume the BS pilots will all have ascendancy implants and no-one else will.

With regards to the BCs, I don't see anything wrong with allowing them to warp equal to Cruisers, they'd keep the "Cruiser" part of their warp balance, and their slower align times are the cost for their size. But that's another topic for another thread.

Battleships need the warp buff, the null pilots here have had their say about the use of Battleships in null, but in low-sec their warp nerf has disproportionally hit an already uncommonly used class of ship. The warp changes were good to buff the use of cruiser sized ships and below, but the Battleships are too comparable to capital warp speeds to the point that roaming with them is to the detriment of the rest of the fleet.

It's terrible to players who may not be able to roam as long as the rest, and it does encourage titan sitting. Battleship pilots already have adapted to it with the use of the Ascendency set of implants, sacrificing the benefits of much more useful implant sets for combat. And even that is only endured by us battleship pilots because we have our fitting slots to work with from that point. Having to use hyperspatial rigs and modules in combination with the Ascendency set just to get Battleships other than the Mach in a bearable roaming state leaves Battleships in a demonstrably weak place.

Anyone who lives and roams in low-sec can see this, and CCP and CSM members can look over the raw numbers with their analytics to prove it. Battleships need the warp buff, they already have so much balancing against the other classes of ships that their current warp state leaves them wanting in almost every situation. That shouldn't be the case for an entire class of ship.

To date nobody else does. I dont see many using them in the future either for the same reason only a handful use snakes.

Perhaps if the low grade costs are ever sorted it'll be a thing. The point I was more making us that we need to assume equitable clones before we can fairly decide if speeding classes up presents a manifest problem.

To me just the ability to do it is enough of a reason to worry. On top of that you also would have the blowback from cruiser pilots who would demand a speed boost so that they are not as slow as a ship two classes above them. Either battleships are slower than cruisers or you just scrap the entire thing.

T3 are in line for a savage nerf.

I'm pretty sure BC and BS don't see much small gang anction more because people think they don't bring enough positive to counter the drawback of being in a BS. You do get something out of it but I think people see it as not enough.

Its in the balance chart. They are slated to land between t1 and t2 cruisers.

To be fair the Bastionaddes video (that I think you're referring to) was done by an experience pilot, using deadspace and faction gear, implants, and boosts, all while the players he was fighting were using the exact tactic that a blap golem will excel against. Downgrade the fit to t2, no implants or boosts, and start fighting against alpha doctrines or a gang carrying neuts, range, remote reps etc and the outcome will be dramatically different. You couldn't ask for more perfect scenarios in some of those fights.

Links, implants, booster alts, drugs, deadspace and factions gear and the perfect combat scenario against inexperienced pilots ignorant of a ships weaknesses give false impressions about what a ship is really capable of.

Edit: Baltec1, to be clear I respect your opinion on this matter, I've read your posts and I think that they're well thought out. I don't agree however. If tech 3s are nerfed I believe the meta will shift back to HACs. It's just too hard to ignore the effect of signature radius, aggregated resistance, and tracking. You may still use battleships, but I think that with all of the balance and insurance changes that have taken place recently, Phoebe is the final nail in the coffin for their widespread use for everyone else.

Battleships and to a similar extent combat battlecruisers need a buff. They need to be worth the time they take to align and warp gate to gate. There should be a reason that you'd want a few in a gate camp, or in local defense.

Those ships you mention can cause some hurt in the right circumstances, and there are a few battleships that are a great addition to a small gang or local defense team. The geddon and domi come to mind, but a lot of that is the fact that they can use a drone bunny and can field neuts. Other hulls don't fare so well. The problem is that HACs and pirate cruisers cause more hurt, offer more tactical options and do it for less isk and risk, and I think that the proof lies in what ships people actually use. T2 and pirate frigates and cruisers are far more prevalent because people gravitate naturally to the best choice available to them.

As far as ingenuity is concerned, it only takes one innovator to establish a trend. Once the superiority of a tactic becomes known, the genie is out of the bottle, and even those who are the least apt to invent a tactic are free to adopt it.

Edit: Personally, I don't want battleships to be fast. I like the fact that certain ship classes have to commit to a fight once they're in it, win or lose, I just don't think that most of the games battleships have enough of what makes a battleship a battleship to make them worthwhile.