Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Introduction

This is the proposal I have been looking at writing for awhile. It is simply this: Make battleships, battle cruisers and their t2 counterparts worth the wait to get on-grid. The warp speed changes seriously hurt these ships, which are now overshadowed by the recently buffed HACs in almost every mobile application outside the blob. The stats on these lumbering sub-caps were fairly well balanced when they moved as fast as a cruiser once in warp. Having taken a 16.777-33% warp speed nerf, they became vanishingly rare in mobile applications, reduced the speed of several kinds of PvE and generally became less effective as tools for offensive operations, with defensive operations still being rare or in range of capitals, even post-phoebe.


It is thus that I ask for a battleship buff of stats affecting on-grid performance, such that their overall effectiveness on grid is increased by roughly 20%, and a similar buff to combat battlecruisers such that their performance is increased by 15%. A second request is a minor rebalance of large guns and missiles. Attack battle cruisers, being as specialized as they are, seem to be mostly in a good place, and would receive the benefit of the changes to large guns, meaning they would then be in an effective place still, without over-doing their effectiveness as suicide gankers in HS.


Battleships are supposed to be fairly slow but powerful sub-capitals, unlike the real world, where they most definitely are/were capital ships. In masse, they should be a threat to capitals and infrastructure and yet in recent large engagements, they have been not worth the lag they caused. This leads to the need to evaluate them against other sub-capitals as far as effectiveness on grid vs. ability to project power/raid/roam without capital support, and they currently come out lacking.

Battle cruisers on the other hand are based on the same class of ships in the real world, which have a fascinating history, where battleship weapons were mounted on effectively oversized cruiser hulls, and the armor was upgraded somewhat, making them mostly proof against cruisers. The Combat battlecruisers are effectively real world heavy cruiser designs but have less of the speed of regular cruisers without sufficient increases in combat capability once they arrive. Attack battlecruisers follow the real world example, but currently trade slightly too much tank for their gank, but would need a more individualized approach to their balancing, as they are currently much used in suicide ganking and other highsec combat which places massive emphasis on gank, and requires little to no tank.

Table of Contents
Links to posts containing the proposed stats and why these changes are what the ships in question need.

1. Caldari Battle Ships
2. Minmatar Battle ships
3. Amarr Battle ships
4. Gallente Battle ships
5. Empire Faction battleships
6. Pirate battle ships
7. Large turrets
8. Cruise and torpedos
9. Caldari CBCs
10. Minmatar CBCs
11. Amarr CBCs
12. Gallente CBCs

Change log:
11/4/2014 16:00EST: Thread launched and structure setup, state of affairs on caldari battleships posted. Fireproof underwear stockpiled.
11/5/2014 5:10 EST: Requested thread closed to relaunch with a better structure, created google doc. Nearly podded self after creating outline of things this would be touching on

Minmatar battleships

Current state of affairs

These ships are also feeling the changes fairly deeply, but remain somewhat viable because of their relatively high speed and low sig.

1st: Typhoon
Shifting it from a split missile/gun platform to a full blown missile platform has somewhat helped, but has reduced the overall DPS possible a smidgen. While it applies DPS very well in PvP compared to other missile ships, and can be armor tanked to free up the needed mids, it remains underutilized and unattractive due to the poor PvP performance of missiles and mediocre performance of armor tanks for PvE.

2nd: Tempest
With the return of the 2nd utility high, the tempest is in a nice spot for PvE, as it can fit several variaitions of utility high and still run its 6 well bonused turrets. Where it suffers is in the ability to tank and still fit DPS+ utility highs in PvP situations, where the rebuild of the Armageddon has mostly obsoleted it. The increases in average speed of smaller ships has also hurt it's old role of AC brawling in PvP. Likely needs only modest changes to bring to the desired new normal.

3rd: Maelstrom
As the heavy tank boat of the minmatar line, the maelstrom sees alot of use in PvE. In PvP, it is also one of the few viable t1 hulls, but remains mostly used en masse for the large artillery's massive native alpha. While it is used and in a better place all in all, it still needs work to be brought up to the new normal for these ships if the changes across the board are implemented.



Solutions:

TBA

Gallente Battleships

Current State of affairs:

1st: Hyperion
Wow. This ship is in a heap of a mess. The active armor tank bonus which would otherwise let it be a truely baller in a small gang scenerio is so hampered by the low cap of the ship, which takes 3 cap rechargers to get stable with only a single LAR. The stong DPS put out by the blasters, and the skirmishing power of an active armor tank, is again hampered by the capacitor. While it has ample power grid relative to the turrets and slots, it also lacks CPU to fit most interesting fits, a common theme amongst gallente ships. It does do well when given a web, scram, prop and dual cap boosters to feed the massive cap hunger of this ship, but it is otherwise fairly weak. It is however, one of the few ships at this level which can mount a semi-viable shield tank as well as an armor tank, but this is an oddity, not a major benefit.

2: Megathron
While Baltech1 may love this ship, and the CFC may have a wonderfully resilliant doctrine based on it, the Megathron can still use a bit of love. In a knife range battle, as it lends itself to, it is too slow with an AB and too cumbersome with an MWD if it uses a buffer tank. If trying to fit an active tank, one runs into the deep issue of capacitor again, and the lower relative PG to slots needed for fitting intensive tank modules makes this even worse. Overall, this is one of the better battleships, but still needs some slight tweaks to make it up to where I would like to see battleships.

3: Dominix
The sentry dominix is one of the few standouts amongst battleships, as it is mostly fielded in large numbers with neuts, or used for high end PvE with a spider tank. As a very capable ship, with one of the strongest bonuses to drones, the relative weakness of the ship are mostly ameliorated by other members of one's fleet. Of all the ships in EVE, the dominix is one of the few where fitting weapons in the high slots for combat is optional, and when fit, it is as likely to see ACs as rails. This versatility, and the ability to field a medium solid tank and several heavy neuts makes it unpredicatble. Unfortunately, even this beast of a ship requires some adjustments after the warp-speed changes.

Solutions

TBA

Pirate battleships

Current State of affairs:

1st: Nestor
Love it or hate it, no one can deny that the nestor as it currently sits is a mess of unrelated bonuses, special case coding and other terms for a bad current state. It seems to suffer from bad cap if trying to use it as a logistics ship, and bad damage if trying to use it to DPS problems if actually trying to use it to kill something. While the refitting service helps, it is at best a glorified, fleet scale mobile depot as thing sit. No one has yet proposed a doctrine for them or used them to great effect unless they have done it in great secret.

2: Barghest
The barghest is currently limited to one effective weapon system as not even the massive bonuses they currently get to making torps worth it are enough to make them deal effective damage to anything but battleships, capitals and structures. The rest of the ship is pretty amazing, but a point range bonus and then only a 25% bonus to missiles is relatively low on a pirate ship. While the cruiser and frigate are extremely powerful because of these bonuses, the Barghest is underpowered in this regard as tackle is traditionally established by smaller ships.

3: Rattlesnake
While great for some kinds of PvE, the rattlesnake is pretty bad in PVP right now. The split DPS from between missiles and drones is a great theory but needs some love. The two drones idea was interesting, but not so great in practice. It doesn't do so great in other respects, especially with the damage locked in like it is.

4: Nightmare
While it is a great ship in theory, and cannot be beat for Incursions, the nightmare is found about no-where in terms of use for PVP and isn't viable at it's current cost. The major thing keeping these around seems to be multi-boxers and incursion pilots. It needs some love, and maybe a niche can be found for it outside incursions.


Solutions

TBA

Cruise missiles and torpedos

Current State of affairs:

TBA

Solutions

TBA

Minmatar CBCs

Current State of affairs:

TBA

Solutions

TBA

Gallente CBCs

Current State of affairs:

TBA

Solutions

TBA

Yeah, I keep seeing people saying "nerf t3s" and "make battleships worth it" on the two threads I have, so I started this. I have most of the battleships written up at home, just posting from work because I can't do anything useful and work related right now.

Will see what I can do about it. Dunno if I can manually delete posts or need an ISD's help.

It will be. I mean, I want to introduce 4 moar t1 battleships, and then minor faction lines of empire power level ships, and the t3 battleships and and and, so its not like I don't want to do a whole junkton of theorycrafting already.