Warfare & Tactics

Battleships are like the Cape Buffalo. Poor at "Solo PvP" like the T2 HAC Lions, nor great at ambush attacks like the "alpha destroyer" crocodiles, but Cape Buffalo (like BS in Eve) are great in numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

(somebody posted this years ago, but it's a great vid that explains the role of Cape Buffalo in Eve)

In that vein of thought, would changing the large turret/missile bonus to a generic turret/missile bonus allowing for an effective mix of different sized gun/missiles fix the problem you see in bses?

Of course, but then they'd be undergunned when facing battleships .

Again, this is the problem of the real-world clashing with game mechanics. In the real world, you designed a battleship to: A) stand in the line of battle and, generally, repulse shells of their own caliber, and B) mount a secondary armament that outclassed the main armament of many older heavy cruisers, and which, in the least, could shatter and light cruisers or destroyers that got too close. Plus, it wasn't like EVE -- the big guns on Earth could one-shot destroyers and light cruisers (and even battleships, if you got lucky). So a battleship could conceivably sink an entire squadron of cruisers without sustaining significant damage.

This didn't mean battleships weren't better off with escorts -- the advent of the submarine and then the airplane both demanded destroyer/light cruiser screens to deal with subs and fend off aircraft. But in the Second World War battleships routinely operated alone (Bismarck, for example) or with a low number of escorts. These were complete weapon systems -- they were designed to be able to reasonably fend off a number of threats.

Now, true, battleships alone (or a couple of them) couldn't handle concentrated aerial attacks on their own: HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales, sunk by land-based torpedo bombers, were in no-way equipped to fight off the force that sent them to the bottom. But in the heyday of battleships (the First World War), battlecruisers (which were not the same as most of EVE's BCs -- they were battleship-sized vessels with battleship-sized guns, they just traded armor for very high speed) often operated alone, in pairs, or as a single fighting force with just a light cruiser screen. And with the advent of the fast battleship late in the war, you increasingly saw this pattern in newer battleships, who, it was thought, would be fast enough to escape a superior foe, and deadly enough to sink a lesser one.

The thing about EVE is that, for gameplay reasons, we only deal with primary weapon systems. So our battleships mount no medium-caliber guns; mount no AA-equivalent weaponry. They are, generally speaking, naked, except against specific foes (a problem that is only enhanced by the concept of tracking). And all the weapon systems in EVE are like this -- they're all very much focused on single-objective design. So you have the issue of gameplay concessions bumping up against reality... because the reality would be that you would not design such flawed ships, so vulnerable to lesser foes, in a universe in which those lesser foes are common.

An ideal, pie-in-the-sky solution would be for every battleship to be forced to sacrifice a turret or two to mount cruiser or frigate-sized weapons (with better tracking) designed to deal with smaller enemies. But unless that was made a universal change (IE, everyone had no choice in the matter). And, unless it was a change that occurred throughout the classes (so, say, a battlecruiser was also forced to mount some smaller guns; cruisers; etc.), then it wouldn't really fix things, since battleships would immediately feel underpowered.

But, at that point, you are talking about a fundamental change to the entire structure of EVE's gameplay, which seems very unlikely.

So what is the realistic solution to the BS problem? Nerf T3 'catch all' cruisers, and potentially slightly improve the tracking on BS guns. A slightly more dynamic solution would be to figure out a way to encourage mixed-composition blobs -- so you didn't just see these 'all BC' groups; 'all cruiser' groups. If we're going to give these ships such significant flaws, we should simultaneously do more to encourage players to bring the big guns. There isn't enough justification in EVE right now as to why a blob of BC players right now should want to tote along BSes... or why they should fear a BS showing up.I think that's all you can do without re-writing the game.

Honestly, light drones are not that effective against frigates. They do about 100 dps on non-drone bonus hulls, which is not enough to break a frigates tank and are easily shot down, leaving you completely defenseless.

Take an Abaddon. pulses have even worse tracking then blasters, if even a t1 frigate gets in close its game over. I don't care how many webs or tracking enhancers you have, you will never hit them. You will launch your lights, he will shoot them down until you have none left and slowly but surely eat away at you, or hold you until his friends show up.

It is honestly not even worth undocking in a battleship. It is a complete joke that a billion dollar battleship is rendered totally helpless by the cheapest and most common ship in space. It's at the point that nobody is even afraid of them. They see the isk signs and go in for the kill. Something is just wrong with that.

The more I hear people go on about this "fleet support crap", the more it proves my point. When one ship needs an entire well balanced fleet of other ships in order to supposedly be the least bit effective, it loses the point of even fielding it in the first place. Especially when you can field a few frigates and cruisers which can do a better job for a crap ton less isk, and less risk.

I just had to post this since we are talking so much about real-world battleships. THE POWER! (Note the escorting cruisers, destroyers and frigate).

Point is, Battleships already have the deck stacked against them. They are horridly slow, warp at the speed of a sprinting snail, take forever to lock anything, align at the speed of a skyscraper. So, it's obvious that they can't dictate a fight, or range, or anything else for that matter. At least let them do the one thing their name suggests they should be good at well, COMBAT.

As of right now their DPS can be matched by many cruisers (geckos anyone), while still being totally out maneuvered, better lock speed, warp speed, TRACKING, etc. The only thing they seem to do well is tank, but again, cruisers and frigates can use their speed to tank a **** ton of damage. So, what exactly warrants all that isk and risk to undock in one???

are battleships kind of in a sore spot right now? sure.

but if you just say "moar damage application" or "moar utility" to the point that a solo BS can actually fight off a small frig gang effectively, then why would anyone EVER fly something smaller than a BS?

you would completely remove pvp in smaller hulls because why fly a frig when you can fly a BS that can kill everything.

should BSs be looked at? im not against it, but they most certainly do NOT need an all around buff.

EDIT: grammar, spelling, etc

also, if you fit 1b isk BSs on the reg, why are you complaining? you obviously have the isk to burn. most t2 fit non faction hulls come in at about 250m

CCP has some smart people working there. I believe they could resolve this problem without overturning the cart, or even peeing in someone else's cheerios. I think we can all agree that some slight tweaking would likely bring battleships back in line, and I don't believe anyone here is asking for them to metamorphose into invincible, catch-all fighting machines that immediately render all other vessels obsolete.

The problem we are seeing with battleships is the same problem that lead to CCP dramatically altering the less powerful combat vessels into support ships: that underutilized hulls don't do anyone any good just sitting there. Here, we have an entire class (and, whats more, I would argue the most iconic of them all) that for many skilled players is simply collecting dust in their hangers because the return just isn't worth the risk.

Changes are required. That's all there is to it.

You're right, they're not entirely useless. But I do think it's a shame that a number of the hulls are rightly-regarded as PvE-only, when this is something that CCP has been trying to do away with concerning the other classes.