Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Honestly I think removing stealth would tone them down a bit, a bombing run would be much more difficult however no less effective.

That is only a tiny portion of why battleships don't work. You know you can't throw bombs in empire space, right?

yeah that's fine and all, I'm just not sure why the hulls that can bring the most destructive power in the game to baer also gets invulnerability through invisibility.

I simply think bombing runs and fighting bombing runs would be cooler if you actually had to dodge lead on your way in.

Killboards suggest that battleships are dying to cruiser size ships with battleship DPS in the form of sentries, and not bombs.

Can we please hurry and get the nerf to either bombs or bombers? Back in November CCP was considering making cloaked ships able to decloak each other again, then went back on that because people complained. The biggest factor in making battleships nearly non-existent in null sec is bombs, as much as people may complain about the 2au/s warp speed (and it does suck). Bombs are a completely broken mechanic because it is possible for 7-8 bombers to land cloaked on grid, decloak, fire, then warp off and in less than 13 seconds be able to wipe out an equal or greater number of ships. Of all the ships in EVE they are the only ones capable of doing this, and it is specifically against battleships, and to a slightly lesser extent battlecruisers.

In their other role as small torpedo boats there is no issue with bombers, typically for hot drops or to a lesser extent roams and structure bashing. They are small, inexpensive ships that are relatively easy to train into and do good damage to large targets. Also in their role as torpedo boats they may or may not fit a cloak as it is not used in an offensive manner like with bombing runs.

Over the weekend I got a few other people together to do a battleship roam because I miss the old days before bombs when I actually got to use my Tempest, and despite the relatively short notice I actually got a significant number of people who were also excited about going out and shooting stuff with slow lumbering battleships instead of the typical null sec meta of only cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Shortly after we set out, people on intel channels heard that we had battleships in the area they quickly formed an 8 man bomber fleet and ambushed us. Thankfully we were sitting on a gate and most of us jumped out in time so we only had 1 loss, but it speaks to how overpowered bombs are against battleships when a 40 man fleet with about 25 battleships and battlecruisers has to be concerned about being wiped out by 8 guys in ships that are at best 1/10th the value of the opposing fleet.

There are a number of things that could be implemented to reduce the effectiveness of specifically bombs while not nerfing bombers in their other roles.

• Actually go through with the plan to make cloaked ships decloak each other so that there is some additional warning either with active D-scan vigilance while they are in warp or seeing a cluster of bombers land on grid in your overview to give you a few extra seconds to have anti-bomber ships try and knock out some of them or give battleships extra reaction time to spread out and avoid damage. Proximity decloaking would 90% of the time only affect bombers that are clustered and preparing to do a bombing run and it would only be a minor hindrance to other ships that fit cloaks.


• Make bombs do less damage as it radiates out from the center of the impact zone. This would make it so that bombs aren't the current 30km AOE nuke that can wipe out every subcap of a large enough sig radius in the entire blast zone. Doing decreasing damage as the blast radiates outward from the impact zone would also make accuracy important for doing maximum damage against a specific target.


• Make it so that there is a firing delay after decloaking of some type, either bombers have to have a target locked to fire, or a flat delay after decloaking.


• Making defender missiles a point defense tool to counter bombs/ allowing small ships to target bombs and shoot them.

they willl probably reduce the damage of bombs.. simplest solution, would be nice if they combined it with the point of impact and shockwave damage mechanic though.