Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What I want is to kick logi in the nuts in these large fights so we get much bloodier battles. Right now once you have a critical mass of logi then there is no amount of firepower that will break your fleet.

Seriously, go fight a super fleet with any subcap. It doesnt matter how many pilots you bring.

So let's recap. Battleships are nearly useless outside of L4 Mission in High Sec and running Incursions and structure bashes and some other limited PVE aspects(ratting/anoms).
Although, they may not be the best choice for some of those activities, they are at least functional in those.
Did I miss any area where they are useful?

They suck because they are horribly slow. They cost way too much to build/buy in general and in comparison to cruisers they are much more expensive in price per effectiveness for pvp, thus they are very rarely used. They are easy to hit by Dreads and pretty much anything smaller. They can't really hit cruisers and below with their primary weapon systems and Battlecruisers are hardly used so one of the few things they can reliably hit is hardly ever seen. And the new T3 Destroyers can easily scan them down and eat them for lunch.

I'm sure I'm leaving a few things out, but that's mostly what I got out of reading this thread so far.

Suggested stats for navy caldari and minmatar hulls are up in the working space.
Offcially supporting the changes contained in the OP of battlecruiser application bonus thread as the way to go to make CBCs worth flying, and part of a holistically balance sub-cap environment which includes all sizes of sub-caps.

May get other navy hulls done yet this morning.

So, to my casual and fanatical readers, I pose a question.

Should the navy domi double down on drones, as I dislike the current split bonuses (thinking drone speed increase in place of hybrid bonus) or turn into a total brick, similar to the SNI, by swapping the drone bonus for an armor resist bonus?

I actually like the split bonus on the Navy Dominix. It gives the younger Vexor pilots an idea on how this ship would be if they train for it.
And she will not be entirely useless once all the drones have been destroyed.

I posted a different battleship thread that focuses more on larger role and meta concepts, and the directions they should take. I'd like to keep it separate of yours since you're really getting down to the nuts and bolts of the issue, and I want to focus more on the forest of running Ents instead of the stampede of trees: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5736995#post5736995

I also like the split bonus on the Navy Dominix.

I was noodling about with some spreadsheets, and got some interesting results using the ratios of sizes currently extant to make up some XL buffer modules (spreadsheet working space in the link).

XL Shield Extender II 6563HP 879PG 63CPU 90Sig
And

3200MM plate II 9600HP 1438PG 39CPU 15000000 kg
6400MM plate II 19200HP 3594PG 46CPU 37500000 Kg

The high grid prevents them from being used on almost anything but battleships and BCs with otherwise seriously compromised fits, which would make something like these a partial solution to the "Battleships aren't tough enough relative to cruisers" but would create potential for significant HP creep.

*Ed: used the wrong ratio for the XL shield extender HP, new HP is the scaling between medium and large

If you look at the Machariel you can see an example of an effective battleship. Its bonus to warp speed and range allows it to dictate fights.

I do not think that all battleships should have their warp speed increased but I do think there need to be positive trade off for having a low warp speed. I would love to see an increase in tank for battleships and increase in the optimal range for all short range large guns.

This would turn them into more of the 'bullies' they ought to be.

I think CCP are waiting for the 'Fozzie Sov' changes to go into affect before they make their mind up about battleships.

Messed up the ratios. post quoted is now corrected, and corrected portion is bolded above

I am more than slightly worried about the growing disparity of the highest LSE being about 1/3 the HP of the largest plate though.

I think moving to the ratio between micro and small, and then small and medium would yield better results for a VL and then XL shield extender. This gives us a yield of 2 modules, to match armor, with
Very large 5,270HP 495PG 62CPU 50Sig
XL 21,040HP 5115PG 92CPU 175Sig

which means that a drake (famous for the heavy passive tanks they can mount) can just get a VL shield extender on, for a tad bit better than twice the shield HP, but the 5k grid of an XL requires sacrifices on even battleships. For example, of the t1 battleships the Rokh would undeniably benefit most from the XL shield extender, with the resist bonus and already bloated sig. However, to fit it with 425mm railgun IIs and a meta MWD, with perfect skills, would require a RCU II and an ACR I if these were implemented without any fitting changes to the hulls, or tweaks to the fitting requirements.

The extreme HP numbers for heavy for the size class fitting requirements also put them much more in line with the current meta of 800 and 1600 plates or LSEs on cruisers, which let most cruisers double their raw HP with a single heavy mod, rather than the double and triple plates which are required for fleet battleships, meaning that now fleet battleships can begin to mount more than just tank in their larger number of slots. This makes battleships more viable as a class, as they can now mount more damage mods for armor fits, or more tackle/ewar for shield fits, because they are running the same number of slots for buffer (1) as the cruisers they are competing against, for similar benefit (doubling or better their raw HP in their primary tank) at similar cost (massive fitting cost relative to fitting room)