EVE General Discussion

This is an honest question, because I truly don't know the answer. I'm not an expert at this game.

I know why you'd fly a battleship to run a level 4 mission. It's because there's gonna be a ton of other ships there, including battleships, and battleships are good vs. other battleships, and you need a big tank.

But why a battleship in general? They seem to suck. They have a hard time hitting anything but other battleships. I don't know why you'd PvP in one (and perhaps people don't), and why would you put them in fleets? Seems like a fleet of battleships would have a hard, if not impossible time, against a bunch of cruisers and frigs.

This is one place where I think CCP screwed the pooch. In real life, a frigate, destroyer, cruiser, whatever, would be toast against a battleship. But at any rate, tell me why these things are used, if indeed they are.

(Oh, not sure if it would make a difference in your answer, but ignore tier 2, tier 3, navy issue, pirate, etc)

Yep, it's how you separate the wheat from the chaff

Granted, how the thing makes you feel when you fly it is a valid gameplay reason to fly it. But if you want to win a PvP (you vs. another ship), or win a small engagement (a couple of ships vs. a couple of ships) or win a large engagement (big fleet vs. big fleet), is there any particular reason to fly one, and if so, why?

lol... since the best answers have been given already...


Battleships on their own are not that good. There are some exceptions (both in terms of the ship itself and how people use them)... but in general, battleships excel in two ways:

- teaming up with other battleships to create a "wrecking ball" of destruction.
- holding the field.

But, as others have said, battleships are slow. very slow.

This means that battleships excel pretty much at one thing:

- structure bashing/defending

Mind you, capitals can do this well too (and in some ways, better)... unless you know that there is a larger 3rd party of capital forces in the area and want to avoid giving them a reason to deploy on you.
Or we are talking about high-sec (where capitals cannot be).


10 battleships supported by 3 Logi ships is a force to be reckoned with.

Only problem with battleships is the pilots trying to fly them.

Battleships are large, slow, have tank and do lots of damage when they hit.

Solo up close to a small target they can't hit at all.
What happens if say you have another pilot in a smaller ship working with you and they reduce the speed of the small target, increase it;s signature, and stop it getting away? What happens then?

What the difference between small scale pvp and large scale pvp?
what's the difference between running pve missions in high sec and pvp in low/null?

Eve is a game about using the tools available to adapt to the situation.

Spider Tanked Geddon's and Domi's are great for POS bashing when a capitals are out of the option. Like Highsec. Also Battleships do very well once they have a supporting wing behind them to help them out. The Geddon's neut bonus alone makes it a wonderful ship to have in a fleet comp alone.

A battleship fit properly has no trouble hitting a cruiser and doesn't care much about frigates. Especially in fights that you know are going to turn into a no-distance knife fight, when you're webbed and scrammed to bejesus and back, the battleship does more dps than smaller ships (usually) and has more tank.

In wormholes, if you don't have the manpower to fly 30 T3s around, vindis and bhaalgorns are great force multipliers if you pick the right fight conditions.

If CCP could be accused of ever making a mistake with battleships in general, it's that we got so used to them being able to do some of the things they shouldn't have been able to do just as well and let it stay that way for so long. People keep bringing up, for instance, the warp mechanics changes and calling it the big battleship nerf when in reality it's how it should have always been. Battleships are suppose to be bad at maneuver warfare, but able to make up for it with the ability to bring more killing power and stay on the battlefield longer. It's a cost of using them we're not so used to so it makes it seem somewhat unfairly lopsided when it's actually not. So far, battleships in general seem to be fine to me, though I do see a lot of people complaining about their lack of speed now both on and in between battlefields, which is the way it's supposed to be.

The very same thing was said with the Dire Wolf in MWO when PGI added them for example. They can't maneuver for ****, are as slow as an Atlas, have no jump jets (minus the S variant), and have poor visibility which encourages tunnel visioning...easy pickings for a competent pack of lights if one ever gets caught out in the open all by itself, no matter how good the pilot is with the weapons he/she dropped with. Put anything that's not paying attention within 50-360 meters in front of it and have a lance of support and ECM to screen it for a few seconds so it's left without interruptions or fear of being flanked, and it becomes a murderously unstoppable monster. Send it off by itself to race off to a capture point, out of the fight and horribly alone, and it becomes a free kill for lights and one less DPS boat when you really need. In most fights, that's almost a guaranteed loss for the match, too. Good players recognized this inherent set of vulnerabilities and, like any other assault mech, players in anything not assault tend to huge close to them both to protect them and ensure they are permitted to steamroll the field unabated. The one's piloting assaults learned to stay close to that ECM and support and not to "ridge" unless a coordinated push is called and to never "squirrel" unless it's the end of the fight and you're mopping up the last hostile. You know...good teamwork.

The only difference is that assaults in MWO (and, technically, every BattleTech title to date) have always had those flaws since the first assault class mechs hit the MWO server. Some of the ones battleships deal with in Eve Online are only fairly recent shifts from nonexistent to now being actual issues. Once players who haven't already get used to that, they will find that battleships are still dangerously powerful instruments of warfare just the same as they have always been, but now deserve a little more respect for where they are weak and meant to be weak.