EVE General Discussion

So far the dominix and megathrons are doing very well in pvp.

Man as a PvPer who uses mainly battleships and nothing else, in solo sometimes 2-3 man gangs you lot make me sick, they do perfectly fine just learn to Fly them correctly christ...

'Geddons too.

After reading the discussion for the last week I decided to train the skill and buy one of these things and put it through some trials just to get more of a personal perspective on it.

But first, a story. I'm probably the only person on these forums to have ever been on a battleship. And not just in a museum or decommissioned. I mean an actual real-life fully-functional fully-refurbished (basically brand-new) battleship on sea trials at sea. Not once, but several times in fact. My uncle was Senior Logistics Analyst for a major shipbuilding company in the USA. During the 80's, under Reagan, the USA took the old mothballed WWII battleships (or at least some of them) and brought them back into service. They were completely stripped-down and redone from the bare metal on up. Fully modern, advanced electronics and targeting systems, the whole 9 yards. One of these was the Battleship Iowa. It originally had a hardwood deck. And they actually restored the wood deck for historical reasons. When the thing was recommissioned, then VP Bush came and spoke at the recommissioning ceremony. I had free passes, courtesy of my uncle. After the speech, the guests got to crawl all over the thing. Then it was put in the water and went out for sea trials. Again, I was allowed to be on it. Despite what most people would think, the thing wasn't slow by any means. It was like a sea tiger. It could go really fast, and would cut right through the water. I was also amazed at how the thing could turn. They did donuts with the thing at full speed, and the ship would lean into the turns. Stirred up quite the wake and some good waves, heh. They also fired all the guns broadside once, and the whole ship moved sideways the other direction in recoil (I was later told that the shells were blanks).

Now onto the topic at hand. My first comment is that in-game these things seem to be saddled with what I will term 'arbitrary' drawbacks. It's like the developers said 'hmmm... we need to add some drawbacks here just for the sake of having some drawbacks,' as if they didn't already have enough.

For instance, the slow warp speed. I see no reason, neither in lore aspects, nor for gameplay or balance reasons, why it is there. As for lore or sci-fi, yes it is a bigger mass, but naturally it would also fit a bigger warp drive, so it isn't necessarily going to be slower than another ship in warp. Possibly slower to charge-up or initiate warp - sure. But not slower once warp is reached.

As for top impulse speed - no reason for it to be slow here. Slow in reaching top speed (i.e. slow in acceleration)? Sure, that's possible. Slow in maneuvering at top speed? Sure, that's possible. But not a slow top speed. Just because something is bigger or heavier, doesn't mean it is slower. I will submit examples now. A Boeing 747 is way bigger and heavier than a Corvette or Ferrari or whatever sports car you want to imagine. It is also much, much faster. For that matter the Saturn V (or was it a Titan? I forget the name) rocket that blasted men to the moon was much bigger and heavier than a 747, by orders of magnitude. It was also much faster, as even when still in the earth's atmosphere it broke the sound barrier, and if I'm not mistaken it achieved multiples of the sound barrier while still in the earth's atmosphere.

Also, no reason whatsoever for a battleship to take so long to target other ships. A ship's size or heaviness would have nothing to do with it's speed of targeting, it is purely a function of equipment, electronics, etc. An actual modern-day battleship would target something as fast as a frigate.

To conclude, I'd say that, as a start, remove the 'arbitrary' drawbacks which make no sense, neither lore-wise nor for balance. I've listed a few of these arbitrary drawbacks above. I'm sure there are more.

Also, if someone who is familiar would present a history of the balance of these things over the years, and the reasons for various changes over time, I'd be interested in hearing it.

I underlined the 2 main problems you have.

#1 This is EVE not real life. It's easy to see how you got stuck on the idea of what "battleships" should be, because you are confusing EVE Battleships (BS) with the real world Battleships (BB) you are familiar with. Sorry if this is harsh but that's silly as all hell. It would be like disliking EVE Carriers because you served on a real carrier and no real carrier could fit 2 Battleships inside them.


But the second part I highlighted (your last sentence) is the actual important thing. Battleships were the original 'solopwnmobiles' of EVE Online, occupying the same really screwed up place Super-Capital ships occupy now ie the only way to beat them was with another battleship OR crap loads of dudes in smaller ships who were willing to take hideous losses to kill one.

So CCP introduced the balance features you ignorantly call 'arbitrary', because without them EVE would be 'Battleships Online' and totally not fun for anyone else.

Last night a guy (Guillejejeje XDD) rolled a hull tanked Megathron (Gallente BS) into the constellation I play in. Can't post KMs here but you can look up the guy's name (he came back in a Dominix and cyno dropped a Thanatos on us, which my Alliance's response fleet killed).

It took us a small gang to kill him, and he still killed one of our HACs, a Curse, before we could kill him. So even after all of CCP's balance measures that still happens. Somehow you seem to want things to be different, you think that Mega should have been able to wipe the floor with 9 of us in Cruisers and Battlecruisers. \

But that wouldn't have happened, we'd have all just been in battleships ourselves. Balance exists for a reason, and you'd do better learning why rather than posting about things admit you don't know about.

You can start at YouTube.

Perhaps you think a couple of frigs or cruisers should be able to take out a super-capital?



The stuff I called 'arbitrary' is not what's making Battleships suck. Well, let me rephrase that. Sure, it makes them suck worse than they would, but it's incidental suck (slow warp speed, etc). Other issues are bigger, or suckier, if you will. I was simply saying that eliminating the arbitrary stuff would be a start to balancing them.

Anyway, I get it. Obviously you like smaller ships and hate battleships. Fine, to each his own. But hateful trolling does nothing to state your case and is rather pointless. So hopefully one of the more intelligent, more well-spoken chaps posting here will chime in with more input to my post above.

Thank you, and have a nice day :)

Maybe its just you who doesn't have a clue about game design...maybe send them your resume if you are such good at the job.

A 747 is a plane, a ferrari is a car, and the Saturn V was a rocket.
Maybe better compare a 747 to a F-14, or the Saturn V to a sidewinder rocket, and if you insist on bringing cars into the equation, compare a garbage truck with a ferrari in terms of size, agility and speed.

Much as I hate to say it, there was some justification to the warp speed changes - and more importantly acceleration/deceleration from warp changes.

For some time before that I had some fun running geddons(bulkheads/inertia stabs) alongside armoured cruiser gangs - the geddon kept up fine (it was faster than a Deimos into/out of warp ) and provided heavy neuts/sentries/MJD to the gang without any penalty to fleet movement. That's clearly a stupid situation and the changes dealt with it.

However the acceleration/deceleration changes to warp were too much for me, couldn't deal with the tedium on even moderate length roams so about the only BS I've flown since is the Mach.

Initially the first BSs were so OP that it required GM intervention - j0rt in the first Dominix was moved 50 systems away from Mara-Passari (where m0o had a long running gatecamp - like weeks long).

Then it was all laser BSs - BoB days.

Then it was megas in your face

Then TE2's turned minnie BSs into god mode (well all AC ships really).

Everything changes.....

Jenn hate battleships?!?
Bwahahaha...