Warfare & Tactics

BC's make excellent and very commonly used PvP platforms. HAM Drakes and A/C 'Canes seem to be the most popular.

BS' are a different story. A little too costly to throw away easily an the large weapons make it VERY difficult to deal with smaller vessels.

Just my 2 bits.

If you don't give a **** about losses then go ahead, just be prepared to have a lot of them.



They're also significantly tankier and can fit neuts and webs and drones. If I were running around in a solo battleship I'd make sure to be in something that had the utility/EW slots/drone bay to deal with frigs, maybe keep a backup set or two of lights handy, and that should solve that problem. I just wouldn't engage frigate gangs solo.



OP: One of the largest factors in PVP is being able to get people you want to kill to engage you (forcibly or by bait) and getting away from people who can kill you. Battleships are completely awful at getting away from people that can kill them.

Cost is not the only reason people recommend learning PVP in frigates/cruisers - small ships are able to GTFO when **** goes down infinitely better than BS. With a BS, as soon as you are engaged, that's it. If you're on a gate or station you can disengage and pray for the aggression timer to run out but otherwise it's kill or be killed.


If you're not any good at PVP (which is likely because you lack the ability to avoid bad fights and find good ones), you will more than likely just end up welping your battleship into death. While I would definitely say a solo BS could work, I'd be careful.


If I were you, I'd start in cruisers or maybe tier 1 battlecruisers. Particularly the former are still definitely on the cheap end while still not forcing you to be running around in a frigate.




If you're actively PVPing and admittedly not very good at it then it's extremely possible to lose a ship per day.

Wow thanks for all the responses guys. I think Ill try to start with some cruisers and battle cruisers. Battle ships are pretty expensive. Thanks for the help.

If you can fly a Dominix you can probably fly a Myrmidon, which is an outstanding PVP ship.

The Domi makes a good PVP ship too because it makes good DPS, it can "handle" smaller ships in ways that other BS's can't because of the large drone bay and flexibility to fit neuts and you can tank it like a wall. However, it's hard sometimes to get people to aggress larger ships, especially ones like the Domi that are iconic "bait" ships. They'll often run instead of engaging because they'll be thinking that you're a bait cyno or that you have a fleet on standby nearby.

I'm a big fan of the buy 50 Rifter plan for dipping your feet into PvP.

It's pretty simple, buy 50 Rifters(or Punishers or Incursuses (Incursi?) or even Merlins), fit them cheaply, and lose them all. Preferably in 2 weeks or less. The whole project will probably cost you what losing 3 battleships cost, and you'll have a minimum of 50 fights under your belt to those 3 fights with battleships.

As for not liking being in something smaller than a BS, I found that as I did more fighting, I disliked fighting in big ships more and more. Battleships are SLOOOOW. Slow moving, slow aligning, slow firing, slow locking, everything about them is slow. Of course, sometimes you just want to see something pounded into rubble. Then you take your battleship out.

When you first start PVPing you will lose many ships per day. count on 15-20 if you seriously want to learn. Even experienced PVPers may at times lose several in a day when they are really active. If you try to PVP in a battleship with little or no PVP experience you will die seconds into your first engagement. Even learning to PVP in BC's will be very expensive. The reason why everyone says to start out PVP in rifters until you get the hang of it is because you will go through hundreds of ships while you are learning.

If you are determined to PVP with Battleships you may be able to start out in null sec fleet ops without losing more than a couple per day, but only if you can get into a really good null sec corp, and are really good at following the FC.s direction. Even there it is best to start out in cheap ships performing tackle or E-war roles until you get used to fleet ops and can kill more assets than you lose.

Of course you can pvp in those ships in the right situations.

If however, you mean "can I go out and get fights by myself or with one or two of my friends in these ships", the answer is still yes but you will lose a ship every day. Which is why it's best to start pvp in cheap frigates that you could lose 20 of a day and not care.

But do whatever you want obv.

If you don't like frigs, I would also suggest cruisers. A full T2 fit and rigged cruiser costs about ~30M. Maybe a bit more since the price spike. I recommend Vexors as they are versatile and can be fit many ways.. I prefer cruisers over any other ship class.

But honestly - do the frigate thing. They teach you to become a better pilot. I kinda skipped them early, and wish I hadn't. With the patch, I'm buying 10 new Incursus for a refresher. ;)

Battleships usually aren't good solo for many reasons, but there are a few exceptions. The Dominix can be a real beast. For laughs, hull tank it (not kidding - DC with bulkheads = lots of EHP). People will think, "Oh this Domi is dying quickly... I can stick around for a few minutes longer... Oh crap."