Ships & Modules

Hi there!.
I guess that t2 battlecruisers, comand ships, demands a buff. I sugest simple decision - to increase number of available weapon hardpoints for all 8 ships of this class.
For example Absolution have 7 high power slots, 6 turret hardpoints, 1 misile hardpoint. Let it be 7 high power slots, 7 turret hardpoints, 1 missile hardpoint.
Or Damnation (coolest loking ship in game imo) have 7 high power slots, 4 turret hardpoints, 5 missile hardpoints. Let it be 7 high power slots, 4 turret hardpoints, 7 missile hardpoint.
Other bonuses, roles, characteristics and so on remains the same.
Situation is weird. Comand ships have looooong skills, but gives no expected profit as battlecruiser. How often you met them in the game? What, everyone should be Caldarians and use Drake and Tengu for PvE and PvP? I guess that there must be another options and oportunities.
What for all this changes? It will bring this ships back to game. Amarians will get strong and powerfull enough missile ship for solo PvE and good oportunities in PvP. Their roles as comand ships will not harm. Need a fleet comand ship? Fit 3 links. Need t2 battlecruiser? fit weapons on maximum

I know that CCP declared ship rebalancing. I really hope on this. But in my opinion this change to comand ships can be implemented right now. This changes will not ruin balance in entire game, because entire class of comands is highly unpopular. How many comands flyes in the game? 5, 10 or 20 per hour? How many chars have skills to operate it (i mean real operation - skill 4th level at least)? And how it can be operated? As comand ship with bonuses to the armor warfare links in the Drake gang?

PS Sorry for bad English

Field Commands are essentially t2 variants of the tier 1 bcs. They are geared towards combat and carry over the combat style of their "little brothers" while adding an additional two bonuses and half assed t2 resists to each hull. Fleet Commands on the other had are what you're trying to talk about. They are geared towards proving improvements to racial links while sporting some of the hardest tanks to break in the game due to having full t2 resists unlike their field command brothers.


Now back to the op...

Commands of all types need buffs however I'm going to avoid dashing into the rehashed topic of the fleets just because it has beaten to death so many times.

The issue with Field commands is mainly based around when they were introduced and many of the ships that have been seeded since their implementation. Field Commands are based off of tier 1 BCs and each have +1 slot, -1 rig, +2 bonuses, and generally increased fittings allowing for more liberal fits. This all seems great on paper however there are some more specific issues that lead these ships to be underwhelmers compared to tech 3 cruisers, and even tier 2 bcs.

1. First major area of concern is going to be the total number of slots available to these ships. All field commands essentially have the same total number of slots as the tier 1 bcs through the addition of 1 slot and the removal of a rig slot. Compared to tier 2 BCs they all have 2 fewer slots, 1 less normal slot, and 1 less rig slot. In the case of the sleipnir and astarte this is not entirley true though. Sleipnir has 1 more slot than any of the other field commands so it has 1 less total slots compared to the cane, the myrmidon also has 1 less slot than other tier 2 bcs (because of large drone bay) meaning that the astarte has 1 less total slot compared to it.

Conclusion: +1 slot to Astarte, Absolution, and Nighthawk.

2. My second major area of concern has to do with base line hp values present on Field Command ships. As i'm sure i'm not the only person to notice this... Field Commands have lower base hp values than the tier 1 bcs they are based off of. Tier 1 bcs have less base hp than tier 2s meaning that Field Commands have a significant disadvantage in raw hp values when comparing them to tier 2 bcs. Some of you like myself may have asked yourself "why"... I have an answer for you. It has to do with the implementation of Field Commands many many years ago prior to an HP buff than many of you have probably never heard of.

After the implementation of Field Commands, BC hp values were increased to minimize the power gap between them and BS. This is not the universal hp buff the game received that was applied to all hulls, This was a different bc specific hp buff. Problem with this hp buff is that for some silly reason ccp did not apply it to the field commands that were based off these tier 1 bcs. Result was that field commands that had higher base hp values than tier 1 bcs before the buff ended up having lower base hp values than the t1 bcs they were based off of after the buff.

Conclusion: Rectify this 6+ year old mistake and increase hp values on field commands to be greater than their tech 1 counterparts. Almost all other combat related t2 ships in the game have a significant base hp advantage compared to their tech 1 parents. I fail to see why Field Commands should be any different.

It depends if you are talking about fleet command or field command. As mentioned previously, fleet command ships are not exactly used for DPS but rather for their fleet bonus's. However, i do agree that they need a buff, not in the DPS role, but in the role of the bonus they provide. Sure they can run 3 links, but T3's give a 5% boost while CS's only give 3%? Where is the logic in that? o.O

Also, i personally dont feel that field command ships need a buff as they are powerful enough as they are, dont change something that is not broken right? :)

Regarding the Nighthawk it seems a bit odd that they converted Drake's 6th med into a low slot specifically for people to put a reactor control unit to make the ship work. Looks like a ******** logic. It's like: "Our car is the best in the world you just need to add some wheels!".

do we all agree that the only important thing is that we get a command ship with a hurricane hull?

Only possibly?

The Nighthawk is, by far, the worst offender of CCP's "Caldari don't need MWDs" balancing. The fitting on it is just laughably bad, to the point that CCP's failure to deal with such an obvious problem for YEARS raises serious doubts about their professional abilities as game designers.


(And yes, the Drake does everything the Nighthawk does and does it better, since you can actually use all of your slots on something besides RCUs.)

So what exactly does the Nighthawk do better then?

More tank? No.

More dps? No.

More speed? No.

Able to fit a gang mod? No.

More ewar/tackle/etc? No.


PS: who cares about PvE, either you fly a Drake as a cheap ship for a newbie, or you fly a Tengu or Golem if you have the skills to even undock in a Nighthawk.

Tier 2 Battlecruisers make T2 field command ships look fairly weak.

T2 field command ships have less slots, less hitpoints than Tier 2 Battlecruisers.

The skill requirements to fly command ships are very high and the costs of flying one isn't cheap either.

Than it means that CCP learns to make better ships with time! :D

But with the comming of Drake's changes you have to admit that it will close the little bits of gap in perfomance. Drake won't have the 5% ressists bonus but it still will have more base HP, 1 more med slot, 1more rig slot, 1 more launcher, better fittings, same electronics and speed.

The only superior stats of Nighthawk would be 5% kinetic damage bonus which is tied to the Command Ships skill and twice the cargo.

Rather dissapointing for the amount of training involved?



And for the Fleet Command Ships: the support role of links is not a reason to gimp ship's dps so severly if it has no other options to contribute to the battle. Especially if someday someone makes links work only on grid.

Not true a sleipner can do pretty well in PvE for sure.

The Nighthawk needs a PG buff. It should be able to fit 1 ganglink without gimping the rest of the fit. Also one thing that people forget in all these nighthawk vs/drake discussions is that the nighthawk gets a bonus to missile precision. Granted this bonus is only marginally usefull, it is an advantage over the drake. It just doesnt show up in EFT. That being said though the difference between the 2 ships is too small compared to the training time and the cost. imo this is partly due to the drake (and maybe bc's in general) are a bit OP