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The dev blog https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=121281&find=unread on upcoming ship changes is admirable for reiterating the problems and some innovative solutions your team (and it could always be a larger team) is working on (also thanks for the reply post on page 26). And, sure it makes some sense to progress in a linear fashion up the ship sizes. But this leaves the problem area of the BCs still a over a year or more off in the future.

The problem from a player perspective is the pace. You acknowledge the rush to BC and the over usage of Drakes for all pve and pvp activity is not healthy. But not doing anything while you eventually get to rebalancing BCs after all frigs and all Cruisers will be a rather long wait. Is it not possible to make some relatively (at least from my unlearned perspectve) changes in stat tables for these ships? It seems to me the following would be rather simple to implement and would not kill any tier 2 BC. It would possibly make them less favorable for certain activities and reduce their usage, but at the same time it would provide more utility to the competitor ship classes (tier 1 BCs, Cruisers, and HACs, and even BSs, Commands, tech III, and tier 3s).

Suggestion 1 - HP stats

Change the entries on the stats tables for tier 2 BCs concerning hit points in shield, armor, and structure to the same as those of the tier 1 BCs of that race.

This does not involve any changes to resists, cap, pg, cpu, slots, bonuses or any other balancing consideration that might be hard to code and test. And it would not harshly affect the current fitting schemes for the tier 2s. For instance, a Ferox can passive tank just fine. The Drake will still perform better than it due to the extra mid slot. It will make the Drake less favorable for level 4s in pve or fleet actions in pvp. But isn't part of the goal giving people a reason to train BSs and Tech II and Tech III ships anyway?

This does not kill any of the tier 2s. It does knock them down a peg, a small peg. And it would simultaneously elevate other ship classes that suffer to them in ISK efficiency and power directly.

Suggestion 2 - Shield regen stats

And this one admitedly is more tricky with immediate balancing concerns. It has always amazed me that the BC class got such skewed shield regen stats. The hp stats for BCs are much closer to those of a BS than a Cruiser. This disparity gets affected by tanking rigs as those are percentage based on the base and module augmented hp, resists, and regen stats (trimarks, cdf extenders, etc).

However, it is most pronounced with the passive shield mechanics in pve. Adding hp through tankiing mods and rigs synergizes in a more extreme manner with passive shield. To have the BC regen stat be 1400, with a cruiser at 1250, while a BS is at 2500 has been an odd situation. BCs hp stats are much closer to a BS than a Cruiser, but the shield regen time is much closer to a Cruiser than a BS. It seems to me that a correction is in order.

Midway would be 1875 sec. This would not be correcting for the skewed hp of a BC being much closer to a BS still. So even it the regen was placed there it would still leave BCs with the better shield regen than one would expect. I am not advocating 1875 though. It probably would kill passive tanking in pve. But there has to be some point somewhere between 1400 and 1875 that would end the overpweredness of a passive regen tank compared to the cap and time limitations of either an active shield or active armor tank.



There are other suggestions I'd like to propose in a full manner, example- boosting the damp boat, painter boat, and TD boat bonuses from their current almost useless 5% per level to maybe 10% (still nothing compared to 30% per level bonuses on ECM boats). These ships might then get used for more than their secondary tackling roles (always fun to provide less certainty about opposing ships on a battlefield) but this post is getting a bit long and well I think the overall idea is now presented sufficiently.

I posted this here in TSF because it gets the most dev response and I'm whoring my post for that but if someone wants to move it to F&I that's fine.

edit - And look at what is being done with FW NPC imbalance. Here you guys are taking an interim step toward balance by removing the imbalanced ewar of the NPCs, while still working on a comprehensive fix. It can be done Ytter! Make it so.

Their, uh, aesthetics don't help them either.

Actually, I complain in other posts, not the op itt. The op is rather constructive and not my usual sarcasm. The whole point of the thread is that contrary to what Ytterbium said in his post on the rebalancing blog, there is a precedent for interim measures (removal of fw rat ewar) in addition to a comprehensive reworking on game changes.

Also, this is a relatively easy one line substitution of values for four ships that could be applied to those tier 2 BCs, that wouldn't break any of them. It takes nothing away from the devs' stated preference to proceed up the ship classes. But it does further the same goal of bringing BCs back into harmony with other ship classes, the best example of a problem area according to Ytterbium himself. If tier 2 BCs were given the same base hp stats as the tier 1s, it makes the tier 1s and Cruisers look a small measure closer in comparison of power/value vs tier 2 BCs. It makes HACs look a little better in comparison of power.

I'm basically asking someone to show me how this conflicts with their stated goals and would be "tricky" to implement with the next patch. This very slight nerf isn't even targeted at a single ship, but at a ship class. That ship class will still have their extra slot, and acknowledged better ship bonuses. They will still be "better" ships within the BC ship class. Is there some way such a switcheroo on tier 2s would imbalance the game or kill the utility of any of the tier 2s? I can't think of any. And it does move things ever so slightly toward their stated goals of tiericide and not leaving Cruisers as a speed bump on the rush to tier 2 BC.

Yes thank you for not reading my op. It does not say buff tier 1. It says nerf accross the board ever so slightly tier 2 as an interim measure toward tiericide. Do you understand now how that would not "amplify" the rush to BC, and instead actually would help cruisers?

Yes, that is why I linked that thread in the op (the first post in that thread btw has the link to your link). It is also why my op said this: "(also thanks for the reply post on page 26)." Believe me I've read every post (well I've skimmed the mining stuff) in that thread. I was responding to that followup post in making this thread. Particularly the following section

"•WHY WORKING ON FRIGATES FIRST WHEN SO MANY OTHER SHIPS CLASSES ARE BROKEN?(battlecruisers in particular): that’s mainly because we are not just fixing ships, but overhauling EVE balancing as a whole by removing tiers. This is an extremely tricky move, which is why we want to start to get experience with frigates first before we move to the more problematic hulls."" underline added.

Notice in the op I used the word tricky.

"Suggestion 2 - Shield regen stats

And this one admitedly is more tricky . . ."

Ytterbium said in his followup post on page 26 in that thread that any interim changes would be too tricky. That argument is not true. Interim changes like that which I suggest, well at least the first suggestion, have nothing tricky about them.

at least is could be done on sisi, to see how it works.

I'm no expert at Eve or at the war in Delve, but I think this is pretty much because Goons and Test use drakes. They have fielded 1000s of drakes and lost quite a lot of them in the war on AAA.

I'm not saying drakes aren't imba. They very well could be for all I know.

My point is that these _massive_ blob corps who spam missiles really throw off the aggregate numbers. That supports the idea that these things are very cheap and very effective - thus they are used entirely too much - but if these get nerfed then some other ship will just appear here as the lowest cost, highest output ship.