Ships & Modules

Tier 2 battleships consist of the Apoc, Raven, Mega, and Tempest. What exactly would you suggest more tier 2 ships do?

What I actually think you're talking about are Tech 2, which currently consist of Marauders and BlOps. If you can think of a needed role which a tech 2 BS is needed for, go ahead and make the suggestion (Note: a high-resists, high DPS BS really isn't what the game needs).

I think ccp said somewhere they wanted to rework marauders, since they are now obsolete with faction bs and noctis around.
So maybe we will have some more pvp t2 BS.

The problem is with your perception that the HACs are just "better cruisers" or the assault ships are just "better frigates" so you want "better battleships"

The HACs and assault ships are specialized ships (as all T2 ships are) with specialized roles (as all T2 ships should have). What would the specialized role for your new "heavy combat ship" be? and please dont say "being a better battleship"

To emphasize on the mortar boat.
The amount of tank would be sub-par for on-field warfare. Make beacons a stackable item that you can jettison for the mortar boat to scan down(which suggest the need for scan bonuses). This would require ships on-field to lure the enemy towards the beacon to be within the blast zone.
The mortar itself would have a SLOW RoF. Fitting requirements that makes it impossible for other ships to fit. Possibly a small siege module would be required in order to fire the weapon with the trade off of leave the ship immobile.

Problem is that this only seems to be practical in a scheduled battle of some kind, but would be handy in defending POS's or home systems in w-space/null.

The only t2 BS I could think of adding would be a Heavy Command Ship with Offensive Warfare Links.

Me wants.

Yes, but imagine a world where a cyno doesn't usually mean supers are about to land on you.

Before changes to webs/nos/drone-bandwidth, command ships where released and CRUSHED a lot of opposition. the Eos was an unkillable monster that did battleship DPS meanwhile things like the sleipnir and absolution where projecting damage like boss's and had pretty solid tanks to boot.

creating a super-heavy assault ship would require them to make something that could take down 2-4 battleships solo and would have 4 bonuses, which would no doubt end up giving most of them a viable frigate defense without using specific fitting... i think they are trying to avoid doing that.

T3 was a good example. They tried to make ships more versatile rather than just better at fighting. Same with marauders... they tried to make a ship with a role that wasn' t a PVP beast... also black ops, they tried to give the ship and interesting mechanic that wouldn't result in it crushing multiple opponents.

Personally i think all Tech 2 battleships are a hideous failure compared to smaller hull sizes, so perhaps an assault-BS would change that opinion. But it would also skew the balance of power tremendously.

2018 will be an interesting year then.

If the HACs and AS are "specialized" as you say than the T2 Battleships would be specialized in the same way, just on BS level. Please tell me what the role of a HAC is and then I will tell you what the role of a Marauder should be.