Player Features and Ideas Discussion

IMHO, Battleships need a large EHP buff. The fact that cruisers can match or exceed their EHP is a very bad thing. Along with an EHP buff, they probably also need a tracking nerf. BSs should be very vulnerable to smaller ships, but for fighting other BSs and caps, they should be the front line ships the lore makes them out to be.

Please don't turn the Armageddon into a drone boat, ala the Prophecy.

I would also second the poster who talked about T1 EWAR platforms for all races. It seems a bit silly that only Caldari get a T1 EWAR battleship.

I would love to see one of the Amarr BS for example being turned into a neuting platform, so that there would be a lesser alternative to the Bhaalgorn for neuting. As it stands, there's a massive gulf in neuting power, EHP and price between the Curse and the Bhaal, which is now being filled by having hundreds of battleships or battlecruisers with utility slots mass on a target with their neuts. Which, you know, is a bit boring. Variety is the spice of life.

Minmatar might do well with a target painting bonus to the Typhoon, coupled with a focus on missiles. Gallente, I dunno, I guess damps for the Domi. (OP?)

don't think i agree with this.

I agree gallente ships are somewhat under used, but i think this points back more the the balance between armor and shield tanks than to the ships themselves.
With the inclusion of the MJD it's reasonable to assume that fleet BS battles are for the most part eitehr going to be at 0 or 100km - 145km. when you compare the rokh and the mega to operate effectively in that range their bonus' and mods needed mean that they are fairly similar in performance.

As for amarr BS right now i'd say that except for price the abaddon is pretty much better in all situations at doing the same role as it's two counterparts. and because of the new armor skills which effect plate mass etc, agility should be less of an issue than what it was previously, if that still needs to be altered i'm not sure.

nice. so we get a second chance to try to convince devs that weapon capuse bonus on ships is no real bonus in context of the current state of balancing.

I fly mostly Amarr BS and the occasional Domi. Overhauling one Amarr BS is a little dangerous. I agree with what someone said earlier in the thread about not turning the Geddon into a bigger version of the new Prophecy, but that said: The Bhaalgorn needs competition. Right now, there is exactly one neut-bonused BS. It is a terrifyingly powerful ship in small-gang and WH PvP, a 30km sphere of webbing, neuting, and general day-ruining. A single Bhaal can demolish a logi cap chain or flat shut down Gallente or Amarr DPS ships, to say nothing of what they do to capitals. Making the geddon into a NEUT boat, albeit a less effective one and lacking the web bonus, would at least provide an alternative to a 1b+ isk ship that does something literally no other ship can. I would be less concerned about its DPS. Granted, that makes it less useful for PvE, so it might be worth making the Apoc into a more attractive PvE platform at the same time.

It could also provide the foundation for a new Amarr ewar-based BOBS (hint hint).

As for other races, they Hyperion needs a rethink. I was working on a mission alt's fits and found no way in which a Hyperion could out-perform a Dominix, except that it wasn't reliant on drones. I'm not sure what kind of rethink, but as it is it's a waste of a delightful ship model.

Hello there CCP Rise.

When it comes to balancing ships, I like to think as if every ship could be fitted the way they should be fitted. That way, we can set starting grounds.

Amarrs have 3 battleships, Armageddon, Apocalypse and Abaddon.

The Abaddon is fine, it's the tough powerhouse everyone knows about, it works fine. Maybe a +10 CPU and some tweaks regarding cap usage would be great tho.

The Apocalypse is highly limited by fitting requirements.

Just like on the Armageddon, you don't have much CPU to play around and absolutly have to use Adaptive Nanoplating.

But what really hurts the Apocalypse is its inability to fit Tachyons.

With a somewhat standard Apocalypse fit (2 plates, 2 EANMS, 2 damage mods, 2 tracking comps, MWD, HeavyCapbooster and a full rack of Tachyons), I'm at 791/631 CPU and 34032/25625 PWG.

Every battleships can fit a full rack of the biggest long-range weapons with a single fitting module. Except the Apocalypse, which has troubles with both CPU and PWG.

This, along with the useless cap usage bonus (Which translates to a "Hey, now you can use your guns, ain't that great ?!" bonus), is what makes the Apocalypse useless.

The Armageddon is quite good, tbh.

Here's how I would change it :

Make it easier to fit (adding some CPU is non-negotiable, adding some PWG would be a welcomed boost as it would allow Armageddons to fit heavy capboosters).

Change it so it uses 6 turrets instead of 7, switch the rate of fire bonus to an actual damage bonus, so that it doesn't hurt the ship's capacitor too much.

Give it enough PWG to fit 2 heavy neutralizers.

Done. It loses a bit of DPS because of the -1 turret, but it can finally fit utility mods. The other two Amarr battleships can't, they are fleet ships. Please make it so that the Armageddon becomes the true Amarrian Skirmish battleship.

Eventually, switch the cap use bonus to a tracking bonus.

Anyway, I liked what you did as a player, and I'll probably like what you're going to do as a balance-master.

And I love battleships.

Oh and, if you could think about us poor little things in wormholes that can't use battleships much (even in C5-C6 wormholes), that would be awesome.

With regards to BS's, to start all that's needed is a baseline being picked for HP and slot counts (say, the Tier 2) as the tier 1's do come up lacking and the tier 3 being a little bit too good, and then each ship being adjusted accordingly for race and roles.

For the most part, the bonuses and roles are really only ok for the Caldari due to their line up in the form of a dedicated EW boat, a missile boat (cruise need some love though) and their gun boat.

Minmatar are somewhat ok due to a probably soon to be torpedo boat, a full dps attack boat and a slower tanky boat. The latter pair simply replicating the new design of cruisers as one is an Attack ship the other Combat.

It gets harder with Gallente and Amarr.

Gallente have an awesome drone boat and two very similar BS's, the Hyp having a questionable active rep bonus.
As the lovely Megathron works well as a blaster boat, it would perhaps be senisble to give the Hype an EW bonus.
The Hype with a damage bonus coupled with a damping bonus would make an interesting choice, although it might be sensible to move damps to be a high slot and lose a mid lest it stay as a shield boat.

Amarr have three very similar ships. The 'Geddon for DPS, the Abaddon for tanking and the Apoc coming inbetween and also being a sort of sniper boat. The problem is that they're all quite good and a big change could risk ruining a decent ship. A TD bonus on the Apoc or Abaddon might work though.

I'm also trying to bear in mind that Tach's are a cut above the rest of the race's upper tier weaponry, so not taking that into account.


Tier 3 BC's however are a big problem due to how they were designed and released. I was very suprised when they were released with 8x high slots and matching amount of turret hardpoints + good bonuses, because it makes them step heavily on the toes of the entire gun based BS line up.

Personally, I'd redesign them to field 4/5 or maybe at a max 6x large turrets, but with normal bonuses (certainly not the 100% bonuses seen on Marauders and faction ships with lower turret counts) and only enough grid/cpu to fit either the medium tier guns (ie, 350mm Railguns) or the lower tier large guns (Dual 250mm railguns) + tank. As a counterpoint, I'd let them keep their current mobility.

This will give them BS range and edging towards BS damage on the cheap while not eclipsing the BS's, and also mean they make more sense lore wise as they're battlecruisers with large guns bolted on rather than bespoke large weapon platforms.
That should make it so they're not the most obvious DPS choice out of the BC's, with that role going to ships that can field 6x medium turrets + a bigger damage bonus (so design wise one set has extra damage, the other range).

(Might be spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes in the above).

Nb, I miss using coloured text for racial names.

Bonus: Two Step's point of lowering BS tracking + EHP buff is worthwhile exploring.

Definitely a +1 to that ECM nerf. CCP Rise, Please, do the honours, do us all a favour, and actually inact a GOOD idea for ECM nerf, and give that guy a medal.

I'm inclined to agree, having worked on an AA system to train pilots, i can tell you that for us this is almost exactly how we would operate against brute force jamming.

To maintain some degree of balance it would probably have to work along the lines of break all locks followed by only the ECMer being re-targetable. The initially burst of ECM is pretty much blinding and takes time to adjust targeting to etc.

well done on a nice idea, have a + 1 from me.

I concur with this opinion. Diversity is a good thing.