Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Word is the Typhoon will be going full Missile and according to the Chart will be Attack.

*Shakes Fist* Damn you CCP, stop killing off split-weapon ships. They're cool!

Oh I miss read Attack Battlecruiser as Attack Battleship, I still call them Tier 3 Battlecruisers. I thought people talking about a Missile Naga thing was a long past memory.

I had an idea about that a while ago. Mk II Ships. Most people love the Rail Naga, in any contest of popularity it wins hands down over Missiles. Building 4 new Attack Battlecruisers is also a pipe dream.

The idea of Mk II Ships is that a copy is made with a different role on a ship and balanced out in other places. Caldari gets a Missile Naga and a Blaster Scorpion, Gallente gets a Rail Megathron and an Active Tank Blaster Vexor (Mini Hyperion). In the end all races still have an equal number of ships but certain races have more variety in different area's.

Nice history lesson.

But, don't forget that RL battlecruisers were primarily built for economic reasons. The first development of the BC was in response to the proliferation of heavy cruisers. It was simply too expensive to build sufficient battleships to counter them. The BC was proposed as a lighter (ie. cheaper) hull, mounting battleship guns, to keep the superior range advantage over the heavy cruisers. Most of these engagements were either solo or small gang work, protecting shipping. In larger fleet engagements, the BCs were also used to support battleships, mostly as skirmishers. BCs were never meant to stand toe-to-toe with the more expensive front-line battleships. As gun technology improved, BCs became less economically feasible - whereas a WW II battleship was designed with sufficient armor to withstand a hit from one of its own guns, anything with less armor didn't stand much of a chance. BCs got bigger, more heavily armored, and more expensive - which sort of blurred the line between BCs and BSs.

In the EVE universe, combat BCs are really heavy cruisers, whereas the attack BCs are the only true battlecruisers. If you want to keep them "true to RL history", then, attack BCs should have firepower equal to a BS, but on a much cheaper hull. In EVE, a cheaper hull should mean: (a) less tank, (b) less slots, and/or (c) less CPU/PG.

Split-weapon ships are cool, but not popular.

Although more players today have both gun and missiles skills trained up to T2, the split-weapon ships still suffer from two critical problems:

a) Ship bonuses - split-weapon ships get, at most, a single bonus per weapon system, whereas many single-weapon ships either get two bonuses for their single weapon system, or a weapon bonus plus a bonus to something else, like tanking.

b) Weapon upgrade modules/rigs - for the most part, modules/rigs which benefit guns don't benefit missiles, and vice versa; ie. you need twice as many modules/rigs to support a split-weapon configuration.

So, even with max skills, split-weapon ships tend not to perform as well as single-weapon ships.

That is right, but Battlecruiser themselves were not cheap ships, these things were the same tonnage and size as Dreadnought Battleships. The Heavy Cruiser class came later between WW I and II where no new Battlecruisers were being built. It's Armored Cruisers you're thinking of which is the Heavy Cruisers direct predecessors. (There isn't much of a difference between them.) Armored Cruisers were getting faster, the British worried they would raid merchant shipping which is what Briton as an Island survived on as well as cut them off from their colonies. The amount of Armor Cruisers it would take to defend all the convoys would be prohibitive while their suspected enemies mostly in Europe didn't need the sea as much. The Battlecruiser as you said was to hunt down Raiders before they caused trouble, this was before anyone knew just how major the U-Boat threat would become.

They were successful in hunting Cruisers there is no doubt but some foresaw a problem. When a Battleline was need they worried that Admirals would want these massive ships on the line and the critics were right in that regard. At Jutland several were brought in and 3 sank in quick order when shells pierced the armor right into the ammo magazine killing almost everyone on board. The HMS Lion a Battlecruiser at Jutland was also hit the same way as the other 3 and a Sailor gave his life flooding the Magazine which put out the fire that was going to set off the Ammunition. On board the Lion was Admiral Beatty who commanded the entire Battlecruiser Squadron. He remarked about his exploding Battlecruisers "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today." (Stiffest Upper Lip Ever!) The tragedy at Jutland would be repeated with the HMS Hood in its duel with the Bismark.

The blurring I find interesting as it happened in several ways. The German Scharnhorst class is referred to as both a Battleship and a Battlecruiser. The Kongo class Battlecruiser was up and converted to Battleships. (Favorite Battleship BTW the Kongo class.) The Courageous class were turned into Aircraft Carriers surprisingly. The only real Battlecruisers to serve in the Second World War was the two ships of the Repulse Class and the Hood, 2 of them sank. A lot of the World War era Dreadnoughts also remained in service slow as they were while newer ships like the King George, North Carolina, Iowa, Bismark and Yamato class began life with the speed of Battlecruisers.


Well Heavy Cruisers actually were much lighter and smaller ships then Battlecruisers with lighter Armor. The originals Heavy Cruisers were Treaty Ships limited to 10000 Tons by the Washington Naval Treaty or 1/2 to 1/4th the size of Battlecruisers depending on the type. Later Heavies reached around 15000 Tons. There is no real comparison between them and Combat and Attack Battlecruisers as real Battlecruisers were so much bigger and stronger then Heavy Cruisers. The Hood being bigger then all other Battleships that served in the Royal Navy during the War.

There is a ship that compares to Attack Battlecruisers though. The Germans called it a Panzership, the British a Pocket Battleship but its real name was the Deutschland class Heavy Cruiser. A Heavy Cruiser with 6, 11" Guns compared to most Heavy Cruiser 8" Guns. It was designed to be mobile with no armor and packing a heavy punch. It didn't quite live up to what they were hoping for in speed so a new faster type was developed under Plan Z but it fell apart when war started quicker then H1tler expected.

Funny story about one of these ships, the Graf Spee. It bloodied up 2 British light Cruisers and one Heavy Cruiser taking minor damage and put into a neutral port for repair in Uruguay. It was on a time limit to how long it could stay in the port and the British could not see a way to muster a force to defeat the thing. So they just pretended they could and had their spy network "inform" the Germans that a task force was waiting for them. The Captain scuttled the ship just off port and shot himself. Probably my favorite story of the war. The Graf Spee is being raised now and will be restored into a museum ship in the near future, I hope to visit her someday.

All this is of course meaningless to ship balance especially since I like my EVE Battlecruisers the way they are, but I like Ocean Warships almost as much as Space Warships.

I don't disagree; I like the Domi as a PVP boat for this very reason.

However, it still remains a fact that if you fit a Phoon for all guns or all missiles, you are sacrificing one of your ship bonuses. And, if you try to fit it with both guns/missiles, you can't fit all of the weapon upgrade modules and rigs. Many players view this as a serious disadvantage, outweighing the surprise factor advantage.

There should be a better way to incorporate flexibility and surprise, without the current penalties.

Perhaps, a set of weapon modules and rigs which boost both gun and missile performance? And, changing the ship bonuses to something which is not specific to either guns or missiles (ex. speed or tanking) - or perhaps a bonus which equally benefits both guns/missiles?

No, don't. That optimal bonus is great anywhere except at very close range. The only problem Rokh has (apart from the obvious ehp issues for all battleships, as I said before) is that Naga can pull off more damage, but I'm not sure buffing Rokh would be the right solution here.

Problems with that. A weak ewar bonus like Tpainter on a battleship is a waste of a bonus and slot. Battleships must excep by brute force when compared to smaller platforms. The scorpion is better on some usages of ECM than the smaller ECM boats. A target painter on a typhoon would NOT be more effective than a simple bellicose, therefore no one in their right mind would waste a typhoon on that.

The tempest with falloff bonus would be GREAT, but then loosing 25% damage would hurt it a LOT. You would also have to change the 5% rof bonus into a 10% damage bonus to keep its DPS.

They could very well overpoer Logistics on repair capability and that would nto be a problem. They are far less mobile, far larger and easier to hit.

I would prefer a remote armor repair bonus than a target painter bonus on the typhoon. FAR FAR more useful.