Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Welcome to the Tech 1 Battleship rebalance, fasten your seatbelts!

Some of the changes herein are significant, so I'm going to lay out our overall tiericide and balance principles at the top of each race's thread, and also provide ship-by-ship explanation. I encourage you to read both before hitting the caps lock key, you may find answers to some of your questions and concerns.

Tiericide -
Our effort to destroy ship tiers continues. With battleships, the tiers were most evident in HP amounts and price. All variations had an equal allocation of slots already (19), except drone bonused hulls or disruption hulls, which won’t change. As usual, we will be dividing battleships into roles rather than tiers. The distribution will be as follows: One 'Attack' Battleship for each race, and two 'Combat' Battleships for each race (except Caldari, who will retain the only 'Disruption' Battleship for the time being). With these new roles in mind, we will be adjusting hitpoint amounts for all combat battleships near the former tier 3 hitpoint numbers, while the attack hulls will sit closer to the former tier 2s. As with other ship classes, attack battleships will be faster, more agile, and will focus more on damage application and projection than their combat counterparts. Cost of production will be adjusted to reflect tiericide, but so far we have not settled on exact numbers.

Exciting roles for every ship and every race -
One of our main goals during this balance pass is to see that each battleship has a lot to offer, and that each race has access to all of Eve's environments. Formerly, the battleship line had strange overlaps and gaps which left certain races excluded from certain styles of play and other races with more than one option for a certain role. This new distribution should hopefully provide new options and excitement for players of all races.

I am breaking the post into four, by race, with the hope of isolating feedback. We look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Without further ado:

MINMATAR

Maelstrom:

Like most of the other former tier 3s, the Maelstrom is very healthy in its current form and will not be changing.

Minmatar Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
+7.5% bonus to Shield Boost Amount

Slot layout: 8H, 6M, 5L; 8 turrets , 0 launchers
Fittings: 21000 PWG, 640 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 8000 / 7500 / 7000
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second) : 6000 / 1250s / 4.8
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 94 / .136 / 103600000 / 19.53s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 100 / 100
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 75km / 90 / 7
Sensor strength: 21 Ladar Sensor Strength
Signature radius: 460

Tempest:

Updated based on feedback to make the Tempest Minmatar's second attack battleship. This keeps its sig down, lowers its mass slightly, at the cost of lower hp.

Minmatar Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
+5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret damage

Slot layout: 8H, 5M, 6L; 6 turrets , 4 launchers
Fittings: 16000 PWG(+500), 550 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 6800(-154) / 7000(+789) / 6800(+259)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second) : 5400(+87.5) / 1154s / 4.68
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 127(+7) / .116(-.004) / 99500000(-3800000) / 16.00s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 75 / 75
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 67.5km(+5k) / 100 / 7
Sensor strength: 20 Ladar Sensor Strength(+1)
Signature radius: 360(+20)

Typhoon:

The flying garbage can is a very special ship. It seems to be very fondly regarded by most eve pilots, despite prohibitive skill point demands and minimal rewards. Our redesign here aims to honor the spirit of the typhoon while also providing a more focused base that will hopefully lead to more actual application.

It will lose the split weapon bonus (as all tech 1 ships have as part of the tiericide initiative) and will replace the projectile bonus with a missile explosion velocity bonus. Along with the addition of 6th launcher, the Typhoon will now be a very formidable damage dealer. Utility has always been one of the Typhoon's strong points, and it will be sacrificing some of this utility to take on such a strong attack role – this is a point for which we are paying close attention to your feedback.

While we are agreed that this version looks extremely fun and powerful, we also expect this to be sensitive for many players, especially those have heavily invested in making use of all three weapons platforms. If you’re one of those that has cherished access to projectiles, missiles, and drones, we would encourage you to remember that the Navy battleships, which will get looked at soon, will likely be able to fill some spaces created by the tech 1 rebalance.

It should also be mentioned that we hope to have a look at cruise missiles and torpedos in time for the summer expansion as well.

UPDATE: Based on feedback we are lowering the Typhoon's signature radius a bit, and also giving back its turrets(though they will not be bonused) to offer some more flexibility.

Minmatar Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+5% to Cruise and Torpedo launcher rate of fire
+5% Cruise Missile and Torpedo explosion velocity (replaces large projectile rate of fire)

Slot layout: 7H(-1), 5M(+1), 7L; 6 turrets(+1) , 6 launchers(+1)
Fittings: 12500 PWG, 640 CPU(+40)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 6500(+289) / 6000(+531) / 6000(-211)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second) : 5400(+400) / 1087s / 4.97 (+.3)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 130 / .11(-.006) / 100600000(-3000000) / 15.8s(-1.16s)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 100(-125) / 125(-50)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets):...

Why signature increase on the Tempest?

Edit:
Also, typo in the OP. "Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 8000 / 7500 / 700" on the Mael.

phoon changes i like

Please apply the remote reps to the maelstrom's shield boost bonus. The other ships' tanking bonuses are usually applied to remote reps (resist bonuses?) While this still doesn't protect against alphas, it still makes them more likely to survive in fleet battles.

Regarding the tempest, you've changed the capacitor capacity, but not the recharge time. Doesn't that alter the peak recharge value?

From odessy i'll probablyfly a geddon instead of a phoon, not much of a fun of these new everything-should-be-caldarized mania.

How will this affect the Tempest Tribal Issue?

Why such the heavy handed nerf to the Typhoon drone bay?

Pretty sure the Maelstrom doesn't need anymore help to be viable in fleets.

Typhoon had 5 launchers/turrets before, not 4.

With that said, assuming torps/cruise get changed in the summer too, I think this will be a hilariously fun boat to fly.

Minmatar attack BS is a missile boat. Oooh kay.
So 15% increase in raw HP justifies 15% signature increase?

Edit: (and another edit because too disappoited to count)
Re-checked sig on the Tempest.. You are making it 420 (+80), as currently it has 340m sig. So it's 23% increase. Do not approve.

This rebalanced Typhoon looks good.

Torps/Cruise will still need some love, but in their current state and on this modified Typhoon, it should be workable.

The rebalanced Tempest is good. The current Tempest is already a very good shield platform (Even if it's going through tough times against tier 3s) and will become even better.

Armor Tempests are getting more breathing space with the PWG buff, good job.