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My experience with the 4 new tier 3 battlecruisers :

The attributes of these ships are fantastic - They almost feel too good to be true. And when something feels wrong it usually is...
Amongst themself the Tornado, Oracle and Naga seems well balanced but the Talos gets the stick a lot. Besides this the roles of the ships need to be far more specific and consistent. Battlecruisers with big guns simply isn't enough of a role for this eye candy!!

SPEED
Currently the tier 3 battlecruisers are retardely fast and likely even able to outrun even cruisers!! Someone must have watched too much spaceballs: http://youtu.be/ZFqbAGqKTsE

The Tornado doing over 1600 m/s with a MWD and no speed mods is ridiculous and totally out of place.
My Naga did over 1300 m/s and was faster than a plated Talos w/ Trimarks.

Yes, these new babies need to be faster than battleships, but IMO they shouldn't be able to outrun and kite T1 cruisers and battlecruisers. Also it hurts me to see the gallente Talos sticking to the last place when we know how important it is to get in range.

I would look into getting it it more in line like this (Base velocity with maxed skills) :
Caracal 223m/s - Vexor 199m/s - Stabber 361m/s (w/ ship bonus) - Omen 226m/s - Average 252m/s
Moa 205m/s - Thorax 213m/s - Rupture 240m/s - Maller 205m/s - Average 216m/s
Ferox 175m/s - Brutix 181m/s - Cyclone 206m/s - Prophecy 188m/s - Average 187m/s
Drake 175m/s - Myrm 181m/s - Cane 206m/s- Harb 188m/s - Avg = 187m/s
Scorp 118m/s - Domi 124m/s - Phoon 163m/s - Geddon 131m/s - Avg = 134m/s
Raven 118m/s - Mega 131m/s - Temp 150m/s - Apoc 118m/s - Avg = 129m/s

• NAGA should as a long range hybrid ship be between 175m/s and 223m/s (base velocity + skills) -> 180m/s base?
• TALOS should as a blaster ship be between 181m/s and 213m/s (base velocity + skills) -> 195m/s base?
• TORNADO should be between 206m/s and 240m/s (base velocity + skills) -> 190m/s base?
• ORACLE should be between 188m/s and 226m/s (base velocity + skills) - 185m/s base?

This said in general with a majority of minmatar ships fitting shield tanks and blaster boats being designed for armor I believe the velocity stats between gallente and minmatar should be reversed, however that belongs in a fix to blasters and not a tier 3 BC discussion.

SLOT LAYOUT :
I kind of likes the slot layouts a lot. It looks rather balanced without neither pre-nerfing or boosting the ships.
What worries me though are 2 things: The estetics of having a battlecruiser crammed up with heavy weaponry only the tier 3 battleships can rival and the danger of having battlecruisers with a devastating alphastrike.
And well I also think it will be a great shame to have the ship cost punked up a great deal from 8!! large weapons.

In my opinion these ships would not only look much better, but also be more balanced fitting only 4 or 6 turrets and adjusting the damage over RoF role bonus. The leftover hi-slots should be removed to not allow any utility slots.

FITTING :
I feel a bit sad to see these ships easily being able to fit the biggest short range weapons and also being able to fit the highest tier of long range weapons. In my opinion they should not be able to fit more than tier 2 long range weaponry even with maxed skills, rigs, reactor controls and implants...

BONUS :
Usually the most debated part of ships and often one of the most important features of a ship. They should ofcourse fit the racial themes as well as supplementing the role of the ships - And it seems the current bonus are way off...

• First off the ships need the role bonus to fit the large weaponry - Make sure people cannot fit too big weapons without the use of fitting modules etc...
• We also need a role bonus to make sure the ships are capable of running their weaponry if they are using capacitor. I believe the current stats are too forgiving in regards to cap and should be a little more tight.
• Then if the ships get fewer actual weapons on their hulls we need a bonus to compensate. A damage bonus will break the purpose of cutting the number of guns down to avoid a high alpha, but 6 guns with a 25% ROF bonus will be equal to having 8 guns and 4 guns with a 50% ROF role bonus will also be equal to having 8 guns.
• Now what these ships REALLY need for a PROPER ROLE BONUS is a bonus to enable the weapons hitting while you have a higher transversal than the guns are designed for. All ships should get a 25% Tracking role bonus to help hit their targets while getting under the guns on battleships.
• TALOS and TORNADO should have an additional tracking bonus 5% pr level as their first bonus.
• NAGA is fine with the 10% optimal bonus as the first bonus (or is it 5%?).
• ORACLE is also fine with 10% cap bonus for the lasers as the first bonus (or is it 5%?).
• TALOS to set itself apart from the caldari counterpart should have a damage bonus 5% pr level as second bonus.
• TORNADO also deserves to be a damage dealer and should as second bonus have a ROF bonus 5% pr level.
• NAGA and ORACLE to support their ranged bonus should be granted a bonus towards 10% Shield/armor pr level.

Plz note that CCP can also use the amount of turrets to regulate dps in case one or more ships should need it.

TORPEDOS :
I have nothing against torpedos, but it is such a shame to dedicate the tier 3 BC to torpedos when CCP have made a fantastic model with the ability to carry friggin beutiful huge guns... Should CCP decide to they can easily insert missile bonus, but keep in mind the ship need 2 bonus to whatever they decide.

Actually I'd say that the most likely candidate for T3 BC bashing are T2 BCs, not battleships. Nanocane and cookie cutter heavy drake should do the trick most of the time.

About the 5% resistences bonus, that was just an example, it just popped up in my head, as anything else could've done.

Yet, the rage bonus gives torps the possibility of kiting somehow, as without the bonus both High damage and high precission are too low in range to do it propperly. I agree in the need of a bonus like explosionvelocity/signature, without torps are just pointless against non BS.

Sadly problably not since 90% of its potential lost in this pointless 150km range; maybe cruises will make sense again if they set up a minimum warp distance of ~400km; same for the RG Rokh ;).

TALOS

General efficiency: we do realize it suffers from some problems next to the other hulls. Unfortunately, as some of you pointed it, the real issue here comes from blasters, and how they compete against similarly close ranged weapons like autocannons and pulse lasers. Thus, this is little more that can be done by tweaking the hull itself, since the problems mainly come from:

• Damage projection: blasters have issues projecting damage, especially considering Tech2 ammunition like Scorch and Barrage, which greatly empowers pulse lasers and autocannons and leave hybrids far behind for little increased damage to compensate. The issue is also widened because blasters benefit less from tracking enhancers and falloff related bonuses than their Minmatar close weapon counterpart.


• Mobility and armor tanking conflicts with each other: no surprise here, fitting plates into your Gallente armor oriented slot layout decreases its mobility, which is a direct contradiction with how blasters are supposed to work. This leaves little to no choice but to fit shield extenders on Gallente ships (I'm looking at you, Mr. Brutix and Hyperion ) to keep some mobility and actually try to apply the blaster damage output. Also let's not forget Minmatar ships are usually faster than Gallente by design, while Gallente traditionally use the shortest weapon system available.


• Lack of usefulness in gang/fleet engagements: thus, because of blaster low damage projection and Gallente poor mobility when armor tanked, blaster ships are found lacking in gang warfare, as either your target or yourself are long dead before you can reach it. Besides, having blaster ships moving all around the battlefield to engage its target leads to coordination issues with the rest of the fleet, especially if logistics are implied.

So yes, we are aware of all of that and CCP Tallest and myself, among others, keep discussing of possible ways to fix the issue blasters face at the moment. However, what you must understand here, is that there is no magic trick we can pull out of our hats to fix all these issues instantly, as they require looking into massively complex tasks that have a lot of repercussions themselves.


For instance, let us give you a quick insight of the indirect problems we have to face regarding blaster balancing:

• Do we want to nerf Barrage and Scorch? If yes, by how? Wouldn't that kill their usefulness as a whole? If no, can we add even more falloff to blasters, knowing it may be over-inflating the balance of power again?
• Don't we need to have a look at shield extenders/armor plates as well? If we nerf them, are we confident with possible changes to passive tanking? Can't we make active tanking more useful on PvP setups, so that passive tanking is less used for blaster platforms and more on Amarr platforms, designed to be more static than Gallente? Doesn't that require looking into NOS/Neuts as well? How about Cap boosters? Overheating?
• Can we make Gallente ships faster than Minmatar knowing they also use railguns? Wouldn't that be defeating the original design goals for Minmatar ships?

Turning the Talos into a drone oriented ship: this ship is not supposed to be a drone boat, as it would allow it to hit smaller targets far too easily. We will maybe consider reintroducing its 25m3 dronebay if it is found really underperforming, but this is really unlikely for the moment

FYP

I agree with most that has been said in your post, but I would like to make a few points.



Comparisons with Raven & Rokh -> These battleships are generally regarded as long range & low DPS battleships. Please don't punish the Naga for its family and reduce/remove the range bonuses for damage bonuses (providing of course that the Naga can still hit large towers with torps).

As for the Talos, I would recommend that the hybrid bonuses for the Naga should only be for Railguns. Can this be done? This would prevent the Naga from upstaging the Talos.


These BC3 get their protection from speed, but I see a great amount of variation between them. Thus please boost the slower BC3s such as the Naga.

So you basicly say you don't want to make the Naga overpowered in the exact same way in which the tornado is overpowered, which you consider fine....

I guess you should watch that video of a tornado killing drones and an interceptor. Even with double webs, that is really ****** up.

The fact that you think that it's not the ships fault that blasterboats suck, while everyone who has ever flown a blasterboat knows that they would perform the way they were intended to on minmatar hulls, makes it clear to me that hybrid ships are not going to be fixed, and gallente gunships will always remain the underdog as long as this game lives.
Im happy that i lost enough of my hope a year ago to train both amarr and minmatar instead.

Have you considered making blasters useful in other ways that do not place them in direct range/falloff competition with autocannons?

-- lowering or eliminating reload time for blasters, making ammo type changes easy to manage in combat
-- lowering all fitting requirements for blasters, which means blaster ships will have more interesting fits available in the mids/lows which will differentiate them from other combat ships
-- blasters being able to reroute their energy usage to engines when not firing: blasters giving a passive buff to base speed when the guys are NOT cycling (on blaster bonused hulls only).
-- blaster fire control computers target enemy engine systems, causing a target to be hit by blasters to have a small decrease in their base speed for X seconds (basically a snare or web).

This is just brainstorming; I realize some of these ideas may cause other problems or take too long to implement. But there is a need to think outside of increasing damage or falloff. That said, I do think an across the board increase to blaster optimal range would be good.

Has anyone else tried a nano / gank fit of these on capital yet? Been playing around with small groups of these.


Vs fighters, - really fast at popping them
vs drones - ouch im on fire.

Time takign out a capital - about 10+ mins on a archon - no repping on the archon, 6 tier 3's. more info as i get more people to test it.