Ships & Modules

I spend a lot of time reading on these forums, and the one thing that drives me crazy is all the crying about nerfed ships/ship classes.

So the thing is technology evolves and such from will change the roll of the now older lesser ships. Most recently I was reading the Battle Cruiser post about them being trash now. The BC still has a place in this universe, now if that is just a cheap command ship for a small gang then so be it. Just because the HAC came out doesnt mean that the BC has no place.

The Battle Cruiser is faster to get into and still has a good tank and a good DPS application but yes they are slow boats and if pitted against the right ship they do pop easy but so do all ships. As new ships are are brought into the game lets try and find new rolls for the others =)

So lets not post about ships and classes being worthless but rather post discussions of what we can use them for now =) I like the idea of using the BC as a cheap command ship with a bit lack in DPS and keeping their tank =)



Sorry random post.

I know its a little annoying when people whine about a ship or another that they might have used and loved, only now its been changed and its not exactly what they want. The noise people are making though, at least in my belief, is symptomatic of a problem that CCP has created with the rebalancing of warpspeed, HACs, t1 cruisers, interceptors and AFs. CCP has deliberately kept the power of BCs and BSs low relative to smaller ship classes in order to avoid what they call power creep, but the buffs that the smaller ship classes have received and the nerfs of the larger ship classes (and indeed nerfs to some modules) have an aggregate effect.

People whine that the hurricane or the drake feels weak not just because tracking enhancers were nerfed, or that heavy missiles were nerfed, but because other ships were buffed at the same time, making the gap much wider than it would have otherwise been. In this game the balance changes all interact with each other, and its easy to get caught up with EFT numbers, but they don't tell the whole story of how powerful a ship is going to be in a particular meta.

Combat battlecruisers look powerful, in terms of EHP, active tank, dps, and the flexibility that a higher number of slots imparts, but many of these advantages are mitigated by their lack of agility, warpspeed, and locking speed, especially when compared to smaller ship classes in these fields. EHP and active tank raw numbers only tell half of the story of a ships survivability. A pilots ability to react to a threat and work to mitigate his incoming DPS by increasing transversal or moving outside of another ships effective range is just as important as raw tank.

Responding to threats often means being able to lock new targets, apply a web quickly, destroy drones, or warp to another location in system or some other foolishness. Ship agility, locking speed etc all have an impact on the meta.

The problem that I see is that CCP balances these factors, at least on some hulls, as though they were exactly in proportion with one another, as if a battlecruisers EHP were to increase in proportion to its ability to speed/sig tank decreased. This is not the case. I guess this is the central point I've been trying to make all along, that if you take away things as a ship gets bigger, that the things you replace them with are worth what you've paid for, so to speak. I don't think it is, to be honest, and though bigger shouldn't always mean better, BCs and BSs deserve their role in pvp too, even small gang and solo. It feels to me, right now, that the advantages that BCs and BSs bring to the field, at least outside of a few specific scenarios, don't offset their disadvantages.

I think that there's more to the story than just the occasional person crying about a beloved ship being nerfed. The meta has changed and things are going to be out of whack until they get corrected, and until then, were going to see people complain about the state of balance.

Thank you for a reply like that, that truly explains the difference of smaller and larger ships. I do understand them but I think as ccp changes things as in buffs and nerfs we as a community need to find new uses for the ships. Maybe the BC class should be allowed to use a MJD? I just would like to see our community adapt to the good and bad changes. I like the idea of small gang pvp and having a command ship in the gangs I guess I just imagine combat different then most. More true to actual fleet as apposed to the solo/ fighter wing combat that actually happens.

BC's are extremely cost effective ships.. For the price they have great tanks and damn good dps.

they are not in any way bad.

The current meta just doesn't favour them that much. They are easy to blob so not a lot of people fly them solo. In the frigate heavy meta we have now they can easily be destroyed by a few frigs roaming together.

They are still used quite a bit in small scale fleets but there they are a bit limited by how many corporations are capable of fielding full fleets of HAC's or commandships that roll over the BC's due to t2 res.








And giving the Bc's control ewar bonuses would have been extraordinarily stupid.

I think BC's were originally designed because someone thought they would be cool.

But they can mostly do what you said. They outgun/tank all cruisers and out run all bs's (mostly)

eos would be the end goal, but a myrm is probably about an 8th of the price fully fitted...

T1 BCs are really powerful when you know what you're fighting. If you know you will be up against a linked, pirate implant active tanked HAC, BCs are the perfect counter. 2 harbs/canes can do a combined 1500 dps and have two medium neuts which will kill any active cruiser links or not. They are terrible for roaming because they have no mobility and are extremely vulnerable to getting kited.