Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm going to say no. It does not need a cloak to perform its role (stated by ccp in the 1.3 devblog) as a logistics battleship.

What is stopping the nestor from being used right now is its price. Once it gets to the same price-point as the other faction battleships (under 1 bil at least), you will see it gain traction. CCP did the right thing in the last update where they added an alternate way for it to be acquired while also buffing its cap, cap recharge, scan res, and RR range. Once the market has time to respond, prices will drop, and I predict that it will come into its own.

Which still does not argue for a cov-ops cloak. Everything dies except pod pilots themselves. It wont be alone, the things are likely to spider tank themselves somewhat well, and when they do you are going to be right at the edge of someone's optimal at pretty much all times trying to attack them with short range ships. That may make it a dangerous thing to try.

Granted, you can throw cheaper bricks through your holes, but the Nestor is a different kind of brick. No one said it had to be more useful than any other, just uniquely useful. It does need to come down in price, by at least a third.

Any argument that requires a spider-tanked nestor squad to maintain range from smaller, more mobile ships is lost before it starts.

Under full microwarp, a Nestor moves at a tad over 1000m/s, burning cap at a horrifying rate. Any fleet of almost anything else will be able to close range in short order after emerging from a wormhole (or gate for that matter). In the confusion of combat it will take an extremely skilled fleet to merely stay in rep range of each other, particularly when the enemy start bringing their web lokis into play (they will the moment they are within 50km). Once one nestor is webbed, all must slow down to match its speed, otherwise the webbed nestor will fall behind to be erased by the onrushing fleet without help from its friends who will be out of rep range.

In any case, the point is moot. If the nestor gang is at range, the attacking fleet will not rush towards it, they will bounce a cloaky frigate off a celestial, place it close to the nestors, and then bounce the attack fleet onto the scout's position - right in the middle of the nestor gang.

Battleships, with the possible exception of the machariel, are fleet ships because the multiplicative power of the fleet compensates for the the lack of maneuverability.

Unfortunately, fleet fights are the least suitable for the Nestor since its strength lies in spider tanking, which favours a small skirmish on a fixed position. Spider tanking in a fleet fight is a losing strategy because of the overwhelming incoming alpha.

Ergo, the nestor is only useful if it warps into a fight that's already underway. This is the only time it has a hope of maintaining range for a time.

Giving the nestor a covops cloak would allow the logi squad to position themselves carefully before decloaking and joining the battle. It would give it a little time before the opposing fleet rushed it and destroyed it.

With a covops, a nestor becomes interesting. Still not worth 1.5Bn isk, but at least it starts to have a purpose.

If not a covops cloak, then it needs some other utility such as w-space clone vats, ship hangers or something else that no other ship can do.

Failing that, it's a fail ship at any price. It cannot be an effective logistics ship because it has a gigantic signature and a lousy T1 resitance profile.

It's a dog at 200m isk.

There is NO WAY that the nestor is more damaging or has more power by warping cloaked, it simply can travel with other cloaky ships, as I have said until I am blue in the face that the smaller tackle ships that jump you are your problem, a battleship is the least powerful implementation of a covert ops cloak.


Edit sorry the post ate the quote and put this one in, which had nothing to do with anything so I have removed it. it was a comment that the nestor was overpowered by warping in and assigning sentries to ships that had someone tackled, late now, can't be bothered to find the original quote.........

Certainly for wormhole space. And I'm not necessarily convinced that a Covert Ops cloak would completely redeem the Nestor at this point. At least not without a substantial increase to agility to reduce its align time. With the Machariel getting a warp speed increase to 3.0AU/s, it's highly unlikely we'll see any similar changes to make the Nestor more effective.

This is really becoming a redundant counter-argument... How many carriers and supercarriers operate in low or null-sec without a cloak fit? You can equate the necessity for cloaks for capitals in these regions with Covert Ops cloaks for anything larger than a frigate in wormhole space.

I suspect that those that live in wormhole space might take issue with that analysis. But these are all really moot points, since the price precludes the Nestor from serious consideration for any role (PvE in high-sec or PvP).

The nestor to me always seemed to be a beefed-up version of a covert tug.

It can cloak while it's not needed - rep damage on buffer fit ships after/during fights.
Hold more ammo
Hold cyno fuel and act as a depot.
Do lots of things that don't necessarily involve pvp directly, which is were I see many of the complaints coming from, people taking what is in effect a BS sized logi and trying to find some lethal pvp use for it. I just do not and never have seen it that way.

I would definitely use it for things like lowsec deployments where you might want to maintain that upperhand somewhat, keep them guessing whether that extra neutral is a links-alt, hot dropper or scout

I am struggling with this.

If you're in lowsec, there's normally a station available for all of these things.

OK, a station is not mobile but moving a Nestor through a lowsec gate is just a game of Russian roulette. There's no upside and lots of downside.

In fact, an Orca would make a better depot since it has more storage space, can hold spare ships and is much cheaper.

Hell, a Rorqual would be a better option than a Nestor. At least it can get past gates without being blown to bits.

Then there's the carrier option - again avoids gates and can if needed bring 20,000dps of remote repair or 1000dps of drone damage, or non-triage capital reps AND 1000dps of drone damage... for less money.

With the exception of a highly contrived PVE spider affair (gated complexes?) there really is no role for the Nestor. It's an utter dog.

What a damn shame. The other two Sisters' ships are truly awesome.

Just lol.

Mike, Just accept WH space is very very different from your expectation.
And we like it that way. Dangerous, unknown, and death is dealt from a clear blue sky.



A big white whale sitting there has a life expectancy of a prawn sandwich. And currently the nestor is worth as much here.

It does not have to remain that way.