Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You're missing the mark here. Let's review, because there's a lot of useless crap in this thread and some of it seems to be getting mixed up.

Of course you use your leadership skills immediately after training into a CBC. I use my paltry leadership skills that aren't anywhere near V. No one said they weren't useful, just not 100% relevant to flying the ship well from a single player's/character's perspective. Not everyone does multiple accounts. Nor should they be expected to.

Is this relevant for a command ship? Well yes and no. CBC's shine in fleets, but do not need fleets to shine. If a player wants to actively progress in a line of ships while providing boosts during fleet activities they currently have two options which are much quicker to get into while allowing them to get back on track of increasing core skills such as gunnery, missiles, engineering, armor, shield, etc... This means they can take and max out a single link for a T1 BC and provide good boosts while flying a T1 BC, and will be able to get more bang for their buck in the T1 than if they had rushed a T2. They get to actively participate in the fights sooner, in other words, and they also get to use that T1 BC for solo play when they are not in a fleet without embarrassing themselves sooner than they otherwise would.

They also have the same option for a T3, and then have options for using that T3 for multiple purposes. Train up a single link type and fit it when needed. If the fleet doesn't need you as a booster today they can fly DPS, tackle, recon, E-war, and if in a pinch logi. The only two roles a T2 BC can play as secondary roles are DPS and tank, and it takes longer to train into that T2 BC than it does a T3, so you again have the problem that the T3 pilot gets to go back to focusing on their core skills before the CBC pilot, and thus gets to use their ship for other purposes sooner.

The leadership skills are great, but they don't let you explore all of the fitting options you would have available if you had another million SP in engineering, they don't give you the extra 100+ DPS in a HAC that those last few bonuses give you, they don't give you training to fly the HAC in the first place whereas other ship skill requirements do, and there are redundant skills across the races. If your corp or alliance flies armor the time you have to spend training Siege Warfare could be better used training Armored Warfare Specialist, and vice versa if they fly shield tanks. If you took a Nighthawk as an example and replaced Armored Warfare and Skirmish warfare with shield management and target navigation prediction (not saying these are good examples, just grabbing random combat oriented skills that're the same training time) the Nighthawk pilot is still trained to use the two bonused warfare links right off the bat, has better combat skills and thus survivability than if he had trained the leadership skills, and still has the option to train into a third link skill at their convenience which is always less of a priority anyways since it doesn't have a juicy bonus.

As a benefit to being able to train in combat skills at the same time as working towards his Nighthawk, that pilot can also fly other ships more competently when a Nighthawk is not necessary or problematic. Remember. No multiple characters in this scenario. One character every day, and if you can't fly something useful you're out of the loop or on your own. In this scenario, if you're on your own you still have something to do other than spin that pretty Nighthawk, because you can take it out with more confidence that you aren't just wasting your time and throwing something moderately expensive at the killboards. And you get to do it in a nice ship.

So the breakdown:

1. A single character needs alternatives to just a single ship that can be situational by design or because of the character's training.


2. A single character has better alternatives than a CBC given bulletpoint #1 if they wish to be a fleet booster.


3. CBC's can be used for more than just fleet boosting, and it's only reasonable that their training requirements not only reflect this but encourage and enable it.


4. Good leadership skills are not an incentive in themselves to go down the CBC line. You can use them without a CBC just as effectively, but it is rarely satisfying for that to be your sole major contribution to a fleet.

Is my perspective making more sense now? Keep in mind I'm not calling for CBC training to be streamlined and sped up. It would take LONGER to train into CBC's for all 4 factions if what I suggested was implemented in any fashion.

inb4 Ishukone naga with 100% optimal range bonus.

Again, there are no Level 5 link skills required. Only leadership skills. Which are different because they work without a module.
And are only a *2 Multi.

Also there is not a 'Caldari Command ships' skill. There is 'Command Ships'. No Race involved, and CCP have been working on going away from extra requirements on the ships other than the Level 5 Racial skill and the T2 skill. Because that creates bad complexity where people train the lvl 5 racial skill, the T2 skill then discover they still can't fly that ship.

So.... No. Keep it simple.

As for Bohneik, Multiple accounts have nothing to do with flying in a fleet. Most fleets don't want you multi boxing even, especially in booster spots since multiboxing ups chances of a crash.
Yes, leadership skills don't let you explore everything, of course, being Battle Cruisers that are at the large end of sub caps, firstly they aren't meant to be as fast to train into as HAC's, so you should already have that engineering skill. Secondly they are fleet ships. People don't train into Interdictors then complain they aren't super fast solo ships for PvP. People train into Interdictors to work with a fleet. Use the right tool for the right job. It's meant to be a fleet ship. The fact it can be used solo is a bonus on top of that ability.

Aren't T2 ships about specialization? I feel like the current CS skill branch resembles specialization quite neatly.

You have to learn leadership-skills accross the board, with no variation between the different races.

This isn't specialization except in the broadest terms. With the same logic, I could claim a ship demanding perfect missile, hybrid and laser skills at the same time is specialized in shooting things.

Except it doesn't take you less days to train for a Marauder than a Command Ship.
It takes you more, unless you deliberately make your training as slow as possible and don't bother with a cha implant. In which case if you are trying to claim that taking the worst possible case scenario and using that as your baseline, you are showing exactly how desperate you are in this thread. So... Thanks I guess for harping on about that in most of your posts.

from a brand new toon to train into a max boosting toon it would take around 353 days this is all specializations for links to 5, wing command 5 and CBC 5 this does not include any support skills at all this is only links skills.

with support skills this train would easily reach 500 days.

the question is is that a bad thing? CBC's are top end ships that specialize it fleet boasting there skill train should take quite awhile still 500 days does seam a little much

To max out any ship takes a very long train. Maxing out a ship class is different from being effective, All V's are never needed. Just nice to have. Boosts can be used fine with 1's even.

55 Days is not 'months'.
And 25 Days for HAC skills is not 'almost instantly'
Tug on the emotive heart strings all you want, but the mice don't lie.

Same as trying to tug on the skill change to racials. Yes people got 'free' sp, that allowed them to do exactly what they had access to before. So it's actually a penalty to those people, not a bonus because it added 7 Million SP to their clone costs and they got zero abilities.

Now, if you are trying to make a case that the entire BC class feels like it lacks a decent slot in the current Meta of EVE, that's an entirely different point, possibly valid, but for a different thread.

P.S. Command ships use Medium weapons. As do most of the T1's.

...what? The only thing you need besides Cruiser V for HACs is Energy Grid Upgrades.

It's not a penalty when you consider they will never need to train the leadership skills for the life of their character. They already have everything those leadership skills open up, and combat pilots are not used as link alts.

Yes, command ships use medium weapons. However, T3 BCs use large weapons, and are the only BCs really used at all. Therefore, they cannot be used by a medium-weapon pilot training for command ships, so said pilot does not get any benefit out of training Battlecruiser V, which makes the skill another long annoying timesink for them.