Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is the proposal I have been looking at writing for awhile. It is simply this: Make battleships, battle cruisers and their t2 counterparts worth the wait to get on-grid. The warp speed changes seriously hurt these ships, which are now overshadowed by the recently buffed HACs in almost every mobile application outside the blob. The stats on these lumbering sub-caps were fairly well balanced when they moved as fast as a cruiser once in warp. Having taken a 16.777-33% warp speed nerf, they became vanishingly rare in mobile applications, reduced the speed of several kinds of PvE and generally became less effective as tools for offensive operations, with defensive operations still being rare or in range of capitals, even post-phoebe.



It is thus that I ask for a battleship buff of stats affecting on-grid performance, such that their overall effectiveness on grid is increased by roughly 20%, and a similar buff to combat battlecruisers such that their performance is increased by 15%. A second request is a minor rebalance of large guns and missiles. Attack battle cruisers, being as specialized as they are, seem to be mostly in a good place, and would receive the benefit of the changes to large guns, meaning they would then be in an effective place still, without over-doing their effectiveness as suicide gankers in HS.



Battleships are supposed to be fairly slow but powerful sub-capitals, unlike the real world, where they most definitely are/were capital ships. In masse, they should be a threat to capitals and infrastructure and yet in recent large engagements, they have been not worth the lag they caused. This leads to the need to evaluate them against other sub-capitals as far as effectiveness on grid vs. ability to project power/raid/roam without capital support, and they currently come out lacking.

Battle cruisers on the other hand are based on the same class of ships in the real world, which have a fascinating history, where battleship weapons were mounted on effectively oversized cruiser hulls, and the armor was upgraded somewhat, making them mostly proof against cruisers. The Combat battlecruisers are effectively real world heavy cruiser designs but have less of the speed of regular cruisers without sufficient increases in combat capability once they arrive. Attack battlecruisers follow the real world example, but currently trade slightly too much tank for their gank, but would need a more individualized approach to their balancing, as they are currently much used in suicide ganking and other highsec combat which places massive emphasis on gank, and requires little to no tank.

Comments located in the google Doc here

Condensed numbers (and current working area) in this spreadhseet

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Special Thanks to:
ISD Ezwal: Bending a forum rule to improve the presentation of the concept
Alvatore DiMarco: pointing out that a google doc would be easier to maintain and wouldn't take up huge amounts of page 1 space.
MukkBarovian: Wrote a great section on large missiles, which is now live.
Stitch Kaneland: Writing the battlecruiser application thread.
Commenters on my other battleship related threads: motivating me to actually start this proposal.
Catherine Laartii: Running Battleship discussion thread, and staying with the project.
Iroquoiss Pliskin: converting or reposting the heavy math into easy to spreadsheet math for recharge peaks

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Changelog
11/5/2014 Thread restarted for cleanup. Original thread locked and permission to re-open is granted gere. List of things to be fleshed out still massive.
11/5/2014 18:20 EST: Major updates to the google doc added, bringing almost all the commentary before I get into messing with numbers up. Section added to OP to thank people who made really good suggestions and regular contributors.
11/8/2014: Moderate updates to google doc around weapons. Added mailing list and in-game channel available at the bottom of this post
11/8/2014: Added MukkBarovian's missile writeup with minor edits.
11/18/2014: Added spreadsheet with current numbers side by side with proposed numbers and changes highlighted. Slowly fleshing out hull changes.
4/30/2015: Officially added support for Battlecruiser application bonus thread and updated spreadsheet. Actually resuming forward momentum.
5/11/2015: Added support for the battleship discussion thread, for talking about the general problems with battleships, rather than the specific fixes.
5/12/2015: With special thanks to Iroquoiss Pliskin for converting or reposting the heavy math into easy to spreadsheet math, the working space for the battleships now includes peak shield and capacitor regen for current and proposed.

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TL;DR: Make battleships worth using and roaming about with.

As it stands, DPS is mostly going to come to weapon systems that are underpowered, like Large ACs. Most weapons and battleships will see little to no DPS gain, though some will see a step up in the number of drones they can field. Large blasters and torps are slated for application increases and pulse lasers are going to get a look at their native tracking. OTH, Tachs will probably get no love, and maybe even some badness comming their way.

Is it republic fleet or republic navy?

If it's Minmatar you're referring to, it's Republic Fleet.

If you can confirm my current thoughts, these exceptions are largely the drone based platforms, with the ability to run tinker or spider tanks, or use a strong complement of nuets and NOS, yes?

For those watching, initial commentary on almost every ship is up, and the overall problems and points to consider in the balancing pass as I see them are up for all the weapons. The remaining ships to go up are the faction battleships, and faction battlecruisers. Still debating if I want to bring the t2 BC + BS balance into this, as these ships are even more contentious than some of the pirate battleships.

@ Kaerakh: Yep, drones as a primary weapon aren't currently penaling the rest of the ship enough at this level IMO

Overall, I think your observations are sound. I see the Domi and the Geddon as being the most useful battleships at the moment, but that's due more to their versatility than to their actual performance (which, admittedly, is still really good). Few other ships, if indeed any, can fill so many roles so well as those two ships can.

I would propose removing the bit about the Hyperion needing 3 cap rechargers in order to be cap stable with a LAR running. I'm assuming that you were talking about a PvE fit since a PvP fit that relies on any cap rechargers is rather suspect, and CCP has indicated that, in general, they balance ships around PvP performance, not PvE performance. (I agree with your general assessment of the ship, that point notwithstanding.)

I think that the warp speed changes were good overall, but agree that battleships, and to a certain extent battlecruisers, need a bit more "oomph" to balance out that loss of mobility.

Thinking out loud here, here's what I'd propose:

1. Increase the EHP of all battleships by some amount.
2. Increase the DPS of all battleship turrets and launchers (not drones) by some amount such that they would effectively kill battleships, on average, in the same amount of time.
3. Decrease the application/tracking of all battleship launchers and turrets (not drones) by some amount such that they would still do the same damage, on average, to smaller targets as they do now.

Without getting into math (since I'm just thinking out loud), the net effects of this would be:

1. Battleships would be more durable against smaller ships without being able to kill them more effectively.
2. Battleships would kill other battleships just as effectively as they do now.
3. Battleships would kill POSes, POCOs, and capitals better than they do now.
4. Attack Battlecruisers would be more useful as a mobile response to battleships, or to bash structures or caps.

Now, the benefit of bringing a battleship to a fight would be something akin to bringing a capital ship to a fight: your opponent could either bring in more support to chew through the EHP, or commit a few of their own battleships to the fight to counter them.


Another possibility, either by itself or in conjunction with what I've proposed above, would be to let some or all T1 battleships use Bastion Modules. I would propose, if this route was taken, that Bastion Modules be nerfed by some amount so that they're less effective on T1 battleships and that Marauders receive a role bonus undoing that nerf so that they maintain their current stats. I don't think I even need to go into the interesting gameplay options of bastioned battleships.


I'm sure I've missed more than a few things here, and I'm not even convinced that either of these are the right answer. Not to mention, this doesn't even touch the issue of combat battlecruisers. I'm just tossing out ideas to further the discussion.

Thoughts?

I think your solution is pretty good, but your aside on bastion modules isn't something that I agree with. I personally would prefer marauders to maintain their unique form of gameplay rather than homogenizing the playing field.

However, I have almost no experience with marauders so my opinion should be suspect.

BTW, I want to say that the OP has obviously put a lot of work and thought into this and I want to say thanks for trying to start a great discussion with some good material already on the table.

Response Roundup!

@ Bronson Hughes:
Your post has most, if not all of the things I am working on. Other tweaks include slightly more cap for amarr ships (as they kinda need the love) and some other ships with bonuses to active tank that need it to run an active tank and guns without having to go double booster. A few fitting and agility buffs but mostly leaving those fairly well alone.

In order to note your points
1: I am aiming for about 7% increase in native buffer on combat battleships
1.1: Attack battleships would be left where they are for native buffer, to further differentiate the two.
1.2: the two ships I think belong in the disruption line I am aiming for about a 5% increase in native buffer on.

2: The DPS is fine as it is overall, with some weapons needing increase in their application (either range or tracking(pulse lasers ) and maybe tweaks to cap usage for others, while some need to come down in application but head up in damage. The exception is torpedos, which are in an interesting place right now. The overall DPS/turret/range and DPS/launcher/range curves for against other battleship sized targets is my primary concern, with some things needing a fairly tough

3: See above. I want balance, and more resilient combat battleships, while letting attack battleships worry more about speed, agility and range control. The overall DPS increase and tracking nerf would synergize too well with the reduction in Sov Structure EHP, and makes for more things exploding too fast, or making it too easy to ninja structures.

@ elitatwo:
Thank you! Always nice to have people appreciate your work. I am not however, the blogger you suspect. This is my main, and I have not run an Eve blog. The point about cost is counting beans, but while these beans must be counted, I am focusing first on the battleships and their weapons, and maybe then I will ask for more help from players more knowledgeable than I about actually building the things, and balancing that.

As far as your offer of data, any data is good. I prefer it sorted. I even mostly agree with you on missiles, which means that you can look forward to seeing better missile application proposed (at least for torps and RHML) as part of this proposal.

@ Maraner:
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree that battleships are in a bad place, and that the warp speed changes are largely the cause, and the utility high removal on most ships has left many ships in an even worse place than they would have been without it. While this is far more comprehensive than a straight EHP buff, this is one of the things intended. If you have any specific suggestions on fitting, EHP or other stat changes, I would love to hear them. As CCP seems to have been firm about keeping the warp speeds the same, I am looking at how to make them worth bringing out, be it that you use warp speed enhancement to get them moving faster and they end up about at the power point they are now without them fit, or to make them more powerful when they do arrive.

@ Bullet Therapist
Thanks! I love hearing people tell me I'm mostly on the right track. While I am not going to expand the scope into the tanking modules at present, it is good to hear that other people think the battleship sized local reps (large and XL) are largely under-powered, as this is something that I wanted to include at first but cut because of the sheer scope of trying to balance those along with the ships and the guns.