Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I guess I'm not really seeing what you're getting at here. The individual roles of battleships themselves don't really change much because of warp speed. Things like arty TFIs are still going to be alpha platforms and napocs are still going to synergize with armor triage despite the warp speed changes. When you say that you feel like CCP's actions point to them changing roles of battleships it could mean a hundred different things and you really haven't made any specific statements to point to what exactly you mean by this, other than saying that some of the suggestions here are aimed at restoring battleships to their previous relationship with other subcaps.

When talking about the class as a whole, its difficult to define a role for all of the ships involved because they differ so much from each other. Tech 1 battleships aren't the same a specialized class, like dreads or inties as an example, which have a fairly pre-defined role build in to the class, with minor variation inside the class. There's overlap built into the individual ships within the battleship class, but for most of them, there are a few roles that they excel at relative to others and the differences between ships are wider than they are for a more defined class. Pick the hyperion and megathron, they can both do the some of the same things, but one is going to do a certain subset of activities much better than the other and what these things are is because of the roles that CCP has defined for those ships and what players (like baltec1) can come up with for crazy ideas to do with them.

In any event, this is kind of an esoteric argument that hinges upon what the word 'role' means within the context of this game and it's not a particularly helpful one. I think its established now that the relationship between battleships and other subcaps is never going to be the same, partly because of the buffs to other ships, partly because of the warp speed changes. That's perfectly OK, but I personally don't think that the battleship class is healthy at the moment and I believe that I have evidence to support my claim. If someone else believes something to the contrary and is willing to offer some evidence, I'll listen to it and consider it in the best way that I can.

Any change that removes the need of 1 fitting module is effectively a +1 slot boost. On the tempest is specially relevant to do a shield tanked ship, just as an example.

If the rest of the fleet is flown on the same capacity .. it will still be faster... Fact remains, not traveling is even more gate to gate based since fatigue on bridges apply, and traveling with a battleship is FAR more boring than on a t3.. to arrive at the destination and not be stronger after all that effort.

So, lets check your wishlist against the numbers on the spreadsheet:
A: Check. Most ships are receiving a boost to fittings
B: More than a bit, most ships are getting (most of) a sigamp welded into their base avionics package, improving lock range and scan res.
C: The majority of ships are getting more than that, with between 14 and 25%, the edge in base EHP going to the hulls designed for shield
D: Not quite ready to do that, but it is an interesting concept. It does however, increase the advantage of armor over shield in EHP through the continued synergy of slaves, trimarks and plates to create numbers that are almost impossible for a shield hull as the normal for shiny PVP armor fits.
E: Its not on the list of things I'm working on, and I think just buffing the module itself would be the wrong way to go. I would support this end state via the skill, but thats a topic for another thread.
F: some of this already happened, but I think it wasn't quite enough with the current mobility of battleships. I think the 12s to travel the 30km would be much more nearly balanced with the speed and agility buffs proposed in the spreadsheet.
G: On the list of things I'm going to try to get to. Unfortunately, I'm working almost full time and looking for another job to support my RL financial goals.
H: Agreed, but thats a topic for another thread. With the advent of MJDs, the minimum warpable range should really move out to 200-300km IMO, but thats not on-topic.

Why woudlI use a frig if I can get a 6-8 bonused gun frig tracking large buffer ship to fight a 3-4 bonused gun frig tracking small buffer ship?

You would not use the frig, given a choice.

I know the point you are suggesting, that smaller ships should have no vulnerability in this manner.

I counter with this, it is a battleship. In what reality should taking the time and effort to field this largest of subcaps, allow it to be impotent against smaller vessels?
Speed tanking is fantastic, but against a BS, I suggest they should need to use that speed to stay out of range completely.

After creating several pages of google docs to document the changes and details of which you are suggesting, you point to three paragraphs and call THAT needlessly complex?

As to the exploitable part, it has no special weakness in that sense, which your ideas do not equally share.
ANY change can represent an opportunity for an exploit, that is why balancing occurs during testing.


Yes, the BS class should be the most formidable sub cap, not simply the largest in size.

This subcap game of rock paper scissors has been renamed small medium large, and the idea that a BS should find a major threat from T2 frigates is not an example of great balance. It is an example of linking the circle's small and large sizes, completing the dynamic:
Rock (Large) beats
Scissors (Medium) beats
Paper (Small), which then beats Rock (Large)

Does anyone with any tactical ability seriously expect competent frigate pilots to be overwhelmed by this?
A smart frigate is not trying to brute force a BS in the first place, so why should this do anything but make them respect their larger cousins....
Unless you were expecting super frigs?

After creating 2 google docs, one to write up specific numerical changes and one to discuss my thinking on how and why these ships need balancing, I call your overview sketch of it needlessly complicated. It is at best a cookie cutter solution which would over-buff the ships, and remove any reason to fly non-battleships if capable of it, and not on a stealth op. At worst, it is a special hell of mode swapping making the problems internal to the battleship class worse, while also obsoleting the non-battleship classes of subcaps.

My changes as they have been set up, have been the sort of incremental tweaks that fix balance through existing mechanics and gameplay mechanisms. This introduces a unique mechanism which eliminates the majority of the disadvantages inherent in flying a larger ship in the current mechanics, without any compensating drawbacks. They are also flat, static numbers, which means that the dynamic aspects are in the fitting and usage of the ship, rather than in swapping modes to hit an "I win" button.




Even in your example, the small doesn't beat large, because now large can use all the utility built into the larger ship to completely dunk on small just by switching modes. It breaks the chain, and now large > all. N+1 Battleships (with logi) is now the only useful doctrine if your change happened.

No, I mean that with this change, 50+ frigates will end up dead without breaking the tank of a single, lone, active tanked battleship.

In my version, the frigate pilot has a chance, through good piloting and proper fight selection, of pinning down the battleship long enough to get buddies or get a mobile objective (like a freighter/JF under jump cooldown) away from the battleship.

In the current version, the frigate is almost invulnerable to a battleship not specifically designed to take out frigate, unless it has drones, and even then many frigates are capable of killing the drones from non-drone bonused battleships without taking massive damage.

See the differances?

By the way, feel free to post your off the wall ideas which introduce new mechanics in your own thread. They are not particularly useful here and are off topic and will reported as such from now on.

On the minmatar role issue. MY opinion remains the same:

Tmepest and amesltrom. One should be lcear ship of the line, other a clear brawler.


ON taht view I would give temepst 7.5% rof bonus and a shield boost bonus. And make it 6 mids 5 lows.

MAelstrom I would change ROF to damage bonus , YES more alpha, but way less dps and shield boost bonus to shield HP bonus.

Both ships now have CLEAR roles. A Terrific close range ATTACK BATTLESHIP that is a brawler.. a real attack battleship. And a Ship of the line that has bonuses that make sense for a ship of the line.


And no, armor temepst is not something we need, because the typhoon overshadows it 9 in 10 times.