Warfare & Tactics

This will most likely come off as a rant, and I am sure I will get totally flamed for it, given that is the type of mentality of most EVE players, but I have something that I really don't understand.

I really enjoyed flying battleships, I liked how they felt, what they look like, and the overall experience. However, outside of PVE, and maybe some station bashing, they are almost totally useless. There are exceptions, mostly the drone and neut boats, but missile and gunnery based battleships are totally disappointing in PVP.

I know this is where everyone is going to scream out and tell me learn to play. I have played EVE for many years, and yes I do stupid things and take stupid risks for the fun and challenge, but I know how to play the game.

My point is, what good is a ship that smaller, cheaper ships outperform in so many ways? The only thing I can think of that battleship are more capable of, is fighting stationary massive targets, and tanking. But what good is a slow, hulking, slow targeting, terribad tracking, ship that can take a whole lot of damage, but not apply any back to anything not their own size?

I mean seriously, a BS poses almost zero threat to anything smaller then a BC and can EASILY be overcome by any t1, t2, frig or cruiser that has any sense and the ability to get in close. Sure it will take a while, but eventually you will run out of cap, or booster charges, and that Ishkur will take your billion dollar paperweight down.

Yes, I understand bigger is not better in EVE. So why the hell does my bigger and less useful battleship cost about 20 times more then my assault frigate which is 10 times more effective at everything but sitting there looking pretty and taking a **** ton of damage? It doesn't make sense! If I spend a billion isk, I want to be able to use it for something and have fun with it, not be restricted to boring missions or the rare instance of station bashing which I am rendered obsolete by dreads.

I can not tell you how many times I have specifically fit my BS to be able to handle smaller targets, double webbed, tracking computers, the whole nine yards, only to have some navy Vexor get in under my guns and **** me up the ass royally, and laugh as my billion dollar investment gets made to look like the prison *****. There is just something wrong with that. It is a Battleship! it should be able to BATTLE, not collect dust in your hangar.

And please, before you all tell me to learn to play, tell me, how often do you see ANYONE even fly a battleship, other then in station games outside Jita? There is a reason for that. They are terrible!

Sure, but once they are under 10 km, that will never happen. He will simply shoot down your drones and orbit you at 500 laughing and eating a Twinkie as he whittles you down to nothing. You would have to get lucky and pop him on his way in, but lets be real, it takes like 15 seconds just to target ONE frigate, they would be shitting on you before you even had them targeted.

I feel your pain. I'm a Typhoon man, myself. I've always loved the ship. Call me stupid, (but don't call me late for supper.) I do mission with a fleet issue Typhoon, with cruise missiles and drones, and it's mighty fine - to me, anyway. But, yeah, for PVP it purely sucks and folks just laugh if I bring it to the game. It does have its uses, but the way PVP is played in the main these days, it's really worse than a fifth wheel...and I think that can be said of all battleships except for a speed-rigged Machariel. (Though those have fallen out of vogue as time has gone forward on us.)

This all began with the introduction of the T3 cruiser iirc (and I think I do.) THEN the complaint was only big ships got love and if you planned to PVP you may as well forget about your battlecruiser and standard cruiser. Those two don't fare very well at lucrative 4lvl missions, so what was the point of using them? The Domi was all the rage, and the only other ship that had as much glory was the OP Drake missile boat. Enter the T3 and all that changed almost over night.

I really wish things were more balanced. I wish the introduction of one ship, or tech, didn't drive another one into obsolescence, but for the life of me I can't come up with a way to suggest to developers so this sort of thing can be avoided. Compound this with the fact I like using a cruise missile fleet issue Typhoon, and that's a HUGE no-no in incursions. So, what I do best, which isn't supposed to be a useless set of skills (but for level 4s) I don't get to do at all. Go figure.

I'm training up to use a Panther anyway. Black Ops BS. Maybe it'll be like my clothes...so old it's coming back in style.

It was actually 2 Vexor navies and an Ishtar... unless you are counting that time in Old Man Star...

...And your problem was Hyperion. Hypes have Damage bonus and tanking bonus, which looks good, but when you compare it to Megathron's RoF and Tracking bonus, the Mega has better damage application.

I guarantee you the battle would have gone better in a Megathron.

Yes it did and yes you will

You could fit smart bombs, bring friends, neuts, webs... all of these will ruin the day of a smaller ship...

If you want to fit your BB in a certain way expect it to be countered... and big guns are countered by moving fast...

The purpose of a BB is as a "ship of the line" not a solo pwnmobile... Baltec will be able to point you to a few scenarios when BB have been horribly effective...

Ah see you have answered your own question, the key to successfully using battleships is to have support for them when they get caught by something small. If you can't properly support a BS it should not be used for PVP.

So, the only strength of the battleship is fighting other battleship and larger, it needs friends in smaller ships to save it from everything else? So basically, what u are saying is, a fleet of cruisers and frigates can just ignore the battleships in the group because they are not a real threat to them.

Being terrible solo doesn't mean its terrible in a fleet...
By definition all logi ships are really bad solo... but when they have a fleet to rep they are awesome...

And you can mix your fleet composition... BB for damage, a few logi, fast and heavy tackle... all about being well rounded

I think a better example is an elephant trying to swat away a wasp.

This is exactly why BS were decommissioned after WW2