Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ceh ceh peh, pls halp BC's.

Really hope they make arty canes viable again on at least the HFI.

Hey on the plus side they are slowly fixing the swishtar. .... slowly. There may be some hope for bc's

I suppose i see it as a bit of the opposite.

Faction BCs should be the the epitome of an anti-cruiser ship. Tracking/projection bonuses with decent EHP/fitting/SS etc. They are what make cruisers go "oh hell" when they pop up on dscan. Instead of the current thought process of "easy kill, lets just hang out at 20km".

T1 BCs are more flexible (hence t1) in what role they fill. If you want a 50m link boat, or a 50m combat ship, either should be viable. Idk bout you, but 150m link boat is kinda steep compared to what used to be 50m.

I'll freely admit I have not read the whole thread so I will apologise up front is this is a repost, but I didn't want to open a new thread.

I've been doing some hard thinking about why these hulls (and to a lesser extent) battleships see reduced use. Looking at EHP, ranges, application, DPS and the results were less than obvious.

So I looked at speed and there it hits you. Speed is the killer, particularly in how it scales with bonuses.

I looked at the caldari line (because initially I was looking at DPS and the rails are a decent starting point).

Merlin/moa/ferox/rokh

Paper speeds:
bs 111
bc 175
cru 260
fri 388


These are not too bad, the problems start appearing with mods:

all have a x-MN cold gas enduing MWD fit:

bs 790
bc 1083
cru 1560
fri 2838


Suddenly the bigger boys are left in the dirt, completely. Add links/implants/drugs if you like, it only opens the gap wider. Left in the dirt to the point there's no sane reason to fly one.

That's the issue, to me. In terms of combat they absolutely will shred cruisers today, they just never get the chance.

I do not believe there is an issue at the frigate tier and nor do I believe we should be speeding battleships and battlecruisers up, I think we need to bring cruisers back down. Slow them down so there is a maybe ~100-150m/s (subject to debate) gap between cruisers and BC with a mod on - skew acceleration as required to suit.

Kiting remains viable, but it's not a ridiculous family guys style greased up deaf guy situation we have today.

The fear here would be that "but everyone will only fly battlecruisers!" and the fear is valid and should be discussed. I feel like the bloated BC sig, the slower warps, the lower agility would keep this from being the case. It would also introduce them back as the natural predator of cruisers and give battleships a nice target to go stomping on. A return to rock paper scissors world of cruiser>battleship>battlecruiser>cruiser.

Anyway, it's something worthy of consideration alongside this thread I think - that maybe the problem is the cruiser tier/sized hulls and not actually the other ones directly and adding projection alone (or at all, actually) might not solve it/cause other issues further down the line.

If this is a bad derail I'm sorry - just say and I'll make a new thread.


edit: After reviewing the CBC changes in here and the cruiser changes here and here I am even more convinced this is the root of the rot. Cruisers base velocity saw massive hikes (moa from 164 to 190 and caracal from 178 to 230 for example!!!), CBC were...unmoved. Again I don't think anything should get faster, I think the cruisers should be pulled back a good chunk.

Don't get hung up on caldari, even a cane vs a rupture is 1303 vs 1708. It's huge differences. Adding heat it is 1852 vs 2430.

Certainly, things can be heated etc and mods added, but that applies to both sides.

They absolutely might need a little projection help (I'm not 100% sold yet, all examples are short range guns being kited by long range ones, as one would expect to happen. Aint no throax kiting an arty cane as your video showed), but I don't think it'll be enough, they can't force an engagement. They are too damned slow. Remember the cruisers that are killing them also lack the projection bonuses (for the most part).

So I'm not saying they don't need projection, just that I think speed of the cruiser tier has caused a shedload of problems and we should consider it alongside.

I really don't want to make BC faster, speed creep is hell but if we aren't willing to pull the cruisers back into line we will have to (imo).

Edit: or give them a DST style role bonus to overheating prop mods to give some more options.

BC updates incoming? Or Soon™?

I doubt we will see BC rebalance or Assault frig rebalance until early next year. Because "monitoring sov changes"

The only thing I disagree with is the falloff bonus for the Brutix,

Looking at a Heavy Neutron Blaster II (Null) your base ranges are 6300m + 8800m.
A falloff bonus would lead to a range of 6300m + 13200m = 19500m @ falloff.
An optimal bonus would lead to a range of 9450 + 8800 = 18250 @ falloff.

While it is slightly less range you have better damage application with an optimal bonus and it would then also work well with railguns.

Look at the catalyst and the cormorant, the have the same optimal role bonus but don't obsolete each other.