Ships & Modules

Allow me to tell a story of the downfall of the Battleship (yes this is going to be a long post, you have been warned)

Once upon a time ...............

A lone little raven with an interdictor alt was camping a gate in the region of Querious. This was Firmus Ixions (forgive my spelling been a long time) main entrance system to 0.0. This was a time before jump bridges and people actually had to use gates to get from high sec to low to 0.0. The dictor sat cloaked 2.5k above the gate waiting for the flash. Once the flash began the dictor uncloaked, the raven uncloaked and aligned to warp out just in case, even though he was 120km off the gate. A rupture decloaked and the dictor made its run to web the rupture. Now the sensor boosted raven locked the rupture first and slammed it with 4 damps. Again this was before scripts so the rupture not only lost lock range but time as well. It was already over, the rupture unable to lock and webbed in a bubble waited as the torps flew towards there target........ yes torps used to be able to go over 200km. The life of the little rupture ended. Thus Burn Eden began to victimize and control another alliance.

Some people say this was stupid overpowered.... I do not necessarily disagree.

Thats how some people used to fly Battleships. Others used them in fleet fights because they were the only ships capable of hitting 150km + ranges. There were no Black ops, Marauders, bombs, and very few capital ships to speak of. It was truely the age of the battleship. These ships took the longest to train for and were the kings rightfully so.

Then the downfall began..... in no specific order.

Scanner Probe buff
sensor strength unscannable nerf
Jump Bridges
Super Caps
Titans
HP Buff to all ships making even cruisers survivable against high dps
LOGISTIC SHIPS
BOMBS
Blop hot drops
RR
torp nerf
warp speed nerf
nano nerf ..... buh bye phoon overlord
AF buff
Interceptor point range buff
Offgrid Gang Boosters
************WEB NERF***********


the list goes on and one

Over the last 10 years EVE has been evolving to the point of completely removing Battleships from existance. Now some curageous pilots are still trying to use them. Im looking at you Big Miker, but lets be honest, one competant af or inty pilot = dead Battleship. There is honestly nothing that can be done to turn the tide of this either.

Eve has become too large in terms of pilots. The blob used to be 20-30 guys, now you see fleets of 1000s. The smaller ships are just too fast and have too much hp. Battleships are just too slow and cannot reliably project damage onto smaller ships.

3 immediate fixes that could help battleships but not make them even to the smaller ships are reversing the web nerf (90% webs), making them faster in every aspect, and giving the missiles and guns a major boost to actually applying damage to smaller targets.

We all know this will never happen. Its a numbers game, there are simply more people that would be upset with their thorax dieing to a Megathron, than people who would be upset that their Megathron is dieing to a thorax.


So this for me, is the good bye I have for my love of the Battleship. An official retirement other than tournaments if you will. Im very sad to come to accept that the game I used to play in 2005 just simply doesnt exist anymore. I am also happy that so many others actually enjoy the game as it is today. So I wish everyone who loves the game now as it is a long and wonderful experience, and I hope you never have to endure the years of nerfs and heartache as I did as I watched the game I loved die and transform into what it is now.


Good Bye Battleship PVP ....... RIP

Its funny, I was skimming through the other thread on BS and thinking how is no one talking about people like DHB and Garmon in relation to solo BS. I guess the generation has skipped.

It was watching yours and Garmons videos back in like 07 that inspired me to get out there and pew pew, but this is now a wildly different game to back then. BS are pretty much only useful in gangs with support imo.

Enjoy your ~semi~ retirement o/

As one who wondered if I had been involved in the battle when watching "EVE is Real" I recognise your position...

However I do think that BS of that time were too powerful - there was some need for the nerfs (though on grid probing was not one of them).
There was little place for small ships then, unless you had as many as Goonswarm could bring. I recall being volleyed (one or two volleys of Precision Cruise from a single Raven) off the field in an AB Incursus by Mags and co before I could get into tackle range... when they jumped into us...

Most likely the pendulum has swung too far - maybe it will swing back...

Bring back the cavalry ravens.

I've thought ,for quite some time now, that the battlecruiser was really 'the great equalizer'. Or something like the 'gateway ship' to bigger ships.
BC used to be the ship that could own cruisers, and one of the best counters was to bring in BS. When CCP nerfed the T1 class of BC, they effectively killed the motivation to escalate a fight.
At the same time they were buffing small hulls and promoting FW and other noob friendly environments for isk poor pilots.
I had always heard there was a fear of 'power creep', but that fear seems to have been tossed out the window when devs started buffing frigate and cruiser hulls.

EVE used to have a path of progression. There was a goal to get to battleships, because they were the top of the hill for subcap, hi sec PvP. Then you could pirate in lowsec or take mixed fleets on roams.

Bring back a viable T1 BC, and you'll see a resurgence of BS.

I'd just add, that EVE's numbers are affected by all these "upgrades" and "rebalances"
The height of EVE's player base was back then, during the glory days of BS. There was a path, a commitment, and an investment to get to the top. It was a pretty solid gaming approach.
Todays game has a shorter path, thus a smaller commitment to achieve an end game.
New players have less to lose, less investment in time and money,
Old players have found their investment to be less valuable.

The end results should be predictable, imo.

Fun as they were, oh god no.

Biggest advantage of any T1 BS right now is the insurance payout. Losing a properly insured BS hits you as hard as losing a navy cruiser.

It's all about the mobility. As long as you have cruisers with enough resist and tank that logi can keep them alive against the incoming fire of a large formation...there is no reason to deploy ships which are more skill intensive and vastly less mobile with only marginal gains in damage application and total buffer.

My personal, relatively new player's opinion is that if you want battleships AND battlecruisers to be more viable they need better warp speed/acceleration and better align times.

I've got it. Let's give battleships a unique cargo hold specifically for cap boosters that can carry more than 20-30 Navy 800s.

Want to buff battleships? Nerf T3s savagely.