Ships & Modules

Battleships did not become flawed. It's not as if something happened and they became broken (aside from the warp speed changes).

The problem is that other ships evolved around them while battleships largely remained constant. T3s, bombers, HACs, supers, et al. Even Marauders, and to a lesser extent Black Ops, have evolved. These ships have coexisted with battleships for a long time, but all of them have seen multiple improvements over time whereas battleships have not.

It's long overdue time that CCP evolved battleships.

With tiericide, CCP did a reasonably good job with frigates and cruisers. They evolved into ships with distinct roles, the roles were diverse, and T1 ships still had a place with rookie/disposable fleets even in the presence of T2s and T3s. While tiericide certainly helped battleships, it didn't give them individual roles like it did with other classes. Aside from the Scorpion and arguably the 'Geddon they all fill the same role as front-line combat ships. Sure, some of them are faster, some of them are tankier, and some of them use different weapons, but there are no clear role breakdowns.

Imagine if instead of logi, EWar, fast combat cruiser, and tanky combat cruiser, all we got out of tiericide was four combat cruisers (unless you were Caldari, and then you kept the Blackbird). This is pretty much what has happened to battleships over time.

To become relevant again, battleships need a purpose.

I don't claim to know what that purpose is, and if I did I'd be posting it in F&I instead of here. But I do know that they need some role to fill because, by and large, their roles are currently being filled much more effectively by other ships and as long as that is the case battleships will suffer.

Are battleships dead? No, and I've posted as such in other threads. But there's a huge difference between being "not dead" and "relevant". To be relevant again, CCP needs to finish tiericide and evolve battleships.

It's still weird that a BS-web does as much as a frig-web. If there was something cool to be done, then webbing a ship that is heavier than your own should result in less webstrength - unless you're flying a dedicated light/heavy tackle ship like an assault frigate, for example. Wanted to say interceptor but they're well off just being fast and blocking mwds.

So derptron webs BS, it moves 30% slower, CBC webs BS, it moves 50% slower, AF/BS or cap webbing a BS - full 60%. That'd be really cool and put CBCs back on the table as the sluggish, tackly brawling cruisers.

Some people use rail tengu doctrines (aside from Slippery Petes) and i just can't see the benefit vs Eagles. People will be dumb no matter what. eg; Rail Eagle = Rail tengu (no-Pete) +/- 5% on DPs and tank and costs double.

But that's not universal. Beam Zealot is competitive with DPS to beam Legion, but has 35% of the legion's tank and 2 fewer midslots. Legion all the way.

Rail proteus vs Rail Deimos? no competition. There is no rail Deimos, even leaving aside the presence of the Ishtar.

Arty Loki vs....sorry, laughing too hard...Munnin. I mean, arty Lokis are crap, but the Munnin is massively more crap it's got its own thread in F&I. Loki all the way.

The benefits of the Slippery Pete over an Eagle are:

A) really hard to probe down
B) immune to warp bubbles

If someone probed down a fleet of Eagles, they could just warp in a 'dictor and have them all tackled, at least briefly. With Slippery Petes, it takes longer to probe them and you can't bubble them.

If you flew a fleet of Eagles the way you flew a fleet of Slippery Petes, the Eagles would either get slaughtered, or be moving around so much that they couldn't apply DPS.

T3s aren't all that OP really. Some balancing tweaks throughout the subs would be good though, along with getting rid of that SP loss on death garbage.

Railgu.

179k EHP
Sig 178
Speed 730 (AB)
300 dps out to 80km
cap stable


Why would you choose an eagle over a tengu?

The tengu effectively has a better tank than battleships due to its massive EHP coupled with a sig a third of the size and seven times the speed.

Pilots are part of the problem. Many newer pilots just don't know how to fir or fly battleships so they assume that they're bad. But with experienced pilots, or at least experienced FCs, they still do well.

But I still think that battleships themselves have some issues to be sorted out. Tiericide left battleships underwhelming in some regards in that there's no real diversity of roles for them like you see in cruisers and frigates. Why fly a battleship when you can use a T3 or a HAC to get the job done instead? I think if battleships had that diversity, if they had roles that weren't so easily filled by other ships, they would thrive again.



Battleships don't need a buff, they need diversity.

Not really. Aside from two, they're all straight-up combat hulls.

Sure, there's diversity within the combat role, but there's no diversity of roles.

Geddon = curse on roids
Scorp = heavy ECM
phoon = fast very heavy anti support
raven = slow anti support and the best bait ship ever.
Apoc = long range ship of the line
hyperion = small gang house of tank
Megathron = whatever I want it to be
Pest = the old cane only bigger everything.

I can go on and these are just the simpler fits. Anti frigate ravens, sheild nano blaster megathrons, smartbomb rokhs.

TD don't work for battleships because of their size.



Nestor.


Why would you use a force econ if a battleship with much more tank can do the job?



T3 replace them as DPS ship not E-war.