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So these ships turns out to be more than a lovely addition to Eve Online - And widely popular not only because they are new and good looking, but also because used in the right hands they are super effecient.
Unfortunately as much fun the tier 3 pilots have the rest of us frantically try to counter them with everything but the kitchen sink without any real success.

We are ofcourse blessed with intelligent and experienced oponents showcasing the full potential of these ships, however as I have voiced before there are some serious game breaking issues that CCP neglected to react on in their focus on making the Talos fans happy.

Here are some of the issues I've found :
Using battleship weapons they can engage with heavy dps at short and long ranges. A few Tornados can easily destroy a ship in a short timeframe without really ever jeopardizing it's own security due to either outranging sentry guns or outmaneuvering even smaller ships with superior speed and firepower.

To counter tier 3 battlecruisers you can try 4 things:

1. Counter with your own long range ships, but before a battleship have locked a tier 3 battlecruiser the enemy will already have warped in, killed their primary target and warped out again. Trying to use recons will only cost you ship with a higher value than the ships you are trying to counter..
2. Send interceptors and other fast tackle to close the gap, however they will simply warp out in good time and come back at another location or burn away keeping their distance while shooting ships with a low transversal.
3. Probe out the enemy and sending the cavalry seems to be the best idea, however tier 3 battlecruisers are very mobile. It's easy for the enemy to keep warping around killing one target at a time and relocate before you can land tacklers. It's also easy for them to keep speed up in order to stay away from warpins.
4. Gatecamping in a traditional ambush styleis the last option. But even if you are lucky to catch tier 3 battlecruisers their small signature and massive speed makes them able to easily burn away with their dps taking care of tacklers.
You may catch 1 or 2 but then the rest will have already fled.

Once you catch tier 3 battlecruisers they are supposedly more fragile with less hitpoints and no tank bonus to compensate for the battleship compareable damage output. However the slot layouts make it easy getting a sufficient tank on a ship that isn't designed to brawl it out anyway.

So what is wrong with these ships?
To be honest CCP did a fantastic job, however they failed yet again to realize how broken it is to make ships silly fast. Especially combined with massive dps so far reserved to battleships slow and cumbersome. Having a fragile ship doesn't mean a thing if you can gank targets fast while staying away from harms way at the same time.

• Ship Velocity - With reinforced heavy hulls to support heavy battleship weapons these ships have a base velocity ~35% faster than regular battlecruisers and ~15% faster than most T1 and T2 cruisers.
How can it make sense to have a heavy ship being so fast it can easily outrun smaller and supposedly faster ships?

• Lock range - About 33% more than other battlecruisers and able to achieve 132km targeting range w/ 1 scripted sensor booster seems a bit out of the way as these ships have plenty slots to fit sensor boosters and signal amplifiers.
• Scan Resolution - Battleship Weapons normally come with the price of extra time spent locking up smaller ships, but CCP decided to make tier 3 battlecruisers lock more than 10% FASTER than normal battlecruisers giving these ships a very fast lock at very long ranges....
• Ship Mass and agility is worse than other battlecruisers, but ships like the Tornado can easily spare a lowslot or two to make the ship capable of turning rather fast. In my opinion these ships could easily have more mass and still fulfill a role as a ranged gunboat. Having an interceptor landing close to one of these ships and see the enemy turn around and warp before the interceptor can get a lock is pretty sad.

So why is it perfectly acceptable to outrun cruisers in a battlecruiser with battleship guns and lock ships up faster than you can spell insurance. I love to see tier 3 battlecruiser being accepted so fast in Eve, but they have to be balanced in a way where engaging in combat involves more risc than overheating your microwarpdrive for too long...

Go and buy a Naga and stop moaning... Welcome to EVE.

Hakonen certainly gets a lot of showcasing ^^
And Hera is pretty epic at killing even interceptors in that Talos people complain about...

Pinky

These ships are SB food in a fight in nullsec. The only overpowering is in areas they cant be owned by AOE effects.

Fair point, but not all fights are winnable.

I've actually never seen this done, myself, but if it's true then good point.

Hah, charging a blaster Talos with a Cynabal, that's a good one. I thought we were talking about arty Tornados sitting at 100 km off or something. The Malediction would have fared better if you scram/web fit (or dualprop fit), with an armor tank and orbited at close range. Armor tank doesn't reduce your speed THAT much, and you have bonuses to it on top of that. Only issue are drones.

And no, at close range, I don't really know how to deal with a Talos. I just know to stay the hell away with Vagas and Cynas.

I have myself taken potshots at tier 3 BCs with torps in lowsec. Not enough alpha to kill, but they did visibly **** a brick since they weren't expecting the sudden alpha. Also, they can't be moving that much, or they'd never track.


T1 EW is hella cheap and massively underused IMO. Recons are indeed a bit too risky to use, but the Arbi and Celestis have enough mid slots to take 2-3 BCs out of sniping action per ship.

I'm not saying tier 3 BCs don't need iteration. They do, and badly. Until then, I'm just trying to figure out ways to best kill them or make t heir life difficult. Same as I used to with Dramiels!

I guess that explains strategic cruisers easily having 400-600k EHP, so you're saying CCP will be reflecting on tier 3s for a few years and then making them balanced if we're lucky they haven't forgotten?

I guess they want people to sign up for impressive ships so they can cash in for developing Dust...

I'm a bit more optimistic than you, however I do miss the days where CCP stayed true to Eve Online.

A game where spending isk only gave you a marginal advantage in a few situations.
A game where all shiptypes had their place.
A game where people had to make choices instead of using cookie cutter fits.
A game where people would have to earn their isk.
A game where people didn't move directly from Frigate to Battlecruiser in a month.
A game where CCP had a clear vision of how they wanted Eve Online ships balanced

Lots of changes will have to be made to achieve this again, but it's not like Eve is all fundamentally broken - It's just a huge imbalance waiting for a hardcore effort that should have started at least a year ago...

I actually feel the Tornado does what its supposed to while lookign like its supposed to do what it does... I think every tier 3 battlecruiser does it.

The problem is... the rest don't. Except tech 3, but frankly, i'm starting to consider them overpowered plain and simple, aswell as well outside the bounds of balanced gameplay. (The logic here being that ships of a given hull, regardless of Tech level or Faction level, obey the whole T1 < Faction < T2 < Pirate faction and debatedly < next ship class. T3 just spit on that and become the best.)

It certainly seems like all new ships have focus on being everything players want instead of being balanced...

It's not a real weakness to have less hitpoints when they lock faster, lock further, have a small sig, fly faster, does more dps, shoot further and react faster than ship classes below it designed to be better in those attributes.

Pinky