Player Features and Ideas Discussion

THREAD UPDATED BASED ON FEEDBACK - Have a second look if you haven't since I originally posted.

Welcome to the Tech 1 Battleship rebalance, fasten your seatbelts!

Some of the changes herein are significant, so I'm going to lay out our overall tiericide and balance principles at the top of each race's thread, and also provide ship-by-ship explanation. I encourage you to read both before hitting the caps lock key, you may find answers to some of your questions and concerns.

Tiericide -
Our effort to destroy ship tiers continues. With battleships, the tiers were most evident in HP amounts and price. All variations had an equal allocation of slots already (19), except drone bonused hulls or disruption hulls, which won’t change. As usual, we will be dividing battleships into roles rather than tiers. The distribution will be as follows: One 'Attack' Battleship for each race, and two 'Combat' Battleships for each race (except Caldari, who will retain the only 'Disruption' Battleship for the time being). With these new roles in mind, we will be adjusting hitpoint amounts for all combat battleships near the former tier 3 hitpoint numbers, while the attack hulls will sit closer to the former tier 2s. As with other ship classes, attack battleships will be faster, more agile, and will focus more on damage application and projection than their combat counterparts. Cost of production will be adjusted to reflect tiericide, but so far we have not settled on exact numbers.

Exciting roles for every ship and every race -
One of our main goals during this balance pass is to see that each battleship has a lot to offer, and that each race has access to all of Eve's environments. Formerly, the battleship line had strange overlaps and gaps which left certain races excluded from certain styles of play and other races with more than one option for a certain role. This new distribution should hopefully provide new options and excitement for players of all races.

I am breaking the post into four, by race, with the hope of isolating feedback. We look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Without further ado:

GALLENTE

Hyperion:

Here's the new and improved Hyperion. Based off of your feedback, this new version goes from 8 turrets to 6, while doubling its damage bonus from 5% per level to 10%. It also gains a larger drone bandwidth and bay, a utility high, and keeps its much-needed mid slot.

If anything, I'm worried this is too strong, but it should be an extremely fun ship to use. Hope you guys approve.

Gallente Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+10% Large Hybrid Turret damage
+7.5% Armor Repair amount

Slot layout: 7H(-1), 5M, 7L(+1); 6 turrets , 1 launchers
Fittings: 16000 PWG(+250), 600 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull): 7500 / 8000 / 8500
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second: 7200 / 1500s / 4.8
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 115 / .1178 / 100200000 / 16.36s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 125(+25) / 175(+75)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 60km / 110 / 7
Sensor strength: 23 Magnetometric Sensor Strength
Signature radius: 485


Megathron:

With the Hyperion moving to more of a combat/utility ship via its drones, heavy mid-slot allocation, and spare high, we felt the mega could now afford to move towards a completely dedicated gun boat. Instead of the former 8/5/6 utility focused set up, we now have a 7/4/8 hybrid damage machine that has sacrificed its utility high (which was often unused) to gain another low - giving it more access to damage, damage application/projection, or tank. It stays in its attack role and therefor retains the previously described increases to speed and agility. This design should also fit the 'flavor' that the Megathron has spent a decade building much more accurately.

Gallente Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+5% Large Hybrid Turret rate of fire (replaces large hybrid turret damage)
+7.5% Large Hybrid Turret tracking speed

Slot layout: 7H(-1), 4M, 8L(+1); 7 turrets , 0 launchers(-2)
Fittings: 15500 PWG, 600 CPU(+50)
Defense (shields / armor / hull): 6300(+89) / 6500(-141) / 7500
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 6000(+375) / 1150s / 5.02 (+.15)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 122(+7) / .114(-.0076) / 98400000 / 15.96s (-.63s)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 75(-50) / 75(-50)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 72.5km / 95 / 7
Sensor strength: 21 Magnetometric Sensor Strength
Signature radius: 380(-20)

Dominix:

With the Dominix we've abandoned the split weapon bonus (hybrids and drones) and moved it to a fully dedicated drone ship by adding a drone optimal and tracking bonus. We hope that this new bonus will provide a very strong Gallente fleet option in the Dominix, via sentry drones. It will of course also be stronger at short range using heavy drones. As a combat battleship, its received increased hitpoints across the board, increased mass (it got its mass lowered during the hybrid buff), increased cap pool, and increased sig.

We believe this is a very exciting direction for the Dominix, and hope you will too!

I also want to mention here that while the drone system overall needs looking at, we here on the balance team have some short term ideas for helping the usability of sentry drones – no timeframe on them as of yet, but its something we have in mind.

Gallente Battleship Skill Bonuses:
+10% Drone Damage and Drone hitpoints
+10% Drone optimal range and Drone tracking speed (replaces large hybrid turret damage)

Slot layout: 6H, 5M, 7L; 6 turrets , 0 launchers
Fittings: 10000 PWG(+1000), 600 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 7200(+1731) / 8000(+1789) / 8500(+1859)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second) : 6000(+1000) / 1100s / 5.51
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 109 /...

OHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH

I liked my navy 1400+ dps (garde + rails) domi for missions,but i assume this will make drone users happy i just dont think it will be viable as gank setup for missions anymore.

Meh.

How will this affect the Megathron Federate Issue?

You forgot -1 launcher!

Just use a Mega :D

for the love of god, leave the megathron alone, the changes on it are terribad

The -1 lowslot will make my dual rep mega better.
Thanks CCP!