Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Do we really need a battleship focused on lasers/drones and exploration? What could it do that the current SoE cruiser could not? Do we really want a battleship with a Covert Ops cloak? Especially one with 125 mbps of bonused drones and bonused lasers? Might such a ship be a bit OP?

The Nestor, the theoretical ship in question had a description up on the test server a few builds back, what happened to it though I do not know if anyone knows. In reality it may have just been too difficult to balance a cloaky battleship, which is likely why the Black Ops have taken so long to come to rebalancing as well, my 2 cents.

1. Well, for a start, it would encourage greater travel around lowsec and nullsec for PVE. I've known people to let escalations go just because they're slightly outside blue space.

2. It's plenty reason. You may as well say the existence of the megathron currently obsoletes the brutix, thorax and incursus. Does it?

3. It'll go some way to doing so.

4. Apologies, I forgot the parts where I apparently mentioned projection, application and partially capless lasers that can somehow change damage types. Sorry, my mistake - glad you put the words in my mouth for me.

I am proposing no such thing, my boy. For a start I specifically mentioned the fact that the tank would almost certainly have to be weaker - look at the stratios, for example. It has an inferior tank to most cruisers. I've also stated that balance would be a part of the creation of said ship. And honestly, with local in the current state it is, a cloak isn't much of an empowerment.

1. And, in risking a more expensive faction BS hull, people are given access to greater rewards. It just facilitates things, catalyzes them.

2. However, drone sizes do have tracking differences. If they whip out large drones for a small target, the drones will never hit them. If they whip out small drones, the drones are easier to destroy. A SoE battleship would also be slower and more expensive than the Stratios.

3. Blackops battleships are largely confined to POSes or single-drop attacks with an insta-jump escape. A covops cloak is more likely to encourage blackops pilots to take an active role in covops gangs, rather than being the mule.

4. Can we talk about limited drone bays please? If you're trying to pack a flight of every damage type, you're going to run out of drone bay space reeeeeal fast. If we're going to complain about weapons types that are capless and have great damage projection and dps, let's talk about projectile weapons and missiles, shall we? Immune to ewar - great. Just pop them, no more drone.

Having a weak tank for a BS is having a medium-range tank for a battlecruiser. "Probably" means nothing, and +4% means nowhere near as much for active tanking as +5% did, that's why they removed that extra 5%. How many people are going to have both battleship sets to V, anyway? Plenty of lazy trainers. The Dscan lets you pick your fights and the logoff button makes you unprobable on demand - gonna nerf those? Before you say "that's stupid", they are both actively used in combat, admittedly one more so than the other.

Nestor wasn't planned for Rubicon, as it wasn't ready. Probably talking Rubicon 1.1 release if we are lucky. However it certainly appears planned.
It also makes Lore sense to stagger the SoE ships role out as they are releasing the Frigs & Cruisers for the new ghost sites as I understand the lore, which means initially they are going to only let the smaller ships out then as the threat ramps up we will get the BS.

1. So I guess we never have issues caused by people running around in blobs of super expensive and powerful ships? Right?

2. Irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind would use heavy drones against a frigate. They would switch to lights.

3. How so? Will it let them tank better or do more DPS? Would it somehow protect them from getting pointed when they try to run from a fight? Would it let them jump out faster after a drop? Would it give them a role in a traditional fleet fight?

4. I guess nobody builds entire fleet doctrines around drones. Oh wait... Its not as if the SoE ships have really large drone bays for their hull size or anything.

Even if this new ship has the same raw buffer as a Black Ops the resist bonus will easily push it to 100k EHP or more when fitted while making logistics even more effective than they already are.

Do you not have all racial BS skills to V? I do. I bet a lot of people do. It not like tons of cap pilots didn't train for either Gallente or Amarr capitals and then cross train to the other one back when you needed BS V for caps... wait....

Dscan really is as good as being there you know. It makes it easy to run around low sec avoiding gate camps without a scout. It lets you see exactly where drag bubbles are in null with total safety so you know which celestial to bounce off to avoid them, how far from the gate the other guy is, ect. Oh wait, that's the cov ops cloak that does that, silly me. And wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way to drop aggression timers and make yourself totally safe at any safe spot with just the logoff button instantly without needing to bother fitting a silly cloak?

It would not surprise me to see the Nestor released when CCP is done with the Black Ops rebalance.

Only because I think that's what the Nestor will be: the first of the pirate faction Black Ops battleships.

The point to having a SOE battleship is that ALL other pirate factions have frigates, cruisers and battleships. so as CCP is trying to make everything more equal and balanced, I'd say the SOE need a battleship for that reason if nothing else. Now I think if they do make one, which they should have to it shouldn't be able to cloaky warp, as there are no battleships able to cloak warp.

SOE do need a BS though and there also needs to be a Cald/Min pirate faction race now as well.

Give it a bonus to rhml and probe strength.
Keep it as armour but give it a much larger signature than other bs.
Also give it a bonus to anchoring mobile depots.
Maybe a bonus to armour repper drones.