Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Like some kind of mothership?

*Applause*

Or the Vexor Navy Issue. JS.

Would like to see an SoE battleship. I just feel that 125 mbps of bonused drones and a Covert Ops cloak should be mutually exclusive.

If anything, drones are the worst weapon system to combine with a covert cloak.

Every other weapon system is just fine if the pilot needs to warp off grid. Drones need to be recovered first, making the ability to warp while cloaked something meaningless unless you have extra time after a fight.

Add to that, they have about the slowest time between dropping your cloak and first application of DPS, making a surprise attack anti-climactic to behold. Add to that, the weaker tank is exposed longer to the opponent since your DPS needs to take this extra time.

Blasters, on the other hand, or smart bombs, make better use of the qualities a cloak brings to the table.

Hm, I suppose you may be right. I guess I am just very iffy about a Covert Ops cloak paired with a full flight of damage bonused sentry drones as it might step on the toes of several other ships. (Dominix, Ishtar, Navy Vexor, Navy Dominix, Rattlesnake) So maybe something like this:

Role Bonus: 50% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range
Role Bonus: 37.5% increase Scan Prob Strength
Role Bonus: +10 Virus strength for Relic and Data Analyzers

Can fit Covert Ops Cloaking devices

Amarr Battleship Bonus:
4% bonus to Armor Resists

Gallente Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Drone optimal range and Done tracking speed

Slot layout: 6H, 7M, 6L; 5 turrets, 0 launchers
...
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 125 / 500
...
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 65km / 90 / 7
...
Cargo Capacity: 750

With the other stats (speed, fittings, ect...) left to whatever CCP feels is balanced.

This is all of the projection and application of the Dominix but not all the damage and with one less low slot so tank and gank are in tight contention. The resist bonus helps make up for the lack of a low slot but I don't think it fully compensates as the hull bonus works out to be a free EANM where a Dominix would fit a rat specific hardener instead. Also like its smaller cousin a full rack of guns forces you to choose between a cloak or a probe launcher. Battleship lasers are cap hungry so running a full tank with top tier guns may be difficult depending on the capacitor stats without a cap booster.

Also if you want to fit drone link augmenters to make full use of sentry drone range you will need to make some choices in the hi slots and probably fit a sensor booster to augment targeting range. There are lots of mids for exploration but they will have to compete for mid slots with ewar, drone tracking links, sensor boosters, prop mods, and cap boosters.

Compared to the SoE cruiser it doesn't have as much raw drone damage (5 effective drones vs 6) so in a full exploration fit it wouldn't kill large rats as fast as I doubt that one extra stacking penalized drone damage mod would make up for the lack of a damage bonus on the hull. It would apply sentry done damage to small targets better but the cruiser can always switch to a damage bonused flight of light or medium drones. It would be able to pull range more effectively with an MJD and it has a bit more targeting range but would still need a sensor booster to snipe effectively. However being a BS it would be much slower and unable to speed tank rats so tank mods in the lows may be more important than on the cruiser unless you sacrifice guns to drone link augmenters so you can range tank.

Thoughts?

heh .. I missed that last part.

I got side tracked by the shiny graph, and the lack of Sanctaury Corp LP's on it

The Sin is a full-flight-sentry-bonused ship with cloaking ability. The Redeemer is a cloaking laser boat. Both have the ability to use portal generators. If the Sin is balanced to be more like the Dominix (i.e.: drone range/tracking bonus as opposed to the Navy Domi with hybrid bonuses) there's room for another covert/black ops drone boat with combined drone/laser bonuses.

I agree with you that having such a vessel capable of using a covert ops cloak would be unbalanced, but only if none of the T2 Black Ops battleships are able to do the same. If all the black ops ships become able to use covert ops cloaks, I think the Nestor would fit in nicely as a pirate black ops ship with combined drone/laser bonuses.

The Gila has a full flight of heavy/sentry drones with damage bonuses, but it suffers compared to the Dominix or Eos due to less EHP, less tank and less fitting. The Myrmidon offers 4 heavy/sentry drones and an amazing active tank and so many high slots — a configuration which is happily exploited by solo/small gang PvPers. Sure, there's only a small population of dual rep / ancillary rep Myrm pilots out there, but from what I've read and watched, they're really enjoying that hull.

Of course if the Black Ops ships aren't being rebalanced at the same time, we might see the Nestor released as a covert ops drone boat with exploration benefits. It could still be balanced the same way as the Stratios, four large drones, large laser bonuses, etc. effectively providing a cloaky ship somewhere between Recon, T1 battleships and T2 black ops in terms of power & balance. Even that would be an amazing ship to bring along for black ops roams: all we need now is a cloaky ship with a large cargo or fuel hold to carry all the fuel required to take this fleet on tour :)

Probably a Pirate-Black Ops rebalance and a SoE addition in the next update.

Thing with covops battleships is they can hit MJD and then activate cloak, pretty much guarantees they wont be scrammed in time. Should make it so cloak interrupts mjd.