Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Rumour has it the Rattlesnake hull is changing from a Scorpion to a Raven...

The safest ships are the ones that have already seen a balance pass, so you may very well be right.

• $2-billion (plus) ISK, non-insurable...
• Lacks power grid and capacitor...
• Doesn't necessarily do anything extremely well…

Is there really any question that it's already failed? Even with a Covert Ops cloak capability, $2-billion is still insane...

So this is going to be a drone battleship intended for wormhole use. Given that Sleepers make short work of drones, the only way this ship will work is if there is a role bonus to the drone tanks with much greater hp and repair amounts or automatic remote repair from the host ship, etc.

Just use a TP to draw aggro- you can fight sleepers with drones that way (although it isn't easy).

Also, what will the BPC material requirements be?

It already is one of the most agile BSs in New Eden and has a warp speed of 2.5 AU/s, the same speed as BCs. It will never and should never get a covops cloak for the multitude of reasons stated throughout the thread and unless you can offer a better reason that it should than 'I want, I want, I want,' stop trolling the thread with it.

As a battleship, perhaps not. But as a battlecruiser, there's no precedent - and no reason it couldn't. Since the Nestor can't even remotely begin to fulfill any of the roles (with the possible exception of drones) - I don't see what the problem is. I've already made several alternate suggestions: faster warp speed (more as a battlecruiser), smaller signature, reduced penalty on hyperspacial rigs - just to name a few. This thing is a mixed bag of snakes, and with a $2-billion price tag - it has nothing more to offer than "gank me" written on the side.


This. All I seem to recall is that if any Battleship were to get a Covert Ops cloak, it should be Black Ops. That hardly seems like a reason...

It is always nice to have new people throw in their support for changes, so here is my break down to bring out the depth.

Removing all the turret slots would lean the ship toward RR and drones but SoE is all about having as many tools as they can fit on the hull. This leads to the ships having a split weapon system but without bonuses to turrets other than a range bonus to an already expensive weapon, I fail to see how removing them would stay within SoE design templates or prevent OP syndrome.

I do admit, the ability to RR shield, armor, and cap would be neat but no ship in the game can do this and frankly, it isn't necessary for a ship that is only going to be accompanied by ships set up for exploration. Explo ships are fast and lightly defended so in combat they are best used by speed tanking, something you cannot do if you are stuck within the Nestor's RR range. The armor RR comes into greatest effect after PvE is over or when engaging in PvP on a hole or gate where maneuverability is hampered. If anything, a hull RR bonus would be in order for those very close calls but who wants that gumming up the works.

I'm not even going to bother repeating myself on the cloak issue so if you want to know how foolish and irrational a covops would be or a preferred option see the posts on the last few pages.

The drone damage bonus, along with the armor bonus, is one of the major factors in SoE design practice. Removing it would be like removing a bomber's torp bonus, it would still be useful but it would lose that major element of its identity and a good amount of its usefulness.

The SMA has been a rather popular suggestion, if I may say so myself, with almost everyone agreeing that it should be small but idk about that small. I would recomend that at the least it should hold a cruiser so one of your pilots can switch from a scouting Astero to a more powerful Stratios in order to participate in PvE with everyone else. This capability would be necessary to maximize the effectiveness of a small fleet of nomad pilots far away from supplylines.

Very well, I wont say anything more on covops cloaking since neither logic or reason based arguments are working. However, if anything new or interesting is suggested then I will be happy to discuss them with everyone as that is what these forums are for. Now if you will exuse me, I need to go patch that head sized dent in the wall.

Logic and reason...hmm, I believe I’ve heard them spoken of before. Let me give them a quick try.

First, I will say that you did an excellent job explaining why a covops is so powerful. Look! I'm quoting it so more people can see. Here it is:



Then having said that, you spent the next several pages doing an excellent job of ignoring or summarily dismissing a number of coherent proposals to let Nestor gain the travel benefit of a covops with minimal combat benefit. Let's see how those proposals compare with your solid assessment.

Why is a covops so powerful? According to you, it's a few things:

• Allows a ship to move within a system with near impunity—check (though since a ship has to decloak in order to actually do anything aside from warp, this isn't as big a "problem" as some of the others)


• Grants a ship immunity to all but the best gate camps—half-check (in the very same post I quoted above, you went on to suggest, I think correctly, that even a fairly bad gate camp should have a reasonable chance of success decloaking a battleship)


• Allows a ship to decide on engagements, dictate initial engagement range, and achieve complete surprise—check

After making this quite astute assessment, you then proceeded to ignore several pages of suggestions indirectly aimed at addressing those concerns for a hypothetical cloaky battleship. So now using :logic: and :reason: I will attempt to address them directly.

There have been three main suggestions as far as how to balance a covert ops cloak with a battleship hull. They are:

• Remove [some/all] turrets—this one is pretty straightforward, and neatly fits what you say is "essential for balance," i.e. "that cloaky ships should not be able to go toe to toe with combat oriented ships." (This requirement, by the way, is already problematic given the existing covert-capable ship line.) It's also the only suggestion I've seen you even obliquely address, with the somewhat bizarre claim that the turrets need to stay because, essentially, that's how the Sisters do things. (The fact that this argument applies equally well towards keeping the turrets as it does towards extending the existing Sisters cloaking bonuses to the last ship in their line may or may not have been lost on you.)


• Increase sensor recalibration delay—i.e. make it wait some not-insignificant period of time between decloak and targeting. I've put this one forward myself more times now than I care to count, but suffice it to say that a long enough recalibration delay should greatly reduce the ability to dictate initial engagement range and blunt the element of surprise. For anyone who may understandably be concerned about a scenario in which a smaller cloaky ship lands tackle first and then lets the Nestor wait out its targeting delay, I reply that a similar scenario is easily possible today featuring a cloaked tackler and an off-grid battleship (perhaps with a prototype cloak, for bonus points). If there is no problem with the latter scenario, there should be no problem with the former, as long as the Nestor's targeting delay is sufficiently long.


• Prohibit the ship from accessing covert jump portals—this is just good sense. It should go without saying that a covert Nestor should also not be able to fit a covert jump portal generator itself. The Nestor would thus be reliant on stargates where, as you and I seem to agree, it would be at least somewhat vulnerable.

As far as I'm concerned, the first and the second suggestions may be nearly sufficient on their own for balance concerns. Now suppose all three are taken together: you are left with a battleship that can warp cloaked, but which would struggle to match (let alone exceed) the DPS of a typical t1 battleship; is considerably more vulnerable to gate camps than existing covert-capable ships, due to its battleship-sized signature radius and align time; cannot reliably achieve surprise or dictate the initial maneuvers of an engagement, due to its penalized sensor recalibration; and, unlike every other covert-capable ship in the game (including the Stratios, which is hardly a second-rate combat ship), cannot instantaneously bypass hostile space by bridging to a covert cyno. Those are not inconsiderable tradeoffs for covert capability, in my book. Hell, maybe there's even more that can be done. I think that's more than a fair start.

Honestly, I don't expect to convince you. I don't need to convince you. I'm sure you've made up your mind on the subject. That's fine. But forgive me if I can't take you seriously when you say that the reason we don't agree with you is because we don't get :logic: and :reason:.

I do wish you well with that dent.