Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Battlecruisers are in a funny place. Their role bonus is generally left unused, so they're just big slow cruisers with a little more hit points and damage -- and any ship whose sole defining characteristic is 'more hit points and damage' will be in a rough spot. They have two unique features:

Gang link modules
Medium micro-jump drive

Gang links are tough because the ships' fittings are balanced around their exclusion, which is kind of funny seeing as how the modules are strictly limited to certain hull classes. One non-game-breaking change might be to give as a role bonus, -90% to fitting requirements for gang link modules. Then remove command processors from the game. Seriously, they do the game no good. They only encourage bad game decisions. Then you have to consider whether you want links to work for a true solo pilot, but I'm not sure that's necessary. There are plenty of ships that can trade in instead of a battlecruiser for DPS and tank, but making a command link semi-ubiquitous on them would be an interesting design mechanic and also encourages the Space Buddy System.

Medium micro-jump drives are ill-conceived. They can't be fit on the ship class that can take advantage of the range (ABCs) so exist solely as an escape mechanic. If they spooled up in 4.5 seconds, cycled in 30 seconds and jumped 50km, they'd be a lot more useful and would breathe life into longer-ranged battlecruiser fits, where a 50km engagement range is a real possibility.

Prom posted elsewhere that MJDs should be able to script to a more traditional propulsion module, and I completely agree. Not only would that help fits hurting desperately for mids -- which happens quite often in battlecruisers -- but micromanaging the cycling down of the MWD to MJD, paying attention to the vector your ship is taking and will be on after the spool-up time, and changing scripts are all micromanagement-intensive skills. In short, it favors multi-boxing less heavily in PVP, which is probably a good step to make.

Though battlecruisers suffer from slow speed, they generally tank a lot better than t1 cruisers and have the fitting for longer-ranged weapons than t1 cruisers. Having a ship class that can blink through lowsec would be an interesting twist, given that the lowsec meta is largely dominated by the long point. If every 30 seconds these guys started a 4.5-second spool up and hopped, it would both increase their effective speed by 1.5km/sec or so in a different way than cruisers and could give scrams a role. Push enemies into scram range and armor fits might become viable.

I dunno. Maybe I'm reading too much into that. But I'd love to see some 50km MJDing myrmis bouncing around lowsec.

The MMJD (& the LJD also) would very much benefit from having a standard prop mode & a jump function.
This would avoid what's almost a necessity to dual prop if you want a jump drive which messes terribly with fittings.

If it was half way between MWD & AB both in speed & penalties, it's already shut down by Scrams so that part isn't a problem.
Then they would be good modules.

Fitting the command links isn't actually a problem if you want a link. It's more very few people train links because it requires some dedicated training even for T1 links, and it's Cha training so almost always off map for most people. So I don't think that aspect of BC should change.

I am actually using Ferox with 6 links to boost a mining fleet while having logi around. It's a fair compromise. Cheap too.

I agree completely, and would go a step further and suggest a frigate version which jumps 25km and spools up pretty quickly. Then I think the fitting restrictions should be removed. Let anyone fit any MJD they want.

I disagree. Having to fit 2 prop mods to get both types of propulsion seems reasonable to me, even if you are never using both at the same time. There is a huge strategic advantage to being able to either jump or zoom, and it should come with a cost.

I did want to see the addition of a low slot propulsion module, passive-always on if you don't have another propulsion effect on, and still offering a bonus if you do. My thought was to do this with the overdrive injector: it would grant triple the bonus once per ship if you don't have any other propulsion effect going, but when you turn on your prop mod the overdrive injector would go back to giving its base bonus. If you put on multiple overdrive injectors, the triple speed bonus only applies once and the rest give the single bonus with stacking penalty.
This would make it more viable to avoid using up a mid slot with a prop mod, or it could be used along with a MJD if you can't afford to spend 2 mids on prop mods.

I was flying in my very expensive tengu last night. I got scanned down by a probe but I didn't get spooked until I saw the garmur. A frigate burning toward me at 5900. I just bailed straight away knowing that hml would be completely ineffective against this target in part due to probably not even having the speed to hit it. Im pretty sure that the HML problem is a combination of extremely poor application and low speed. HML must just about be the singularily least viable pvp weapon. Below smartbombs and tachyons.

I don't see why especially on caldari hulls they don't remove the 50% flight time bonus and instead buff the missile flight velocity by 100% and then give all caldari hulls a 25% explosion velocity/radius modifier. One or the other and for ships like the cerberus and tengu/navy drake give them both.

I can't really express my feelings of exasperation at being forced out of a complex by a piddling frigate when I'm flying a 1.6bil t3 but there you have it because the ships weapons are woefully incapable of being a threat to a ship with 3k ehp.

RIP (HML Drake/Tengu)
I really missing them both... sigh...

They are good as cheap boosters. However there is not enough difference between a BC and the current crop of T1 cruisers interms of what it brings to the field. More DPS, more tank but not enough more to be making it worthwhile given the trade offs in place. They take more damage, the are a hell of a lot slower getting around and they lock slower.

They have no niche. Cruisers are fast enough to be...fast, battleships bring much more when actual DPS and survivability is called for. They are in no mans land.

Lots of newbies using BC's to run missions and some sort of ratting. They simply don't care of warp speed sig etc etc cause it gives enough dps and hitpoints vs. cruisers. And BC's are cheaper vs. faction cruisers.

Drake is also blessed with the 'feature' of kinetic only damage bonuses.

Apparently making Caldari missile ships do eff all damage unless they shoot kinetic ammo makes them "interesting".

Oddly enough, the same increase in interestingness doesn't seem to work with Amarr missile boats only getting a damage bonus to EM missiles or Gallente missile boats only getting a damage bonus to Thermal missiles. For non-Caldari missile platforms, it seems that RoF and application bonuses are needed to get the girls.