Ships & Modules

Okay, time for me to weigh in here.

I've been playing on and off for a long time (started in late 2006). In that time a lot has changed. Early on in EvE, battleships composed the bulk of large fleets when facing off against each other. Nothing else had the reach to hit targets and the durability to survive being primary long enough to either warp off or get reps. I got in a lot of experience flying rail Megas in nullsec fleets and brawling boats in hisec wardecs before my extended EvE-vacation in 2010, and when I left battleships were in a pretty good place.

I came back about a year ago and found battleships to be very rarely used outside of PvE and certain niche PvP cases. The warp speed changes had slowed them down, bombs made them vulnerable in nullsec, and T3s could often do the same job while maintaining better mobility. But in spite of that, battleships are still used by a handful of folks to incredibly good effect even if the masses have turned their backs on them.


What I've noticed is that the folks who still fly battleships as front-line combat ships have, by and large, been flying them for a long time. It's not the newer groups who are using them, it's the old guard who have been flying them for years. You could say that they just use them out of a sense of nostalgia, but I disagree.


You have to know how to fit and fly a battleship to use them effectively.


This may sound like an obvious statement, but I'm amazed by how many newer players I've talked to don't get this. Flying battleships takes skill, and I'm not referring to skillpoints. You can't just fit a battleship like an oversize cruiser or an undersized dreadnaught and expect it to fight well. You have to play to their strengths; which are range, damage output, durability; and use planning and guile to overcome their weaknesses, which are low mobility, slow lock speed, and reduced application. You need to know when to use battleships, how to use them, and where they should be on the battlefield. Chasing around a group of cruisers with a pure battleship fleet would be folly, but dropping a battleship or two in the middle of a cruiser brawl after you've already engaged can be highly effective.


Said another way, in order to fly battleships well you need a solid FC who really knows battleships, or at least be a player with the same knowledge who can apply it to other fleets with some degree of autonomy or use it solo. And from what I can tell, those players are in relatively short supply these days.

It's been almost two weeks since Baghdad Bob posted in his own soapbox thread here. He biomass?
Common man, you can do it. It's not over! *fans the remaining embers*

Same argument was used for the nano nerf which impacted every single ship, EVE thrived. Same argument was used again for tracking titans, drone swarm supers and everything else that was overpowered.

Cruisers should not be getting top end cruiser speeds, very low sigs, battlecruiser firepower, high end battleship tanks all while being cap stable. The need a savage nerf because of how out of whak they are for their class. They are cruisers, they need the stats of a cruiser not shiptypes two classes above them.

It is why I have no reason to train command ships on this character. Why would I fly an Eos or Astarte for pure combat when I can fly a Proteus with more bonuses, particularly the relatively long warp scramble range? My slave set makes my buffer pretty crazy for a cruiser, even with several low slots towards weapon damage. My MWD requires hardly any capacitor. Blaster projection with null is good with a blaster setup.

That was a long time ago, when eve was still a relatively new and refreshing game with many unexplored possibilities. You think the same thing would happen again where eve has reach the deadlock stage (meaning newer players are much rarer now as eve has now become a veteran only game). Among the vets of eve, I'd say a good 75% of them fly T3C extensively. Whoever thought of the idea of bringing out the T3Cs outdid themselves and now the T3Cs are a mainstay ship class in eve. The only way CCP would get away with destroying them is if they replace them with another ship class that replicated their previous uses. Right now I'd say the only ship class that can do that are the CSs, that is assuming CCP intends on taking care of these forgotten hulls.

Again, the same argument you just made were used when CCP did the nano nerf.

I'm not that experienced enough nor are others around my age to just flock to another ship class when they all of a sudden become useless. If CCP removed the Tengu and Protues from it's current place in eve, I would be lost as what to fly in eve. The Cerberus and Deimos don't come close to the versatility that their T3 big brothers provide. What other ship class could replace them? If they leave the void empty, I'm 95% certain it would have a whiplash effect and the sub rate would drop another 30-40% (including myself & alts). Unless they buff the CSs (t2 BCs) to match the current T3Cs standards, the consequences would be dire old timer.

Man I just hope when CCP decides to open a forum discussion on rebalancing the T3Cs, that they DON'T take your advice. Old timers like yourself have forgotten what's it like for newer players when they're finally able to get a handle on a game like eve.

Maybe, maybe not. Watching videos of the 100mn Tengu in it's glory days was an delightful experience....sigh if only I was playing eve during those days.

And yes when they were that strong I can understand your reasoning (baltec1) for wanting to destroy them, but they are nowhere near that strong now. I wouldn't be surprise if baltec1 was victimized by these OP ships in those days, which explains his prejudice attitude towards them now.

Any two of those things simultaneously on a T3 wouldn't be inherently broken. Some combinations of three may even be acceptable.

But all of them at once is too much.

No one ship class should be able to do it all, and do it all so well.



And no, price is not a justification. In the era of massive alliance SRPs replacing lost T3s en masse, balancing by price is utterly ineffective.