Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a suggestion to either nerf Attack Battlecruisers or buff tech 1 battleships if not both--but you can take from it what you will, and all I will present here is a comparison of their weapon power. It is my belief that given two ships of equal power output, in which one is more maneuverable and cheaper and the other is tougher, the former will overwhelmingly be the preferred option. If that one is also even more powerful, then why would anyone use the latter?



Attack Battlecruisers includes the Oracle, Naga, Talos, and Tornado. They all have 8 high slots, 8 turret hardpoints, and despite lower than combat battlecruiser fitting capacity they have enough CPU and powergrid reduction in fitting large turrets that they are able to reasonably easily fit a full rack of these. Now at first you might think that that puts them at battleship weapon power, but you must realize that most tech 1 battleships have only 7 weapons. Those that have 8 still have only one weapon skill bonus, while the attack battlecruisers have 2. Well you might counter that the battleships have larger drone bays, but I would say that gives these battleships mixed weapon systems in an attempt to reach the weapon output of a much smaller, faster, and cheaper ship that has a non-mixed weapon setup. And furthermore, battleship drone bays were nerfed at some point and aren't quite what they used to be. Here, I'll make a list of ships and their weapon power:

Armageddon, Dominix, and Hyperion are being excluded as these are drone ships. Scorpion is being excluded as it is not a weapon-oriented ship.


Oracle: 8 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses
Naga: 8 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses
Talos: 8 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses, 25mbit/sec drone bandwidth
Tornado: 8 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses



Apocalypse: 8 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses (neither is a damage bonus), 50mbit/sec drone bandwidth
Abaddon: 8 turrets, 1 weapon bonus, 75mbit/sec drone bandwidth

Raven: 6 launchers, 1 utility high, 2 weapon bonuses, 50mbit/sec drone bandwidth
Rokh: 8 turrets, 1 weapon bonus, 50mbit/sec drone bandwidth

Megathron: 7 turrets, 2 weapon bonuses, 75mbit/sec drone bandwidth

Typhoon: 6 launchers, 1 utility high, 2 weapon bonuses, 100mbit/sec drone bandwidth
Tempest: 6 turrets, 2 utility highs, 2 weapon bonuses (both are damage bonus), 75mbit/sec drone bandwidth
Maelstrom: 8 turrets, 1 weapon bonus, 100mbit/sec drone bandwidth


So in conclusion, none of the battleships can even match the power output of an attack battlecruiser without mixing drones into the equation, and an attack battlecruiser can get in, fire weapons, and get out before a battleship can even properly deploy drones. I submit that battleships are not proper siege ships when there are skirmish vessels that can hit harder.

How do the figures match up when you look at something more in depth than 'this is the number of turrets'? I mean, you're comparing glass cannons that evaporate if you look at them funny to bricks that you need to put some effort into killing.

Just wait they wil have a comeback as soon as some alliance decides to make a decent fleet setup.

The biggest problem is that there is no reason left to bring them no gatecamp that needs to be breached or structure to be shot under fire. So why should anyone bring them?

Increaasing DPS is the worst option because it destroys the balacing of the entire game.
Then everything that is bigger needs its DPS to be doubled and as a result ISK income doubles.

Battleships are good maybe reduce the DPS of the Attack Battlecruisers a bit.

CCP knows that ABC's are overshadowing BS's, Hence the talk about an upcoming buff to CBC's and BS. ABC's may get some slight tweaks also as they are being overshadowed in non gank places by cruisers also but CCP have been talking mainly BS & CBC.

With regards to BS, EHP is actually the easiest place to tweak them without significantly changing overall balance, as higher EHP affects time to kill but not local tank (assuming passive shield regen gets decreased by a similar amount)
Base local rep power 'could' be a place to tweak BS, as the Cruiser > BS local tank step is not very impressive, but something would have to happen to the fitting requirements of XL shield reps to make that possible, as otherwise shield cruisers end up crazy. So it's not an ideal place.

I think increasing base hit points for battleships is on order, as well as releasing battleship-sized shield extenders and armor plates. I agree with attack battlecruisers being brought down to medium turrets. They should keep the poor fittings and have a reduction to the powergrid cost of fitting medium turrets. I also want to see their turret role bonus affect all turrets to put them in line with other tech 1 ships which are fully capable of fitting weapons that they do not have any bonuses for.

Well armor plates have all of the same iterations that shield extenders have plus one in between each. The 1600mm is between cruiser (800mm) and battleship (which would be 3200mm). Going one size up from large shield extender would, following with the standard progression, grant it maybe +130-150% over the large. The large T1 is 137.5% more than the medium but the medium is 100% more than the small. Small and medium are both for frigates, large is kind of on the small end for battlecruisers. Armor would of course be double going up one. Powergrid needs to be high enough to strongly discourage battlecruisers fitting it without necessarily outright disallowing it--more importantly it should cost something significant to a battleship so that they don't basically get to fit it for free. I'm thinking 2500MW for armor plate and 1250MW for shield extender.

X-Large Shield Extender I
56 Tf CPU
1250 MW powergrid
shield HP: +4500
sig radius: +75 m

X-Large Shield Extender I
70 Tf CPU
1350 MW powergrid
shield HP: +6000
sig radius: +80 m


3200mm Steel Plates I
35 Tf CPU
2500 MW powergrid
Armor HP: +7000
mass: +13,500,000 kg

3200mm Steel Plates II
40 Tf CPU
2750 MW powergrid
Armor HP: +9600
mass: +14,500,000 kg


These stats are based roughly on normal progressions throughout those modules, but I had to do some estimation and extrapolation because they rates are inconsistent.

They look pretty good. Faction versions would be about 5% higher, yes? Maybe +250 HP for a Faction XL Shield Extender and +400 for a Faction XL Steel Plate.


Depending on whether T1 battleships get an EHP buff, and depending on how much. Realistically, I don't think we're going to see more than a 10% buff to overall EHP (but I could be wrong). Which means there's still a place for XL shield extenders and armor plates.

With a good hardener fit, it should give more like 50%, and I think that's about right. I don't see any reason not to also give the larger extender and plate, it should be possible for a buffer fit battleship to get at least twice the EHP of a combat battlecruiser, and they need a lot of bonuses to HP to get into that territory, especially if we're thinking about buffing CBC HP.

Battlecruisers get like zero HP though. That's the point - they are all DPS and no tank, whereas battleships reach nearly equal DPS with a comparatively massive about of EHP.

The figures show that BS are still alliance doctrine ships and used more often in pvp vs ABC's.