Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Battleships have a small niche, but many can be killed easily by cruisers, even frigates with enough time. While this of course goes hand in hand with the intent that skill plays an important role in winning fights, it is also not particularly realistic, nor is it a good reason to field a battleship for anything other than ratting. It also fails in allowing a BS to counter a HAC unless the HAC messes up badly and gets webbed (thus, the smart money is on the HAC regardless of skill).

A blob of HACs will obliterate a blob of battleships, unless they've got logistics or ridiculous tanks or the battleships know they'll be facing speed tanks and fit accordingly (edit: And then they don't stand a chance against battleships). A solo HAC can kill a solo BS reliably.

More often than not, battleships stay off the field because losing one of them is a significantly larger loss than that of a single cruiser, even a HAC.

To that effect, I propose the introduction of proximity burst ammunition. Projectile, Hybrid, and Missile variants. For a visual, turn on an air raid siren and imagine a huge wave of WW2 era bombers flying over your city as AA guns shoot explosive shells up at them.

How they would work is that they would be shot at a target and explode in the vicinity of that target. Anything nearby (500m) would be splashed, including the actual target which would not receive any directly dealt damage.

On the topic of balance, the intent would be to make the fight close between a T1 BS and a HAC. A BS with their weapons filled with this ammo type should stand a healthy chance of killing a HAC, where now the HAC would have to be pretty ******** to die to a T1 BS.

• The actual damage would be low. Very low. Enough that over the course of the time it would take for a HAC to kill a BS, a BS could kill the HAC. This of course depends wildly on fittings of said BS and HAC.
• The projectile speed and explosion velocity would be high. Very high. Enough to hit interceptors. The cepters would still have enough speed tank to mitigate some of the damage, but not all.
• Low optimal range would ensure that fast ships can out-range it and either disengage or refit with kiting/sniper fits. The larger the weapon, the longer the optimal, but of course.... (see next point...)
• Tracking speeds (or in the case of missiles, missile velocity) would allow for better damage application. For example, a light missile variant would track better than a heavy missile variant.

This would have the added advantage of encouraging people to fly off on their own in a fight, rather than just anchoring up on one person.

BSes are still used in fleets. But like everything else they have a niche. They are mainly used, pvp wise, in situations where you need a ship with high EHP good dps and a long reach such as but not limited to tearing down POSes, citadels, and some cap fights.

Smaller ships cruisers and below are for fast moving fleets. Depending on the goal of your fleet determines what hull ( or doctrine) you use. if you want in and out strikes you use frigs. If you want a mix of fast and firepower you use cruisers, if you want to be able to take something big long enough to broadcast for reps you use a BS.

What doesnt really seem to have a place in fleets right now is battlecruisers.

LOL. Only bad pilots will be beaten by small boat. I don't. And that fighter madness doesn't count, look what I did to that thanatos a little later.

We already got new tools for battleships. Mwds now have the capacitor cost of an afterburner and a grapple thingy makes all battleships a vindicator and a vindicator unstoppable.

Now the only thing missing would be to not have a jet-sky stop the engine of a boat that will just continue to fly whether a jet-sky is in the ocean or not, just no.

For the curious, an aircraft-carrier from the US-Navy will not be stopped by a jet-sky or two, they will just waltz over them and make a facetwitter thing of how daft people can be from the rear of the ship with the blood tainted remains of an attempt that wasn't thought through.

No defense fleet necessary.


And before I forget, sensor strength!


Let's all have a goody lookski at a regular Phoenix with a sensor strength of 73mm.

And let's have a look at the most technical advanced battleships from the most technical advanced and very same empire, the Scorpion:
Sensor strength: 83mm. Hmm.. Well, let's continue on with the show and look at a real boat, the Nightmare:

Sensor strength with one signal amplifier II: 159mm (increased from 138mm).

The 10.000 skillpoint question of the day, is someone in the Caldari office in Island missing a ONE on the keyboard maybe??