EVE General Discussion

As a smaller ship, it should be cheaper. As a smaller and cheaper ship, it should do less damage (a lot less). It should also have lower skill requirements than a dreadnought. This would make capital-killing more accessible to lower-skill and/or lower budget toons, and would allow warring factions a greater array of options for capital-killing. Dreadnoughts would definitely not be obsolete, as their incredible DPS would be well worth the skills, isk, resources, time, effort, and risk involved in using them.

Also, the battleship version should be more mobile. There is no need for it to use a siege module to get its damage. It should use capital weapons and get considerably more dps than a standard battleship, at the cost of tracking and signature resolution (if signature resolution even makes a difference). But it would also infer a big strategic advantage, as it would be a mobile capital-assault platform, capable of getting into place and evacuating much more quickly than dreadnoughts. It could give chase to capital ships.

I don't feel I have enough knowledge to determine whether or not these ships should have jump drives or not.



Here's a possible setup for a capital-killer battleship (Amarr):
3 high slots, 3 turret hardpoints
4 medium slots
7 low slots
8000 MW powergrid, 600tf CPU

Role Bonus: -99% powergrid requirements for capital weapons
+~100% increase in damage of capital weapons (don't have EFT so not sure of the exact value that should be here)
Amarr Battleship skill bonuses:
-10% reduction in Capital Energy Weapon capacitor cost per skill level
+5% to armor resistances per skill level
Capital Assault Ship skill bonuses:
+10% increase in damage of Capital Energy Weapons per skill level
+7.5% increase in tracking of Capital Energy Weapons per skill level

Notes: I put in 10% bonus damage per skill level because I think the role bonus should be adjusted to make lower skill values fairly low in DPS, further increasing the value of training the Capital Assault Ship skill as high as possible. I think bonus tracking is also a reasonable bonus because battleships are much more prone to drifting, and capital weapon tracking is low enough that a drifting battleship (or a bumped battleship for that matter) can easily have difficulty tracking a stationary target using capital weapons. Finally, note that there is no damage bonus from the base battleship skill. This is important and if you don't know why, just trust me on it.

-edit-
Rebalancing after some research:
* 450 CPU instead of 600 - 562.5 with electronics 5, even without weapon upgrades skill this leaves 322.5 CPU after pulse lasers or 262.5 CPU after beam lasers. That's enough for several hardeners and weapon upgrades, thus should be plenty for fitting without being too easy.
* -98% powergrid requirements - the dual giga beam lasers will take up almost all of the powergrid without PG bonuses, but the dual giga pulse lasers will leave a nice fat chunk for weapon rigs or armor plates.
* 80% increase in damage of capital weapons (if my calculations are correct, that should place these ships squarely between regular battleships and dreadnoughts)
* 15% increase in tracking of capital energy weapons (possibly) - These ships' turrets will have about an 8th of the tracking of regular battleship turrets, but with a 75% bonus, they will have about a 5th of the tracking of a battleship with no tracking bonus, or a 6th of the tracking of a battleship with a standard tracking bonus. I think that's reasonable. What do you guys think?

At first I thought you were trolling, but upon closer inspection I decided I think this is a good idea. Perhaps these faction rookie ships could be expensive to earn the first one, but once you have purchased one you get unlimited free ship replacements for it. If they're going to be training ships, they should not be allowed outside of highsec, or maybe their weapon systems will lock out if you try to attack a player that is not hostile with you and not in a faction rookie ship. And finally, losing this ship should not result in a lossmail.

There could even be cruiser and battleship versions, and a small variety of civilian modules to purchase/unlock for them as well.

I like this idea a lot because many players find Singularity to be too much of a nightmare to bother trying to install it. We'd like to be able to test out some combat builds without losing an expensive ship in the process. It won't be the same as the real ships, but a lot of the basics can be explored and practiced. Shouldn't be difficult to implement. Just give the ships about half the stats of normal ships their size, and make the civilian modules about the same as regular modules (except half damage weapons) but they can only be used on these specialized rookie ships.

I was thinking they should be purchased with loyalty points, but the rest you said sounds right. AUR should only be spent on aesthetic items.

militarized versoins of the rookie ships.

you have that, its called the suicide dread fleet.


what we need is a mother ship killer...

mother ship = supercarriers of today,,,,sorry i forget there are pubbies here that dont know what a MOM is.

A fortress shield ship. Kinda like Nexus The Jupiter Incident and how it had a fortress shield ship. Only, make it fit eve.

I would like to see less ships that are for specific roles, and more that can be used for many roles.

What I mean is, right now, if you scan down mining ship, you know that it is defenceless, more or less. But what if you didn't know that? I scan down a Hurricane and it could be a salvage boat, or an explorer or a gas miner or a PvE fitted ship or a PvP one. I think the now knowing would make EVE more exciting.

I wish they would remove all dedicated mining ships in my mind. If you had to mine using one of the existing "war" ships, wouldn't that make things more interesting?

Hell, I would like to be able to change out modules on the fly, so that I can use one ship for multiple things without having to refit at a station. That way I can go out exploring and if I find a great mining area, I can switch to mining lasers and grab some, and if I get jumped by a pirate that happens by, I can switch back to my guns and have a chance at fighting back. Base it on your "Jury Rigging" skill or some such.

This would also be condusive to more modules getting destroyed as ships get blowed up, and I think it would just add to the feel of EVE more.

Ships that can be built - only in Wormholes - to a players design (it would of course have to be from a template of current ship parts) - but such ships could only be used in wormholes...the reason being that the (insert technobabble here) prevents the ship from entering K space.


And - deep (very deep) space exploration/mining ships that can fly (slowly) between systems without using a jump gate - the ship can scan down new sources of minerals and special fuels as it travels


G

Both ideas are very good.

One possible idea is another ORE industrial ship, that acts as a mobile base of sorts, more than the Rorqual. Bigger cargo bay, larger drone bay, turret mountings for capital mining lasers, and several conversions of the Industrial Core to allow it to have manufacturing and research slots onboard the ship, with the issue being that it can't travel while it is manufacturing something.

Transport ship with a maintenance bay. Not a huge one, but large enough to hold 3 or 4 fitted cruisers. Make life easier for PVP pilots to get ships closer to wherever they do their thing.