Assembly Hall

CCP beat us to making a new topic about removing ship tiers, and changing allot of everything with ships.

Here is a link

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9129.

summary

ccp dude- "Introducing ship lines

That is why we want to remove ship tiers altogether, then refocus our balancing philosophy to be based on role. That means finding common themes, or lines that fit ships with the same purpose, then adjusting slot layout, HP and fittings within each class to support this goal.

Combat ships: designed for direct fights, such vessels are usually found spear heading an attack force, or sniping from long range. Have great damage and defense, but poor mobility. A good representation would be 18th century "ships of the line". EVE examples: Abaddon, Rokh, Hyperion, Maelstrom, Ferox, Maller.

Attack vessels: Made for hit and run assault, or flanking opportunities. Have great damage and mobility, but average defense. Similar in role with cavalry. EVE examples: Armageddon, Megathron, Tempest, Oracle, Thorax, Hurricane, Dominix, Myrmidon.

Bombardment ships: provide heavy fire support to pin the enemy down with constant barrage of ordnance. Have great damage and range, average defense and mobility. Can be compared to artillery. EVE examples: Raven, Drake, caracal.

Support vessels: mainly focused on assisting a friendly force, or disrupting an enemy fleet. Have average damage, poor defense, average mobility. Electronic warfare is the prime illustration of this line. EVE examples: Scorpion, Blackbird, Celestis, Arbitrator.

Industrial ships: provide the mining and logistic backbone to replace military losses and cover operating costs. Poor offense, average defense and poor mobility. An Oil platform is a fairly accurate depiction of industrial ships . EVE examples: Covetor, Orca, Rorqual, Iteron V.
"

Also includes putting destroyers and BC's in the general size progression, and racial prequisites so bc is required for BS.

Generally I support the ideas. Though I kind of like a ship skill that is not bound to a race (train one BC train them all). More interested in removing tiers and balancing within class then the changing of progression, even if it might not affect me much being super trained up to carriers and dreads (only needing to train up to BS 4 will make multi-racing capitals much easier). What do you think? Upvote if you like the blog, and post suggestions.

Personally, I'm fairly concerned about the changes to Dessies and BCs, specifically because I have BCs 5 and was considering training Dessies 5 soon. I just don't see this change to them ending well; either I end up getting the SP back for training one of them up to the level that I have now (and get robbed of access to the other three races due to an arbitrary change of CCP's) or I get SP for all 4 of them (and younger players have to train 4x as long to get access to the same stuff). Personally, I prefer the second option, but neither one is a 'good' solution.

Personally, I think they should just leave the BCs and destroyers how they are now, since it will cause the least pain overall. Otherwise, someone's going to end up getting pissed off and hurt, either way.

I do like the idea of the tiericide though, I'm hoping they balance and execute it well.

With T2 battlesips as they are, probably, except for PvE people who a marauder. Luckily the changes will make it easier to balance, say, BlOps and make them worth flying.

If there will be a new battleship design, I want it to have bonus to medium guns.
Lets face it, for most ship to ship combat, cruiser guns offer more damage than battleship guns.
The only practical uses of battleship guns now is fleet sniping, PVE, and maybe some POS bashing - all of which are well covered by existing ships

A battleship with cruiser gun bonus is going to be different enough to justify its existence. It's something new.