Sustrai Aditua
Irubo Kovu
126
|
Posted - 2016.04.26 22:19:53 -
[1] - Quote
Many years ago I begged for a dedicated command ship. The BC response was an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, which always winds up a failure in aircraft design, and this spacecraft design probably holds the same fate, so why try? I thought a BS frame would be more appropriate for a command ship. (A CS should spend most of its time commanding, not trying to survive.)
Another attempt to drag the BC frame into use was the "hey, you can put heavy guns on this baby...sorry, no tank" version, each with its own design. Each becoming a sniper ship, not exactly the traditional BC role. My complaint about it all had to do with the Hurricane. Why not have a full rack of projectile turrets instead of the two launcher highs? A formidable tank and you've got a pretty vicious ship. However, I don't think the Hurricane has ever been seen as vicious.
When they introduced the T3 cruiser instead, I was crushed. I could see this dev team had the glitter in their eyes - their first time to see the brass elephant head. Now we lose SP when we lose our T3 cruiser. That says a little about the elephant in THIS room - and there the BC still languishes, all potential; no realization. Part of this is the confusion between a "heavy cruiser" and a "battle cruiser". For all intents and purposes they're one and the same.
I think we can assume having put all that effort into the modular T3 design and development, the BC was not even on the table. The aftermath makes one feel the BC isn't even in the room anymore. (When you're penalizing using a T3 by withdrawing skill points should it be lost, you're admitting you have a design flaw somewhere, and you're making the user pay the price for your mistake.)
The progression would be frigate - cruiser - battle, or heavy cruiser - battleship. The destroyer class came into play IRL as a means for anti-submarine warfare, a problem we don't have in EVE. I could see a similar concept as a seeker out of stealthed ships...along with its expendable role in launching scram bubbles. (Who'd use a T2 for this? Some NUT?)
I think it's the presence of the destroyer as a standard role vessel that mucks up this line of progression, and so confuses the developers. Couple this with the myth that all gamers want to see new "things" with every update (can we get mounts for our characters in quarters???) and the entire process is off the rails.
IN SHORT (tl;dr) The battle cruiser needs to be made viable even if it means ditching the highly flawed, and overly-convoluted T3 "heavy" cruisers. The DESTROYER needs to be reined in, given a less broad role, and maybe even made more specialized to one role. This will bring the frigate to battle cruiser transition back into relevance the way reality has it. |