Hello everyone!

The purpose of this post is to explain the last element of the battleship rebalance: build costs. We found that even internally this was a very sensitive subject, one which people had very strong feelings about, and so we spent a lot of time making sure that we went ahead with a good plan. We feel confident that we have that plan, and while we do appreciate feedback (as always), this proposal is very likely the way we will be proceeding at release.

Let me give you the 'what' first, then the 'why':

The AVERAGE build cost of a battleship is going up by around 40mil

Former tier 3 prices will not change substantially, and so the majority of the change in cost is carried by the former tier 1 and 2s.

Prices will be differentiated slightly by role ('attack' and 'disruption' being a bit cheaper than 'combat')

The reasons for the change are as follows:

The primary goal of tiericide is to eliminate any explicit power difference between ships within a class. If the power within a class is more or less level across all ships (which it is after the rebalance), the price should also be level.

So then, if prices are to be more level, where should this new price line be set? The obvious answer would be to just average the cost of all battleships and then set the prices at that average - top tier prices would come down, and bottom would go up. Unfortunately, with battleships, this was not possible. Top tier battleships represent an enormous amount of mineral consumption in EVE at their current costs. That means that lowering the cost of tier 3 battleships would have a recessionary effect on EVE's economy as mineral prices suffered.

That means we are to have prices more equal, but also, we can't lower the prices of the top tier ships significantly. This felt a bit uncomfortable at first, causing certain Devs to say "OMGWTFZFBFBFBB!!" when they saw the proposal, but we looked into some metrics around player wealth and income and found that EVE players are making money faster and faster, and even new players should have no trouble enduring the bump in cost. On top of this, inflation provides room for cost increase as well.

The result is that we all agree that this price increase should not hurt demand substantially, and reflects a more healthy overall design philosophy than the old tier system.

Special Note: You will NOT be able to buy battleships now and then refine them for the increased cost after the changes go live. Like all previous tiericide changes we will use extra materials to implement this cost change.

We hope you agree, and look forward to your feedback.

CCP Rise

The tier 3s worked as a good bar because they show that if battleships are balanced well they are perfectly consumable at the tier 3 price.

What a bullshit of a statement. Tier 3 "worked" exactly because of it being tier 3. Outperforming everything by a huge margin. Argumenting this way earn you no credibility at all.

Oh god forbit, 40mil!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pubbies lol

protip: it costs 32mil roughly~ to buy the guns on a talos. You could up it to 60mil and people would still buy 8 t2 neutron blasters and not stop flying taloses.

Perhaps 10% - 20% more tank overall for BS?

Generaly i have no problems with these changes, but the performance gap between BS and BC is allready low... Some Battlecruiser reach allmost as much tank as some BS.... And the damage you gain by flying a battleship is not THAT high... Something has to make up for the lack of agility and speed.

Just make them a bit more tough. These are ships designed for direct face-to-face standoffs and should be able to take a beating (or more of it) ;)

No. This is EVE.

You have a right to nothing.

Have you been living in a alternate universe which is a direct parallel to our own? ;)

No, some people are just oblivious to the real world and like living under a rock. They are also the same people who cover their ears.. say, I cant hear you and scream lalalalalalalala over and over.

If people don't like it don't buy it.

The dev blog is pretty clear. CCP wants the battleships to cost more because eve players are rich.

The spin about making sure that mineral usage would change if they reduced the build cost to tier 2 levels is just spin. if they were honest about the subject they would just determine what the actual average mineral usage for battleship manufacturing is and set the number at that point. Sounds like it should be easy to quantify and still be able to make happy hour.

Instead they state in the dev blog eve players are rich they can afford it. If people don't like it don't buy it.

Insurance better damn well cover these price increases, and I mean an exact relative refund to the increase so the %payout of insurance increases a little from current payouts (so the isk loss per hull remains the same).

If not:

Congratulations on a futile effort.

You boost battleships by a tiny amount. Then you increase costs by a significant amount.
Seem fair? I think not!

Hell the rokh was nerfed, the scorp gets a low slot and the raven gets a med slot and loses ehp. (But their sig got better!!!11) The domi loses a damage bonus too.

And then you increase huge price hikes like this!??

Raven was what (correct me if wrong), ~140mill, Scorp was ~100mill. Now they're ~230... TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILLION??

NO ONE will fly a raven, scorp, mega, domi etc. etc. etc if you don't increase insurance significantly.

This may actually hurt producers if no one will buy their product!

What a waste of time this battleship reiteration was, we were better off before

You want a bigger isk sink? Guess what, the average joe of Eve isn't some multi-billionare moon miner that can throw away their isk, you're not helping anyone.

/rant.

i like this, points out the critical flaws

(and don't forget the Ammar BS's, CCP seems to be going along the lines of "lets **** up every ship that's NOT gallente or minmmatar")

Insurance better damn well cover these price increases, and I mean an exact relative refund to the increase so the %payout of insurance increases a little from current payouts (so the isk loss per hull remains the same).

If not:

Congratulations on a futile effort.

You boost battleships by a tiny amount. Then you increase costs by a significant amount.
Seem fair? I think not!

Hell the rokh was nerfed, the scorp gets a low slot and the raven gets a med slot and loses ehp. (But their sig got better!!!11) The domi loses a damage bonus too.

And then you increase huge price hikes like this!??

Raven was what (correct me if wrong), ~140mill, Scorp was ~100mill. Now they're ~230... TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILLION??

NO ONE will fly a raven, scorp, mega, domi etc. etc. etc if you don't increase insurance significantly.

This may actually hurt producers if no one will buy their product!

What a waste of time this battleship reiteration was, we were better off before

You want a bigger isk sink? Guess what, the average joe of Eve isn't some multi-billionare moon miner that can throw away their isk, you're not helping anyone.

/rant.

Yeah matar fanboy devs and now the new gall fanboy dev whose favourite ship is the talos , no wonder battleships and especially not matar/gall are pretty bad.

And as others said , people wont use battleships if they think it wont worth the costs ---> probably even less minerals will be used up

Btw why not increase frigs/cruisers costs then too? They are used a lot ,could be a great miner sink ^^
Also ammo should cost much more + t1 crystals should get dmg +drones should cost ammo too great isk sinks right there :O
or warping should cost fuel -> another isk sink
logging on should cost isk --> another one
one is better than the other do it ccp!!!!

That's happens when economist start saying what the game should look like....
I'm having more doubts that CCP at all plays the game. You need to stop watching the excel and try to play the game....
Yeah you might say it's balanced but it's f... useless at that price.

This will really hurt newer players.

If they are smart and follow the 'don't fly it if you can't afford to lose it' - it will be a lot longer until they can get into a battleship hull than it is now. If they are foolish and get into a BS hull before they can afford a loss, the likely loss will hurt them even more.

Given that, for ~4-5m SP pilots, battleships are by far the best PVE ships available to them, this will hurt PVE oriented newbies badly. And it will also result in less battleships fielded in PVP engagements - players with 1-2b in assets won't be able to shrug off a Dominix loss the way they can now.

This will lead to more risk aversion, just as the changes to t1 cruisers have made newer players less willing to risk one of those in PVP than they were a year ago when the boats were a lot cheaper.

More proof in that from how they just buffed the Matar dread and removed the launchers and put it to turrets and gave it a huge bonus, turning it into pretty much the best dread in game, and said nothing about the phoenix and nothing on capital missile weapons.

:)
Oh i love that dread boost , the naglfar will be so minmatar , with being just better than the other dreads it is so minmatarish.

Also love how the loki became the no1 t3 ship for pvp too, ccp-s quick reaction to nerf the tengu payed off pretty well.

Isnt it strange when a caldari boat shows up on top 20 it suddenly gets a nerf?
Falcon->nerfed
Drake-> nerfed+will be nerfed as it still shows up on the list
Tengu->nerfed
Rokh->soon to be nerfed
Naga->probably will get a nerf soon^^

but when minmatar ships are there nothing is done as they work as intended,intended to be the superior ships for pvp