And why do we need COMMAND ships for that?
Even in a bigger small scale roaming gang, we're probably looking at 3 command ships for bonuses (wing + 2 squads?).

In order to not lose DPS for bringing command ships in their respective roles, they need somewhat competitive DPS and of course they need a bit better survivability to not be no-brains primary.

Somewhat competitive does NOT mean that it should be the best option to replace all regular DPS (i.e. in their size BCs and even navy BCs) with COMMAND ships. An all-command fleet should ideally perform significantly worse than a mixed fleet with only the required number of command ships.

Anything else would clearly signal that the command ship is not a T2 ship (a.k.a. tailored towards a special role) but simply an improvement over the regular BC - which is what navy or pirate are for, not T2 specialisations.

All changes are acceptable,

but theres one thing that doesnt allow me to sleep,

the CS ship models,

PLEASE either make NEW ONES (dont be lazy bastards as with new pretty 3d login screens for each expansion) or keep them like now. Sleipnir in a cane hull would make me puke,

I'll go ahead and throw my opinion out there. As far as I'm concerned all of these "you're ruining fleet ships" people can keep crying. as a solo/small gang pilot my initial reactions to these command ship changes were "HELL YEA BABY!" but after loading the new changes into EFT to start making beast fits...this is just utter crap.

http://i.imgur.com/lsS3OPC.png - Old Claymore

http://i.imgur.com/BcZlMx9.png - New Claymore that a change in t2 rigs can't even touch

give me my damn neuts back. The 490 dps is irrelevant and the tank/neuts more than made up for it. But now no amount of isk can make that fit work like it used to.

http://i.imgur.com/jp2EMvq.png - You seriously intended the fit to look like this? or worse? 2 powers and a cpu rig to make something work that worked before without even a fitting implant.

I'll take my SIGNIFICANTLY LESS DPS yet UNDENIABLY BETTER FITTING POTENTIAL old claymore over this ****. You turned the underdog into a gimped freak that thinks it can play with the big boys.

and I haven't even looked at the others yet.

I won't be looking for responses to this as I don't usually post on the forums, I just read the main topics and form my own opinions about what's new (which btw, again coming from a full time solo/small gang pilot, seriously thank you for the much needed buff to active tanks, much appreciated). just wanted to let you fine devs know what an amazing ship with great potential you screwed up.

you mean remove the bonus to links?

Fitting what you want on a ship is intended to take creativity and require tradeoffs.

In your case I advise checking out meta modules. Switching the LSEs and DC to meta 4 and dropping to two BCUs allows your fit to work without any fitting mods or implants, even with T2 links. Add Genolution CA-1 and CA-2s and a 3% cpu implant it works with 3 BCUs.

It's actually been part of the original tiericide design from the start of this balance pass that T2 ships should have tighter fittings than T1, since they are built for players with higher SP. We've diluted that quite a bit by giving a HACs and Command Ships tons of fittings (probably too much but we can always go back and adjust later as needed) but I beleive the original intent has a valid basis. One of the things we look at when we design a ship is how "forgiving" it is, in piloting skill required, cost of losing it, difficulty fitting. T2 can be a bit less forgiving as long as the rewards are there for people who overcome the slight challenge of dropping a mod to Meta 3 or 4 once and awhile.