Only one thing will save links from alpha when they come on grid, adopting a pragmatic approach by having enough baskets for ones eggs. Look at the command redundancy built into modern armies, order givers start appearing all the way down at a squad level whereas in Eve we have gotten accustomed to having one big cheese.

Of course that paradigm change that is necessitated by eventual on-grid change will force CCP to cook up a more fluid way of assigning boosters as they should be expected to be near top of primary lists, if only to test tanks and having to manually assign boosters throughout a fight will drive people mad(der).
Another thing that might help on the extreme end of the scale is the Spectrum Breaker, a novel idea when they introed it but it kind of fizzled. Redesign/fix it and add a bonus to its use on CC's, effectively making them immune to pure alpha headshots.

The self same paradigm change is the reason why ALL the CC's should be on roughly equal footing when it comes to damage/application/tanking which is simply not the case with Damnation being the odd one out with even less output than its HAC counterpart but being able to brick itself.

In other words: It is impossible to balance anything to function on the large scale without unbalancing it on all other scales, so paradigms (read: fleet compositions) must be reevaluated and CCP must develop ways/means to ease that shift.

Luckily for CCP the heavy load won't come until links actually are to come on-grid so they have oodles of time to do the napkin dance and sketch out a solution .. but unless we are all willing to go through another CC balance pass when that glorious day arrives the fact that they are coming on-grid should be included in any and all deliberations this time around (all comes down to Dev time as with most things )

He is probably to Space Rich, to recognize this.

Well look, if I was using a command ship on grid in a 200-man fleet then I think 2 billion to keep the command ship alive is a fairly sensible trade - it's a 10 million premium per ship.

If it's a 10-man defence fleet against a marauding pack of cruisers, then probably the T2-fitted ship is fine. The other guys are unlikely to be able to organise enough simultaneous damage to alpha it.

Once on-grid boosting is mandated, people will have a choice of command link ships that will look something like this:

100m T1 battlecruiser (120k ehp?)
250m T2 command ship with T2 mods (200k ehp)
300m-1.5Bn T2 command ship with varying levels of faction mods (200-400k ehp)
2Bn+ Carrier with various fittings (2.5m ehp)
60Bn+ Titan (60m ehp)

pay your money, take your chances. This is Eve. It's not a nice game. That's how we like it, right?

But with everything from sov doctrines and ship balancing done using all level 5 skills as the base, anyone with less than 50 to 70 mil SP becomes kill board fodder .

You can be more or less "maxed" on multiple sup class ships with far less than 50m sp...

I have 57 million skill points. I never fly an expensive ship in combat without all skills to V for that hull, and never use a weapon system in combat on an expensive ship until I am level 4+ in its specialisation, but that's just me.

Expensive for me means "more than 10 million isk"

My alt, Goody Twoshoes Virpio has been trained from birth to be a maxed scanning and fleet boosting alt. All other roles are secondary to him. He has something like 37 million skill points and is level 4 command ships. He started boosting in a drake and a cyclone, to great effect. He focussed on the T2 warfare links prior to focussing on T2 command ships.

He's also a perfect tengu pilot (yes, even I, loather of the tengu, use one for scouting in wormholes), however I cannot bring myself to commit 600m isk to an off-grid boosting tengu as I find the idea offensive.

With the new changes he'll be polishing off his command skills in order to get into a minny command ship for shield roams, and probably an Eos for armour work since he can become effective with drones more quickly than with blasters.

I'm looking forward to seeing on-grid boosting, aka "Putting your money where your mouth is."

Another small set of changes based on what we're hearing from the Sisi feedback:

Nighthawk:
+100 PWG
+10 CPU

Another small set of changes based on what we're hearing from the Sisi feedback:

Nighthawk:
+100 PWG
+10 CPU

Sleipnir:
+50 CPU

why does the Sleipnir need +50 CPU? ... after you saying the fittings were actually generous and you wanted to take some back?

A lot of the fittings for command ships were quite generous, after looking at and considering feedback we determined that these two cases were the exception. We still have the option to pull some of these ships back a bit after seeing them in the wild for a few months, which is an option we will not hesitate to use quickly as needed.

I've also seen the idea expressed a few times to expand Target Spectrum Breakers to the Command Ships, and that's an idea I think has some serious merit. There likely isn't time to get it in for 1.1, but we'll investigate further and see what comes out.

so +50 CPU for ??? ASB's'

So when is the post about drones coming that was promissed during AT?

Another small set of changes based on what we're hearing from the Sisi feedback:

Nighthawk:
+100 PWG
+10 CPU

Sleipnir:
+50 CPU

A lot of the fittings for command ships were quite generous, after looking at and considering feedback we determined that these two cases were the exception. We still have the option to pull some of these ships back a bit after seeing them in the wild for a few months, which is an option we will not hesitate to use quickly as needed.

Useful, thanks--but what about the slot layout? This clears up (most of) the fitting issues the Nighthawk has, but it doesn't change the fact that the Claymore's slot layout makes it able to fit a much stronger shield tank...

edit: Also, wouldn't this just cause problems when the TSB breaks a lock from a friendly logi?

It would be nice if you could order your drones to overheat themselves :3

SoonGäó. But more realistically, we were supposed to have a thread on the Command Ship model changes that is "greyed out" now (since the thread doesn't exist), so where is that thread?

Oh yes, I am waiting impatiently for that thread!

I am looking forward to telling these guys how horrid their planned change to Nighthawk is. The current Nighthawk has a unique and sexy look... I want to keep it, not end up in a f**cking Drake with a new paint job!

The 'Black Drake' does look nice, and I would welcome it as a model for some other ship, but not the Nighthawk.

Why does every single CS have the same cap recharge? Pretty sure the Absolution should have a higher recharge than a Sleipnir given, oh I don't know, the fact that lasers take a **** ton of cap, projectiles and ASB's require ZERO. But hey, call me crazy.

And why does a T2 BC have less recharge than a T2 Cruiser?

I know I've already been bringing up this point in multiple threads but it's getting a quote because it needs to be addressed.

Have you even flown a beam absolution... I suggest you try it in small fleet or large fleet formation before saying that ship needs a range boost.

If the absolution got a range boost, it would quite possibly be the best sub-capital platform in game.