Hi guys

You may or may not have seen me make a post a while back saying that we were intending to do a revisit on battleship and heavy assault cruiser balance for this summer, and I can now be a little more specific with you about that!

After digging into this we were both happy and a bit surprised to find that there weren't a lot of clear changes needed. Battleships especially seem to be in a pretty solid place. There are ships within the class getting less use than others, but that is almost completely due to either the meta favoring certain things (this is why the Abaddon isn't seeing a lot of action for example) or due to the ship falling into a niche that isn't extremely popular even though the ship performs exceptionally in that niche (the Hyperion is a great example of this). So the result is that for now we are going to leave BS alone and keep checking back for opportunities to make improvements.



PS - how would you feel about an 8/4/7 Tempest?

I still don't think ships like the abaddon or hyperion are fieldable because of their "exceptional performance in a niche" its extremely underwhelming and I'd rather bring a battleship or equivalent that can fill that niche as well as do other things. I think the Abaddon and Hyperion's massive capacitor problems (especially the Abaddon) make them very difficult to use and apply. I find countless fits that must use heavy capacitor boosters because the abaddon and other similar ships simply cannot be viable at all without them.

Because of this I feel that why should I ever bring an abaddon when any other battleship fills the role far better? Yes the abaddon has its massive tank and such but its not very good at anything else because of mobility, cap problems I just don't think its applicable as anything other than a brick, a heavy nearly unthrowable brick. Why bring an abaddon when I can field other battleships that have just as good tank and better DPS applications (or role applications for that matter) because they don't have capacitor problems!

Give the Muninn +1 mid -1 low tia in advance

And no keep the tempest as is

7-5-7 ......6 turrets feel free to remove some launchers
7.5% ROF
7.5% damage

maybe switch its mass with phoon and then buff its speed and agility

8 guns removes the utility high completely and takes a slot from either the low or mid slot .. its just bad choice .. when they could just do what they have done with bc's and the hyperion .. of just increasing the damage bonuses too allow better slot layout

8 guns removes the utility high completely and takes a slot from either the low or mid slot .. its just bad choice .. when they could just do what they have done with bc's and the hyperion .. of just increasing the damage bonuses too allow better slot layout

@CCP Rise - For battleships, They would be used more if you Nerf Tier 3 battlecruisers.

264 DPS - Omen 5x Heavy Beam Lasers II (Multifreq)
356 DPS - Harbenger 6x Heavy Beam Lasers II
455 DPS - Oracle 8x Tachyon Beam Laser II
455 DPS - Abaddon 8x Tachyon Beam Laser II

Removing 1 turret slot from the oracle drops it to 398 DPS

But Caldari gets even better.

272 DPS - Moa 5x Heavy Neutron Blasters
305 DPS - Ferox 7x Heavy Neutron Blasters
584 DPS - Naga 8x Neutron Blaster Cannon
467 DPS - Rokh 8x Neutron Blaster Cannon

I cannot be blind. There is a major disconnect here. A lot of people will say "Oh but the tank will off set the imbalance in DPS"
NO.
IT.
DOESN'T.

This "Ishtar has bonuses to battleship weapons" line that keeps coming up is interesting. We talked about it some earlier here. There's parts of it that we can agree about but it's also something that makes drones interesting across all drone using/bonused ships. You could use the same argument to say that Dominix's shouldn't get bonuses to light drones or that Vexors shouldn't be able to use lights or heavies or sentries.

We feel that in general it's an interesting and positive part of drone design that they aren't fixed to ship sizes nearly as strictly as other weapon types. We just need to find ways to have balanced ships as well.

You're going about this in completely the wrong way dude. You can't say that battleships are okay within the class, as battleships are designed to be versatile and cheap enough to engage other kinds of fleet comps. They aren't either of these things. Its goddamn crazy that a tengu costs as much to buy and fit out as an abaddon, for instance.

I wrote this really long post about why battleships need boosting or making cheaper, but it's gotten lost because CCP's forums are terrible.

Tl;DR, battleships have and will never exist within a vaccum, and in the current meta they are goddamned terrible and anyone who uses them in a fleet is an idiot. They need buffing, and making cheaper.

The Eagle does also need some love beyond a nominal speed increase. A 25m3 drone bay and a better damage bonus to put its rail DPS on par with the Deimos would go a long way.

As it stands, is there *ever* a compelling reason to use an Eagle over a Deimos? I can't see a niche for cruiser gun sniping, since at snipe ranges the sig/tracking of the guns doesn't matter so much, so wouldn't you just snipe in a Naga instead?

EDIT: The Eagle/Deimos comparison is even stranger as I think more about that drone bay. The Deimos is tailored for blasters which can hit smaller targets, and also gets the bay and bandwidth for light or medium drones for the same purpose; meanwhile the Eagle is tailored for rails which cannot hit small targets up close, and is also denied any drones at all, making it doubly vulnerable to smaller attackers. What's the logic there?

Regular Pest: 7-5-7, same stats as now
Fleet Pest: 8-5-7, 7 guns, 5% Damage, 10% Falloff per level.

And the whoel concept of the drone goes down the drain.

Peopel need to stop with hatred ideas. Simply making somethign removed from game is nto the solution.

And no one cares if it doe snto affect PVE. PVE doe snot need balance as much as PVP does.

phoon can do either .. it actually has more shield HP than armour .. weird indeed

maybe a compromise .. is 7-5-7 ....6 turrets with a 7.5% damage bonus 5% ROF .. with speed increase too be faster than phoon .. this way it would be the fastest shield tanked T1 battleship across the board .. or can be properly armour tanked..

Taht woudl be the most owrthless battleship ever!!!

Peopel dont get simple math? 5% damage per level have the same effect on a target that is outtrackign you barely than 5% tracking bonus per level! With the advantage that when the target is not moving you do more damage.

Please people. Use math a bit!

tracking can always be replaced under the guns formula for more raw damage. If your tracking makes you lose 50% of yoru dps you can overcome that by havign twice the raw DPS.... or doublign your tracking ( that was a raw unprecise statement jsut to transmit the general Idea.. that a tracking bonus is THE WEAKEST of all the gun bonuses).

Tempest slot redo will not cut it

7 guns so it can benefit from dual dmg bonus in actual dps number or add application bonus and buff rof.

If you want to keep tier 1 tempest as garbage with sub battle cruiser dps and agility than please for a love of all that is holy do fix tempest fleet issue so it is used over tier 1 phoon or maelstrom, it is a bloody shame where it sit currently.