Ok im not sure where you got this false premise that BCs online existed because of their damage or their tank or w/e. The primary reason that BCs online existed is because you could get more money back in insurance than the hulls cost. In the case of the drake you could get 5-10 mil more from insurance than the hull cost (in some cases more).

Drakes for example were never really that strong. HACs could out perform them, and some HACs (armor variants) could even out tank and out DPS them at the same time. The Cane was a bit stronger, in the sense it could do quite a lot of damage, and tank really well, and had awesome speed.

The nerf to BCs was never done to facilitate the usage of other hull classes, the nerfs (primarily to Drake and Cane) were done to balance the BC line of ships, as these 2 specifically just shat all over the capabilities of the other 6 BCs, to a lesser extent the Harby and Brutix also shat over the other 4 (Myrm, Ferox, Proph, Cyclone).

The only reason that we now have cruisers online, and not BCs online, is because they offer you the most bang for the buck, you can get solid tanks (40-50K) with solid DPS (300-500DPS) great speed (AB or MWD fit) for a fully fit cost of around 30-40M (less than the cost of a BC Hull). More over, Crusiers were designed to be balanced against other hull types, not specifically against just their hull size like BCs were.


Now with the amount of changes to weapons systems, addition of drones as a weapons platform, and revamps to mineral cost/insurance payouts. BCs themselves could use with a rework of their role. Which should be effectively similar to that of the Destroyers and Frigs relationship.

BCs should **** all over Cruisers. But they don't, so they go underused simply because Cruisers are better at shitting on each other for the price point.

Ideally you would have a system like this.

BS > BC
BS should eat BCs (they do)
BC > C
BC should eat C (they don't)
C > D
C should eat D (they do)
D > F
D should eat F (they do)

With

F > BC
F should eat BC with time (they do)
C > BS
C should eat BS with time (they do)

These of course are without any additional flavors such as someone webbing the Frigs down so BCs can eat them, similarly with Cruisers being webbed down vs BS. This is just a basic food chain...and when one link is missing you get left with which ever ship has the least predators above it...in this case. Cruisers, and is partially why we see limited use of BS.


In regards to OP....I like the idea of making the BC/C relationship more like Dessies/Frigs...this is how it used to be before CCP started Tiericide, and then kind of stopped halfway through the balance act in 2013.