Thecla asked what my thoughts on battleships are on Twitter.
I think that there is a problem with the superfluous amounts of Pirate Battleships there are on the market, from boosts to anomaly ratting escalation chance and burner missions, driving down the value to the point where they are cheaper than the Navy alternatives (Making Navy BS unseen outside of eve tournaments or highsec missions). This also strains T1 Battleships somewhat too, as for less than a 100m extra you gain a huge power increase, which being 1/3rd of what your normally pay for a decent fit T1 BS, is usually a no brainer. StarFleetCommander, a Volta/Triumvirate FC mused with me on Teamspeak about, how, 3 years ago, Triumvirate were running Machariel fleets in the DR. And they lost a 200 man Mach Fleet, and then another a week after. This cleaned out the entirety of Jita of Machariels and resupplying their Machariel fleet became a huge issue. He said he recently checked Zkillboard, and 4x the amount of machs they lost are being lost on a monthly basis with no effect on Jita.
I think escalations are a good thing however, since they encourage people who usually stay in one system ratting, to venture out and run an escalation in another system. Mixing up gameplay for them, and perhaps, creating content for someone else who manages to catch them outside their usual safezone. I'm not sure how to reduce pirate BS proliferation, perhaps pirate ship BPCs could be removed from escalation sites.
I think Navy Battleships need to go through a balance pass, notably; Here are some of my preliminary thoughts on the ones that most stand out to me.
Navy Dominix - It performs worse than the regular Dominix in some situations due the lack of the tracking speed and range bonus. It got the hybrid damage bonus as a harken back to the old Dominix. It exists to make EFT generals who haven't undocked in the past 2 years to salivate over 2k DPS fits, there are better Vindicator fits for this for less ISK. Personally I'd just add the Dominix bonuses and keep the hybrid bonus.
Navy Armageddon - Just like the N.Dominix, it exists for people to remember the days of the old Armageddon. The Navy Apoc is a better laser damage platform because having tracking+optimal, with way better fitting, and secondary stats like speed and targeting is better than 15% DPS, utility high and a bigger drone bay. I'd change this to the current Armageddon with the extra stats from navy, +1 low, and slightly bigger drone bay.
Navy Megathron - The Vindicator is cheaper, does more DPS, has a 90% web with the same tracking bonus, and the extra HP on the Vindi almost makes up for the 8th low. I think if the Mega got a 50% Large Hybrid role bonus, with 5% damage per level, and -2 Turrets. It could be an interesting ship, 2 utility highs on a Gallente Blaster Battleship would be a nice niche that seperates it a bit more from the Hyperion and Vindicator.
Typhoon Fleet - The turret bonus should be swapped for something more useful
Tempest Fleet - Give it the same damage as normal Tempest 5% rof to 7.5%
As for Battleships in general, I think they could use a lot better targeting stats (Sensor Strength, Scan Res, Targeting Range). I wrote this a long time ago
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WeoQNrzcbohR_0nfMVCLIneCTFJF7YQN7dBhxaUhra4/edit . Most BS can't even lock a target past 100km naturally, which hurts MJD offensive plays, I also feel like for the cost of bringing a BS to the field for small gang (The warp speed/mobility), they are far too easy to control through ewar like ECM/Damps, with recent tiericide passes, there are many cruiser hulls with better targeting stats than them. It would be nice if the Sensor Strength and Lock Range got buffed to help deal with these ewar types, also, I feel that scan res can be adjusted upwards a tad.