Battleship QoL Updates

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
1

I’d like to propose some battleship QoL improvements. While i think battleships as a whole need a good looking at in some cases, there are some fairly minor changes that can be made that help liven up the ship line without making drastic changes to how they interact in the game.

Signature Resolution Buff

All battleships should see a scan resolution buff of 25-50. Why? See my list below and compare to capitals:

Dreadnoughts:
Phoenix: 87mm
Naglfar: 106mm
Moros: 93mm
Revelation: 100mm

Carriers:
Nidhoggur: 93mm
Chimera: 75mm
Archon: 87mm
Thanatos: 81mm

Amarr
Abaddon: 106mm
Apocolypse: 118mm
Armageddon: 137mm
Napoc: 150mm
Navy Geddon: 137mm

Caldari
Raven: 106mm
Rokh: 93mm
Scorpion: 137mm
Navy Scorpion: 93mm
Navy Raven: 131mm

Gallente
Domi: 112mm
Hyperion: 137mm
Mega: 118mm
N. Domi: 112mm
N. Mega: 118mm

Minmatar
Maelstrom: 112mm
Tempest: 125mm
typhoon: 143mm
typhoon fleet: 143mm
tempest fleet: 125mm

Keep in mind, these are not even including NSA on carriers. So a naked nidhoggur (which almost none are fit w/o an NSA) has the same exact same scan resolution as a Scorpion Navy Issue, or a Rokh. A Revelation has only 6mm less scan resolution than an Abaddon or a Raven. The Naglfar has the same resolution as those ships and is then only a stones throw away to multiple other battleships as far as scan res goes.

There are some outliers, like the typhoon/tyFi, Napoc and Mach that have decent scan res. Those don’t need much work, but a small % increase wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Battleships are no longer the biggest ship on grid anymore, they should not be matching, or even close to capitals with scan resolution. Especially since a carrier can lock and pop a battleship before a battleship can even lock its fighters.

Warp Speed

A simple change would be to just increase all subcap warp speeds by +1.0AU. So battleships are still the slowest subcap, but now warp at cruiser speed, which improves the ability for them to roam and not be so boring. This also means that you can use 1 hyperspatial rig to keep up decently with most comps and don’t need to sacrifice 2 rig slots, since hyperspatials are % based and not a flat number increase.

Also, a point of consideration, its not so much the time it takes to warp that makes battleship warp speed an issue, its the time it takes to exit warp. As you’ll just sit still for 5 seconds and it still shows you’re in warp. So alternately, if you could adjust how warp deceleration is tied to warp speed, that might help as well.

While more changes are needed to help revitalize battleships, these are fairly minor and easy to implement that will help resolve some glaring issues with battleships. It will also give a better perspective, once implemented, to see what battleships really need in future iterations.

8 Likes
2

How about no?

3

Battleships don’t need any of those changes. If you want something that locks and warps fast grab a smaller ship. I personally use a pacifier to catch a lot of people because it warps faster and with no sebos it’s scan res is 1k plus covert ops cloak and self repping bonus.

Edit: stupid auto correct things

4

Reading comprehension is hard.

I said nothing about catching people. Its the fact battleships have almost the same lock speed as capital ships. Meanwhile carrier’s have an NSA which makes them lock like frigates and battleships still lock at the same pace as a carrier without an NSA or a dread.

In case you haven’t noticed, every ship class as it increases in size distances itself from the next ship class in sig resolution. This hasn’t happened for batlteships and capitals. For example:

A Rifter has a scan res of 825mm
A Thrasher has a scan res of 687mm
A Rupture has a scan res of 362.5mm
A Hurricane has a scan res of 275mm
A Tempest has a scan res of 125mm
A Naglfar has a scan res of 106mm

Rifter to Thrasher has a 150mm difference
Rupture to hurricane has 100mm scan difference
Hurricane to tempest has a 150mm difference
Tempest to Naglfar has a 19mm scan difference

Or we can do the Nidhoggur comparison with a Navy Scorpion or Rokh that has exactly the same scan res (93mm). But with an NSA, the niddy will lock like a frigate.

There is no significant drop compared to every other ship class. Battleships are being treated like capital ships as far as sig res goes. So either battleships go up in sig res, or capitals go down significantly.

Adding 25-50mm more sig res to battleships won’t suddenly make you have insta-locking battleships, but you won’t spend 30s trying to lock a frigate.

If everything goes faster by 1.0AU, then battleships are still the slowest subcap. So whats the difference? Its literally a QoL change that doesn’t effect the balance of the game. It doesn’t make BS faster than any other subcap on a base level. It does help for roaming purposes and giving them more options as i already discussed.

2 Likes
5

Doesn’t need a change. If you want higher scan res then use sebos or a smaller ship. As for warp speed increase use rigs or implants or a smaller faster ship.

6

I want to see BS warp speed upgraded just not by upgrading whole game warp speed to accommodate BS warp buff.
BC,s got their warp speed upgraded when CCP realized they are too slow to keep up with cruisers battleship need same kind of nudge up

2.4 (is 2.0) pedestrian battleships
2.6 (is 2.2) marauders
2.7 (was 2.5)BC
3.0 cruisers

Slight bonus to sig res i also see as good change just not as impactful as giving them more ability to keep up.

1 Like
7

Regarding lock times of carriers vs battleships, something that is frequently not considered is the ship doing the combat is in fact the fighters not the carrier itself. Consider the fighter’s size in comparison to the battleship and suddenly the lock time is no longer so imbalanced, in fact it’s right where it should be.

8

That is what bugs me the most.

9

But a defanged carrier is in effect an unfitted battleship. It can’t shoot anything

11

I’m of the opinion that carriers should have a “point defense module”
Think of a quad medium turret/missle launcher. Something that has a chance to whittle down whatever has you pointed. Not too fast, but something that any engineer would look at and go hmm, ya know what if this thing runs out of fighters it’s screwed so it could use a few small guns.

I get why they don’t, but the engineer in me grumbles about lack of point defense on both capitals and battleships.

12

Smartbombs?

13

Scan res is based on the ship, not the weapon system. Light drones are smaller than fighters and frigates. Do VNIs, ishtars or Domi’s have 3k scan res because they have bonused light drones?

No, because those are considered weapons of the ship. You cant undock in a light drone, just like you dont undock in a fighter. Hence, you undock in a carrier, your lock speed is dictated by the size of your ship, not the weapon system.

1 Like
14

I will pass the recommendation on, but I personally think that the existing fits for BSs generally use a sebo to deal with lock time issues, and it tends to work.

15

Thank you.

With respect, that is not the point of the post. I also put SEBOs on battleships, ive even made bubble camping battleship’s placed in horde’s old travel routes to catch things.

The point is there is none or very little sig resolution change when going from a battleship to a capital. Going from a hurricane to a tempest is almost a 50% change in scan res. Going from a tempest to a naglfar is a 13% difference. There is a similar progression for other ship lines as well with others also being 50%, 25% or 20% less than the size smaller than them.

There just isnt a distinction between capital sig res and battleship. Especially when a carrier gets an NSA that lets it lock like a frigate and use a highslot. Whereas a battleship has to use a mid/low and the scan res bonus is % based. So if you start low, a 60% bonus really doesnt change much (Rokh, Scorpion Navy are good examples, sitting at 93mm, the same as a non NSA’d niddy). A rokh with a scripted SEBO is 112.5mm. So 22.5mm extra scan res at the sacrifice of a midslot on a shield ship. Using a sig amp instead only gets you to 108mm. So a 15mm increase. Using both gets you to 170m, but now you’ve used 2 mods just to get non-capital ship lock speed and lost tank and/or damage.

Which is why id propose even some mild massaging of BS scan res of 25-50 more resolution. Alternatively, reduce capital sig res by the same amount instead.

1 Like
17

Oh look, 3 battleships in my top ten kills list.

But hey, it’s a day ending in Y so somebody has to tryhard on the forums.

4 Likes
18

The reason the gap is so narrow at that level is because it’s not supposed to be linear progression because of the way the math for targeting works, increase everyone’s scan res and run the risk of everything being to quick to lock.

19

There is still no excuse for a battleship to have the exact same scan res or worse than capital ships. See Rokh and SNI compared to naglfar, revelation, niddy. The phoenix and archon are only 6mm less. Which is only a 6% difference.

Thats like a hurricane having the same scan res as a tempest or raven.

20

Your comparing different races to each other. Minmatar have the highest scan res comparing them to others is not how you should look at it. Compare the racial carrier to the same races battleship.

21

A rev and abaddon is only a 6mm difference.

A Rokh or SNI is 93mm compared to a phoenix which is 87mm. Also a 6mm difference.

Carriers get highslot NSA’s which allow them to lock insanely faster than a SEBO BS ever could.

The point is, regardless of race, any battleship should not be close to capital ships. Thats like saying a drake should be 106mm (same as a raven) just because caldari have low sig res. However a drake is at 244mm and a raven is 106mm. More than a 50% drop going from a BC to a BS. Only a 6% difference between a SNI/rokh and a phoenix. Then about a 20% difference between a Rokh/SNI and a Chimera (or 18mm difference) . But the Chimera gets a NSA, allowing it to lock like a frigate and not lose any tank to do so.

22

So what, scan res out of ecmvery aspect of a ship is relatively not important as you go up in ship size. The reason it’s important is to catch small fast targets In which case you use a small fast ship with high scan res. If your using a battle ship or capital ship odds are you there for heavy dps not for tackle so scan res is not as important. As for the difference between scan res I really don’t care because it’s A) a game not real life or based 100% in science and B) not broken. Why do you care so much?