Bringing Battleships Back

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

One of the biggest problems with battleships is their speed. They have lots of other problems, obviously, but I imagine that gangs might start roaming with them if they weren’t a 100% guaranteed death. And by guaranteed death, I mean the suicide of the player in preference over the long travel time.

So I had a thought. And keep an open mind, it’s a radical thought. What would honestly get messed up, if they gave T1 (only T1) battleships jump drives with like 2-4LY of range? Would be able to jump to normal cynos, and also to combat recon cynos, which have the same light time as a covert cyno but can only be jumped to by battleships (blops and otherwise) and are visible like normal cynos, lit only by combat recons, another under-represented class of ships.

It doesn’t collide with blops, because blops are only there to bridge bombers anyways, but even if they weren’t blops have cloaking bonuses, massively larger range, and massively lower fatigay.

It doesn’t collide with capitals, because battleships and capitals have almost no overlapping gameplay between them.

It doesn’t oppress other subcapitals, because battleships are still among the easiest ships in the game to kill on account of said “other problems”.

It doesn’t buff blobbing groups, because they blob with caps already. Going down to T1 battleships would be a downgrade.

It doesn’t really hurt small groups in their home space, because if you were going to get blobbed by these, you were just going to get blobbed by a “current meta” fleet anyways.

The small range and normal fatigue means that they’d be spending a good bit of their time gating, but a properly planned fleet could easily use jump drives to speed things up, or avoid the currently inevitable gate camp that will lead to their un-fun demise, or to enter a fight with good grid placement.

The jump drive would take a high-slot, and said module would require all the regular jump drive training that you would normally need/benefit from. Said 2-4LY of range would be with JDC5. Fitting requirements could be balanced such that normally tight fits wouldn’t work, a trade-off for the massive increase in mobility. The fact that it’s a fitted module means that existing fits and their associated metas are untouched directly.

2

You make a T2 battleship that warps around cloaked and we will fly one. Till then, we stick with ships that can get out of their own way. :slight_smile:

3

T1 battleship will never have the place it did due to buffs on smaller ships,due to warp speed changes,due to capital ship spam and due to wealth allowing players to afford using better ships like pirate battleships

4

Titan bridges are already a thing, they even have longer range than you suggest for T1 battleships, but even still battleships remain too slow. Jump drive would not solve it.

5

BBs still have the exact same place they have had for the majority of eves existents and it works fine

6

I think if you want to give BB’s a new lease on life, one from each race should be given some type of bonus against capitals.

Done properly, this would make battleship fleets a choice in a large fight, make subcap pilots a factor again and drive up capital losses some to offset the huge, growing surplus of these ships.

7

My gut reaction to this is “no”.

I’ve long felt that, while the warp speed changes were a good thing overall, the difference in warp speed between classes is too great. I think frigates and destroyers should stay where they are at 5 and 4.5 AU/s, respectively, battleships should get bumped up to 3 AU/s (where cruisers are now), and the remaining subcaps would shift up accordingly: cruisers to 4 AU/s, battlecruisers to 3.5 AU/s. Capital ships, and titans/freighters would remain unchanged at 1.5 AU/s and 1.37 AU/s, respectively. This would largely maintain the same relative warp speed relationships (actually adding a tad more separation between caps and subcaps), while making battleships in particular feel not so sluggish and be fast enough to roam in without succumbing to weaponized boredom.

Having said all of that, introducing a module that introduces some sort of jump drive capability is an interesting notion. But I think that the balance issues it would introduce would far outweigh any benefits, especially when it would just be easier to adjust warp speeds.

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2 Likes
8

All they need to do is ban capitals (combat) from empire space.

-1

9

Problem fixed

10

EVE doesnt need more ships that appear from thin air through a module that activates instantly. While true, its easier to kill a couple battleships than a couple carriers/capitals, it would almost never be “a couple”. It would be an overwhelming force.

Also, it forces the idea that if you want to get the most out of battleships/roaming, you would need a cyno alt. Im against subcap mechanics that necessitate an alt.

As far as BLOPs go, BLOPs pay for their jump drive by having reduced tank and in some cases, dps, compared to T1. A BLOPs BS would die very easily to a properly fit T1 battleship. Having T1s able to jump around in a similar manner without any drawbacks would finish off BLOPs BS being anything more than bomber taxis.

Main thing battleships need is:

Better scan res
Better warp speed
Marginal Improvement to tank (buffer)

11

Go ahead and hold your breath until that happens.

12

Battleships are meant more for actual battles, not skirmishes which is most PvP in this game.

13

They still have place. But not all do. Armor battleships are often used as damage sponges that can dish out some beating w/o requiring long and arduous training and almost being at the disposable level of cost. RR Dominixes I have seen used in gatecamps in place of machs - if system is too hot for 1B mach then pop these babies… and then see how someone tries to catch them only to get melted by drones xD Ravens and megas are also used… so are 'geddons (neuts ftw). Abaddon and apocalypse are probably in worst state (abaddon just has real problems with cap - replace damage bonus with activation cost and it will be fine)

14

True. In most cases whenever I ended up deploying bs it was more a case of intent to get into actual fight or to stand the ground.

15

I have to disagree with this idea, because the reason WHY battleships aren’t used as much is because of force projection being out of wack.

Giving battleships a bonus to shield extenders and armor plates would likely be a good idea, however it will probably just end up instead making drone and missile battleships the type of choice due to how they apply damage.

As it stands, a battleship doesn’t really have much more hp than a decently fitted battlecruiser.

16

It would be great to see the Battleships all become great like how they once were too.

17

just give the BS -size plates and extenders …

1 Like
18

Ive seen plenty of good solo battleship vids on youtube. Between the heavy grappler to help with kiting and killing small ships and microjumpdrives that let you escape I find battleships seem more than capable of taking on small cruiser gangs.

They just have to kill all scrams and MJD out. Usually the question is can they tank till they escape.

19

The issue isn’t battleships’ utility in a fight. The issue is that it takes battleships fooooooorever to get to a fight unless one comes to them. That’s why the OP wanted to introduce some sort of jump drive capability, and why I think that subcap warp speeds need to be tweaked a bit.

20

It doesn’t matter what you do with battleships, when it comes to PvP as long as they can be hot dropped by caps there is no point in putting together a fleet.

Banning caps in low sec would make battleships the meta and that would bring battleships into use again.