We have a small and large ship type for both small and medium modules, but only one size for large modules. What if there were light and heavy classes of battleships?
For example in terms of running missions:
L1 : Frigate/Destroyer
L2: Destroyer/Cruiser
L3: Battle-cruiser/<light battleships?>
L4: heavy battleships
Probably too big of a change to just implement straight away but adding space for more ships seems neat. Similar to Attack (T3?) battle-cruisers with large guns, but sort of in the opposite direction as well (trading dps for more tank). Maybe attack battlecruisers means these new types of light battleships would be hard to implement well? What do you think?
You can fit large Guns on the Tier3 Battlecruisers (Oracle, Tornado, Naga, Talos).
Most BCs or CSs can fit Large Shield Extenders, 1600er Plates. Fits exist tat use L- or even XL-Modules on smaller ships, like the Heavy Neutralizer Curse or HeavySmartbomb Ikitursas… XL-ASB Gilas or Alligators…
And as said, you can always fill a BS with “full tank” in the lows, full “capacitor” in the meds and if the remaining PG/CPU isn’t sufficient for the large guns any more, just use small guns or medium neuts. Fail to see why we would need a new “class” for that. The gap between brick-tanked battlecruisers/commandships and regular battleships isn’t that wide right now, where you would want to sneak in a “light battleship” there?
Light modules - Corvette/Frigate
Medium - Destroyer/Cruiser/Strategic Cruiser
Heavy - Battlecruiser/Battleship.
Destroyers should have enough power to fit 2-4 medium weapons and the rest light, while Battlecruisers 2-4 heavy and the rest medium. that would give both ship types an advantage over the previous tear to deal with bigger ships but still being able to handle the smaller ones.
Yeah I think that is the biggest problem with the idea.
I started wondering about this after noticing that large turret ships didn’t fit the pattern the other turret sizes had. In capital ships even there are also “light” and “heavy” versions with different numbers of turrets, leaving large turret ships the slightly odd one out with battleships and the Tier3 BCs.
I don’t think we need a new class, just thought it might be cool to have one eventually. Introducing the change would probably take years of planning ahead. Maybe the existing BSs would need to be stronger (the large turrets made more powerful but more expensive), light ones could be introduced (maybe one with support bonuses). The “light”-BSs might be candidates for large heavy assault and large support T2 variants. One of the “Large”-BSs might have a Command T2 variant.
What would actually happen is that they’d fit all small/medium weapons and just have more tank. Mixing weapons is a bad idea. Go too fast and suddenly your medium weapons don’t track, go too far and your small weapons are out of range.
So be it, right now nothing stops the players from fitting all small and all medium on ships that were meant for medium and large, they won’t get the weapon bonuses, but will have the tank. What’s the difference?
Mixing weapons on ships specifically designed to allow it as the ones suggested in this thread is not a bad idea when its’ done right. The fact that a special class of battlecruisers that can use large weapons was later added to the game just proves that something was and still is amiss.
Plus it would make more sense. In the “real” world that this game is trying to mimic, ships of different sizes have different weapons systems starting with corvettes and ending with battleships, although today the heavies naval ships that aren’t aircraft carriers are the heavy cruisers of the Kirov class.
Because downsizing weapons means you’re still limited by slots. Giving a ship more powergrid means it can spend more of that powergrid on tank with the same layout, i.e. maybe that destroyer can now fit a large shield extender. Those fits are also incredibly niche if they even work.
And how is it “done right”? Attack battlecruisers don’t use mixed weapons (normally, obviously you can put small guns on them but that’s dumb).
Eve isn’t trying to mimic the real-world functions of ships. This is a game, so some ships should be good at some things and bad at others to have some semblance of balance instead of “bigger is better”.
Doing it right means for example that the destroyers can’t fit Large modes, only small and medium. Talos, a battlecruiser only gets power grid reduction bonuses affecting the Hybrid weapons and nothing else, that seems like a proper way to prevent players from fitting other Large modules.
Tier 3 is not Tech 3. While Tiers were removed from ships, many vets of the game still use this term to talk about the more powerful of the Tech 1 ships, in this case, Attack Battlecruisers that use large weaponry.
