Making Battleships, Especially Navy Lines, More Viable

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

The main purpose of this thread is to discuss how to make some weaker battleships catch up in line with other stronger ones, especially navy and tier 3 battleships.
Notice: This thread won’t touch any issues regarding Capitals vs Battleships.

First I have to stay honest about myself: I have zero battleship solo experience, all knowledge in this thread comes from attending fleets ,messing around with pyfa (a lot) and watching pvp videos uploaded by other players. So any criticism is highly welcome.
p.s I’d like to roam in a tempest once I finished training M battleship V.

First thing first, I have to address a small style issue with rattlesnakes that I want it fixed asap:

http://imgur.com/a/XruaA(I cannot directly upload any image? WTF)
WHY FIVE LAUNCHERS CCP, the rattlesnake looks so cool and you have to ruin the integrity of its hull by giving it unsymmetrical positions of launchers.

Same issue applys to widow, but it is not a problem to me since I might never use a black ops in my life =)

My personal idea on how to fix Rattlesnake:

Gallente Battleship per level:
10% Kin/Thm Missile Damage → 15% Kin/Thm Missile Damage
Launcher Slots 5 → 4

This may slightly reduce the overall dps of rattlesnake, but the second utility high slot makes it more like a drone ship.

Give all battleships a flat 500m^3 fleet hanger:

After CCP buffed cap batteries, players quickly swapped pvp meta to dual rep/large shield booster cap-stable elite crusiers, which made medium cap boosters almost obsolete, and I can persume this meta will thrive more after the redesign of T3Cs.

Meanwhile, battleships got cap booster charge 3200, but with a small cargo space(600-700m^3, only 50% more than a 450m^3-cargo destroyer) and much larger ammo size, most battleships could only carry 5-6 charges maximum.

That means comparing to cap-stable elite crusiers which are able to keep repping forever, a roaming battleship’s lifespan is heavily restricted by the amount of cap chargers it could carry.

By giving all battleships a flat 500m^3 fleet hanger, it will not only make battleships live longer in both solo and fleet, but also introduce the concept of “fleet hanger” much earlier to new players.

Navy Battleships: Give them more personalities!
All numbers/bonuses shown below are only my personal opinion

-Minmatar:

Fleet Tempest

Minmatar Battleship per level:
+12.5% Large Projectile Turret Damage(Effective turret number reduced from 10 to 9.75)(New)
+10% Large Projectile Turret Tracking Speed(New)
Give it some extra capcator

Fleet Typhoon

Minmatar Battleship per level:
+10% Large Projectile Turret Firing Rate(New)
+7.5% Cruise Missiles, Torpedoes and Heavy Missile Damage

-Amarr

Navy Apocalypse

Option 1:
Amarr Battleship per level:
+10% Large Energy Turret Damage(New)
+7.5% Large Energy Turret Optimal Range
+20% Smartbomb Damage(Nah just kidding)
Turret slots: 8 → 6

Option 2:
Amarr Battleship per level:
+10% Large Energy Turret Damage(New)
+5% Armor Hit Points(New)
Turret slots: 8 → 6
Medium slots: 4 → 5
Low slots: 8 → 7
Slightly reduces its speed and inertia
Slightly increase its mass

Navy Armageddon

Option 1:
Amarr Battleship per level:
+5% Large Energy Turret Damage(New)
+10% Drone Damage and Hit Point(New)
Turret slots: 7 → 6
Drone Bay: +175m^3

Option 2:
Amarr Battleship per level:
+12.5% Large Energy Turret Damage(New)
+15% Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer Optimal Range(New)
+5% Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer Falloff(New)
Turret slots: 7 → 5
High slots: 8 → 7
Medium slots: 4 → 6
Low slots: 8 → 7

-Caldari
I think Caldari navy battleships are pretty balanced though, both of them should be better with the help of extra fleet hanger.

-Gallente

Navy Megathron

Gallente Battleship per level:
+5% Large Hybrid Turret Firing Rate
+5% Large Hybrid Turret Falloff(New)
High slots: 8 → 7
Medium slots: 4 → 5
Reduce its mass and inertia for a little bit

Navy Dominix

Slightly increase its speed
Drone Bay: +25m^3

Tier 3 Battleships: Hyperion Overshines Everybody Else

Rokh

Medium slots: 6 → 7
Low slots: 5 → 4
Give it some extra PG and capacitor

Maelstorm

Give it some extra CPU

Abaddon

Give it some extra PG and capacitor
Increases its mass and base speed for a little bit

Overall that is some of my ideas on how to make battleships, especially navy lines better. I am pretty sure these changes may bring more combat style and fun to eve other than simply heading towards pirate ships.

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There IS definitely a need for Battleships to be able to hold more cargo, yes.
As for Navy versions, there should be even more storage than the T1 variants.
And finally, the T2 Variants (don’t forget to correct your posting on the Tier 3 part)
should have another increase as well, above the T1 variants.
As for the total storage on T2 versus Navy, I leave that to the next person on here to comment :slight_smile:

3

many ships need cargo rebalance. a harbinger is a bc and it only has 375m3. there are exploration frigates running around with 400. frigate could fit inside the harbinger, and it would have more cargo room than the harb itself.

thats absurd.

battleships need role bonuses like the battlecruisers got, battlecruisers and battleships need more tank across the board and battleships especially need there own version of the point defense over smart bombs to counter small frigates or have a secondary highslot rack for undersized guns.

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I am not sure about change for Rokh

I feel real problem with Rokh is how 425mm railgun need to be reworking because it is pretty hard on cap and not much gain in dps when compare to Medium/Small counterpart on BC and below.

For starting, it would be nice if Megathron and Rokh can hold stable cap life (40-50%) with 425mm railgun while carry 3 Magnetic Field Stabilizer. Current Rokh last 16 min with full rack of 425mm railgun when firing anti-matter with nothing else beside 3 Mag Stab, while Megathron last 11 min in same config.

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Yeah that is the reason why I choose to give Rokh more capacitor and PG
(Rokh has a weaker recharge rate even than Domi, why)

-Increase Rokh’s base capacitor to a level where it could be cap stable when running full 8 railguns and 2 shield hardeners.
-More pg and capacitor also mean Rokh could have other fitting options than a must-go low-slot power diagnostic system.

When some of these fitting restrictions are removed, then a low slot could be moved to medium for more tank to emphasize on Rokh’s “Shield-tanked gunship that is slow but hard as rock” character, or fit on a cap booster.
But whatever choice players make, Rokh(and some other t1/navy battleships) should be buffed especially now CCP urgently wants to bring down the usage of pirate battleships.

7

Except the Rattlesnake is already quite a good ship, it tanks amazingly and its high DPS is one of its strongest points especially combined with its ability to project that DPS. It’s also heavily used in a lot of different types of PvE, which the extra high slot wouldn’t help it with, the DPS is more valuable.

CCP have already said that they’re looking at potentially small incremental increases to the cargo capacity of various combat hulls. They said they’re going to be taking it very slow though, because reducing cargo space on a ship has the potential to cause pretty big issues for any ships that get caught in space with a full hold when the nerf hits.

The problem with the Fleet Phoon is that it still has split guns/launchers. It should go the same way as the regular Typhoon.

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Nah I’m just obsessed with Rattlesnake has an unsymmetrical appearance when fitted with 5 launchers.

The dual bonuses seem fine to me, but projectile F. Typhoon seems quite minor comparing to missile fits.

A missile F. Typhoon has 8.25 equivalent launchers, considering how pricey Barghest still is currently, F. Typhoon should be the most viable and highest dps armor-tanked missile battleship.

When fully fitted with projectile turrets, a F. Typhoon only has 9.6 equivalent turrets, that number is really not impressing when let’s say: T1 Tempest has 10.667 and Machariel has 11.667.

So why not increase its projectile bonus to a F. Scythe level(ie. 10% shotspeed per M Battleship)? In this case, F. Typhoon would have 12 equivalent turrets, which is the highest among all other projectile turret battleships.

But keep a reminder, without damage-applying bonuses, F. Typhoon still needs a lot of skill to get master with, which is what CCP wanted when they rebalanced dual-weapon system ships.

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Is that not the nature of hybrid weapons? Theyre are ammo types that don’t use much cap.
Never thought I’d see criticism of hybrid cap usage when it’s tiny compared to what lasers crank out and go through. Abaddon with mega beams or mega pulses, cap control circuits, memory cells and cap recharger rigs can barely last 3-4 minutes with multifrequency. Even using standard it’s not much of an improvement. Granted I only have controlled bursts 4 and the long capacitor skill that’s about two weeks for level 5 is only 4.

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Also armor in general needs to be buffed some of these passive rep shield fits I’ve seen are absurd and have ehp values tat just dwarf any armor ship. But it really becomes noticeable at the Bs level and above. Shields need a nerf or armor needs a buff.

11

You haven’t seen how 425 Railguns chew through people’s capacitor.

Activation cost wise, they need roughly two third of laser guns.

12

I get that, I can appreciate it, I just don’t think that’s a good reason to change the ship.

The problem is then you’re basically wasting a bonus. You don’t want to put both guns and launchers on the ship and you certainly don’t want to put both gun and launcher damage mods on the ship because that’s a massive waste of slots.

Specialization will pretty much always trump generic but worse.

That’s a pretty dubious distinction, and being armor tanked isn’t any particular advantage.

Because then it’s still a questionable projectile boat and a questionable missile boat, because it has damage but nothing else. 11.6 effective turrets with better tracking still trumps 12 turrets any day of the week.

That’s why the Fleet Typhoon is literally the only non-drone boat to have split weapon bonuses anymore and why the regular Typhoon pretty much usurped it entirely when they reworked its bonuses to not be split anymore.

They’ve pretty much removed dual weapon ships from the game. Drone ships don’t count because drones don’t take slots and have good enough application and projection that they’re not as slot heavy as other weapon systems.

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I did have a discussion with few people on Slack about it.

I noticed it when I try different fits for fleet purpose and make noted that From Frigate until Battle cruiser can have cap stable with full rack of hybrid weapon (that is for both Gallente and Caldari). And only BS is class that are struggle with cap stable (again for both Caldari and Gallente).

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i wasnt aware, ive never gone that far on the gallente caldari tree yet tbh. i assumed it was a fraction of cap like it is for smaller hybrids.

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That’s pretty much true for Lasers as well though. Generally Battleships run into more trouble with cap stability but they make up for it with a large pool that lasts quite a bit longer than a Frigate or Cruisers’ does under heavy load.

Battleships tend to run more guns than smaller ships and they have less relative regen per second. There’s nothing odd here, ships aren’t supposed to be easily cap stable. The weapons that don’t use cap tend to have other issues, and the ships they go on tend to have much weaker cap pools among other things.

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It’s less than half laser consumption but the ship who use hybrid weapons have ■■■■ for cap regen so you cap yourself out anyway on any sensible fit. If you have to shoot for a long time, cap mods are a requirement on all cap using weapon for battleships.

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They actually don’t, they only have bad cap regen in comparison to laser ships, which have great cap regen. Compared to ships that use capless weapons they have as good or better cap regen and more cap on average which means they last for longer before applying cap mods.

For example the Hyperion has the best base cap amount out of any T1 Battleship, it just also has the worst recharge rate. The worst Hybrids ship is the Rokh with 6k base Cap but the same recharge rate as the Maelstrom rather than the Megathron’s better recharge.

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Actually laser battleships don’t have a good cap regen either, T1 Apocalypse(HAHAHA what a majesty’s joke) only has a 14 GJ/s base regen comparing to Rokh’s 12 GJ/s. Meanwhile laser guns chew 33% more cap than railguns.

That is what a ridiculous position some T1 and Navy battleships are for now and also the reason why pirate ships are overused.

Oh, I almost forget about Abaddon, guess what is its basic cap regen? 12.8 GJ/s, I am talking about a battleship running full 8 large laser turrets with a similar base regen to a HAC. HAHAHA

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The Apoc actually has a peak cap regen of 17.5, the Arma has 14 and that is good cap regen for a T1 hull though. Considering the average is a little under 13, the low is 11.7, and the highest is 17.5 (with the next highest being 14).

For comparison the base peak recharge of the Vindicator is 13.7 and the Machariel is 12.56. The Nightmare is quite good at 15.05 considering it only has 4 guns, but it’s also something of an outlier in that respect. On average the Pirate Faction Battleships have a little over 1 more GJ in base peak recharge than their closest T1 Counterpart. The two real exceptions to this are the Bhaalgorn, which is intended to run far more neuts than an Armageddon does, and the Nestor which is intended to run Large Armor reppers and has no real T1 equivalent.

It’s also not really fair or equivalent to compare a HAC to a T1 Battleship. All the HACs have very strong capacitors with good base regen. It’s one of the things CCP buffed when they gave the class a rework and they specifically called it out. Yes the Abaddon has fairly low peak recharge for what it is, but it has very good capacity which helps make up for that significantly.

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Nah, dual weapon system ships aren’t that bad like you’ve said, because their single bonus oftentimes outperform dual bonuses on other ships.

Other battleships that don’t have a damage applying bonus are also some of the most popular, like t1 Tempest(after CCP increased its ROF bonus from 5% per level to 7.5%), t1 Armageddon and Hyperion. All because Battleship-sized weapons have good range and the power of dual stasis(grappler + web).

Reconsider on F. Scythe, one of the most popular navy cruiser used in pvp, it fits well between t1 Rupture and Cynabal, also it could be used as a cheaper, faster but weaker Orthrus. What we have to do to F. Typhoon is the same thing to F. Scythe, only the projectile turret bonus on it seems a little bit weak, so we should tweak it upwards a little bit.

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They really don’t though. There’s a reason the Fleet Typhoon is the last one where one of the bonuses isn’t to Drones, and nothing about either of the Fleet Typhoons bonuses outperforms what you can get out of another hull.

All of those have other useful bonuses though. Even if you’re not using the Armor Rep bonus on the Hyperion you’re not being forced to choose between that and the guns bonus, you can and people often do use both.

The Tempest is a poor example, it has two gun bonuses. One to damage and the other to RoF.

The Armageddon is a drone boat and therefore falls under my drones exception, and besides that its other bonus is to NOS and Neuts, and if you’re bringing an Armageddon you’re probably using all of its bonuses, there’s basically no reason not to.

So, first off, my bad I forgot about the Scythe Fleet Issue and that it was dual guns. That said, I don’t think that’s much of a defense of dual weapon bonuses.

The fleet Scythe isn’t really heavily used by Cruiser Standards though. It’s sitting at about the same usage level as the Ashimmu, a niche ship if ever there was one. The Osprey Navy Issue, Omen Navy Issue, and even the Phantasm see more use that that thing.

Also from what I can see from zKill the majority of kills these things get are with Rapid Light launchers, which says more about the power of that particular weapons system than it does the viability of the SFI.

Also with the current state in general of Navy Battleships it’s questionable whether it’s even worth looking at the Fleet Typhoon on its own. Its usage numbers are at roughly the same universal level of horrible as the Fleet Tempest and the Raven Navy Issue, its two closest cousins in terms of weapons loadout.