Navy Battleship Balance Pass

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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This is a suggestion to buff Navy Battleships (CCP hinted at FanFest that they were due for a balance pass). All Navy Battleships receive a new role bonus similar to what Battlecruisers have received. Feel free to make alternate suggestions for bonuses. Most existing hull bonuses were retained so that player fits won’t be terribly disrupted. In same cases battleship bonuses were converted to roll bonuses.

TLDR; Buff Navy Battleships to be the Empire Faction equivalent of Pirate Battleships by extending them a role bonus.
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Round 4 - thanks for all the continued suggestions!

Raven Navy Issue
Slots: 7 high slots (-1), 6 launchers (-2)
Caldari Battleship bonuses
5% bonus to Cruise Missile and Torpedo explosion radius
5% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile and Torpedo damage
Role Bonus:
50% bonus to Cruise Missile and Torpedo velocity

Scorpion Navy Issue
Scan Resolution: 110mm (+35mm)
Caldari Battleship bonuses:
4% bonus to all shield resistances
5% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile and Torpedo rate of fire
Role Bonus:
25% to bonus to shield hit points

Dominix Navy Issue
Gallente Battleship Bonus:
10.0% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
7.5% bonus to Drone optimal range, tracking speed and velocity
Role Bonus:
50% bonus to Large Hybrid optimal range
-or- 37.5% to armor repairer

Megathron Navy Issue
Gallente Battleship bonuses:
7.5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret tracking speed
10% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret falloff
Role Bonus:
25% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret rate of fire

Apocalypse Navy Issue
Amarr Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range
7.5% bonus to Large Energy Turret tracking speed
Role Bonus:
50% reduction in Large Energy Turret activation cost

Armageddon Navy Issue
Slots: High slots 7 (-1), turrets 6 (-2)
Amarr Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Large Energy Turret damage
5% to all armor resistances
Role Bonus:
25% bonus to ship capacitor capacity

Tempest Fleet Issue
Minmatar Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
10% bonus to Large Projectile Turret falloff
Role Bonus:
37.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret tracking
-or- 37.5% bonus to shield booster

Typhoon Fleet Issue
Minmatar Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile and Torpedo damage
7.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire
Role Bonus:
25% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
-or- 25% bonus to armor hit points

2 Likes
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What is this? :thinking: The bonuses and role bonuses don’t make any sense.

This makes the Navpoc worse because BS weapons are not known to be good trackers especially at close range and your bonuses would turn the Navpoc into a close range battleship. (Why else would you bonus active tank?)

1 Like
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I didn’t assume I would get all of the bonuses right as I don’t fly all the ships. So as per my original post, please feel free to make alternate suggestions on what would be more beneficial for bonuses. Constructive criticism is always welcome. With respect to the two ships you commented on:

• Typhoon Fleet Issue: The projectile rate of fire and missile damage bonus are already existing bonuses (I added turret tracking speed).
• Apocalypse Navy Issue: The energy turret tracking speed is already an existing bonus (I added armor repairer).

So before you criticize me for how these bonuses make no sense, you might want to check what the existing hull bonuses are first. I’ve simply expanded on what is already in place to avoid completely screwing up player fits.

1 Like
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First can i say these are less op than i was expecting. But if we do this to battleships, do we have to do it for frigs and cruisers?

@Dyver_Phycad look at the existing faction battleships. And active tanks work just as well on kiters as brawlers…regardless, an active tank on an amarr ship is unorthodox.

I’d prefer it on the navy-dominix or the navy-mega. It would be great for differentiating one of these ships from the other variants. A domi with an actvie tank would be a great ‘heavy myrmidon’ and pve boat. And a navy mega with such a bonus wouldn’t cross over so much with a mega/vindi.

Navy geddon may do better with more drones and a resist bonus.

If the phoon could get a bonus that supports both weapon systems it would keep its versatility. A bonus for both weapons, the old stabber speed bonus or a painter bonus :3

2 Likes
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Its unlikely we will get role bonuses for navy battleships. Your changes also keep most of the existing traits and just add tank traits, in most cases. I think some need their traits changed, instead of just layering something ontop of a undesirable trait. Also, things like to navy scorp having shield boost+resist bonus AND 8 mids would make it hilariously overpowered. It already can tank about 1500dps before crystals.

I feel navy battleships ships are about application, buffer and damage. They all have high base buffer and this is beneficial to active tanks (more time to rep, less chance to bleed past your main tank).

As i fly navy battleships all the time, they are strong, but they dont go and wave it around like pirate BS do. There are several that need some adjustments though:

Typhoon fleet:

Remove the gun bonus, its utterly useless, unless youre going full polarized, max gank fit for 2k+ dps. In any practical sense, its rarely ever used. The t1 pest, maelstrom, pest FI and ofc mach are all infinitely better gun platforms. Which 2 of those also provide the same double heavy neut utility.

Id rather see it drop the gun bonus for either a missile explosion velocity bonus (like t1), or maybe a target painter bonus (though it doesnt really fit with the navy line).

Tempest fleet:

Go the way of the fleet cane, make it more than just a t1 pest with more tank/fitting. Go with 10% tracking and 7.5 to 10% damage per level bonuses. This would make it a good kiter that applies (or brawler), or could make it devastating with artillery in fleets (slow RoF though).

Navy Raven:
Arguably the strongest torpedo ship in the game. 8 launchers kill its fitting and leaves no utility.

Drop a launcher, remove velocity bonus, add a 5% damage bonus. Has utility, retains its application and frees up fitting while maintaining dps.

Scorpion Navy:
A very good shop, just overshadowed by the rattlesnake. Its bonuses are fine. Maybe 2k more grid and for the love of god, fix its scan res. 92mm is worse than dreads and some carriers. Takes literally 30s to lock ec300s.

Navy geddon:
Drop a turret, give it a 10% damage bonus and keep cap reduction bonus, move a high to a mid. Gives amarr a battleship that can actually brawl. Also it needs slightly more fitting. Alternatively, remove cap bonus and go with an armor HP bonus (like navy aug). Would make it probably one of the highest ehp BS, other than maybe the Paladin.

Napoc:

Honestly its not bad, just not great in the current meta. Im unsure if it really needs a change.

I havent flown gallente BS so i wont touch on those.

2 Likes
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Retribution :] Active tanked kiter and it’s king atm.

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Blah, I really meant active tank bonus.

2 Likes
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I like these balance pass threads, the navy ships are overdue for a little love too. At this time, I can only speak for gallente ships, but currently branching out into minmatar.

Navy mega just gets overshadowed by all the pirate ships these days. But I like where I think the OP is going with this. The falloff bonus is unusual for gallente, but could turn the navy mega into a mini-Kronos. I like the idea that the navy versions of marauder hulls could be the precursors of T2 battleships. Perfect ships to train into on the way to marauders, and doesn’t hurt that it could work for lore purposes as well.

I think it’s about time for gallente to get an ultimate drone boat. Here’s an alternate idea for navy dominix bonus:

Dominix Navy Issue
Gallente Battleship Bonus:
10% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
7.5% bonus to Drone optimal range and tracking speed
Role Bonus:
+60km drone control range

The extra range would likely set it apart from the rattlesnake, and leave the high slots in its usual Swiss Army knife role.

1 Like
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I see several issues here:
1.) This ship is already fast as it is compared with other BS
2.) If i look at your suggestion you simply made a copy of the Raven. In case of your Raven suggestion it even has more DPS because you gave the raven a lower bonus and forgot that the Typhoon has 125MBit drones.
3.) Im not sure how often the Turret Bonus is used but ppl might get upset.
4.) What exactly iam supposed to do with the 8th low? Im currently use 2 of my 8 highs to extend my drone control range.

1 Like
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Yeah, I’m really struggling with the Typhoon (sorry).

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Thats not the main issue i see. You have an issue with consistancy. If you loog through the game you might notice that role bonuses are shared. All BCs for example share their role bonus, this includes navy versions. You need to stay consistent with that. As it stands you have to find defined roles first. Raven/Apocalypse/Megatron/Tempest form a group (Marauder T1) and Scorpion/Dominix/Armageddon/Typhoon from the other group (Black Ops T1). And the Role Bonusses you apply have to go with the normal and navy variants. This also puts you into the position to find a role for the 3rd group that does not exist as navy.

The Marauder T1 group are weapon plattforms, they are menat to have lots of weapons and deal damage, if you go along side your Raven they would get the Role Bonus of Range. So every ship gets Optimal or Falloff and the Raven gets velocity.

The Black Ops T1 are all Drone ships. A bonus to drone tracking, speed or range would be an option, control range might also be an option.

The 3rd group is tanky so a bonus to armor/shield amount etc might be something.

But if you look at this again, i find it questionable if these ships should have role bonusses all along.

1 Like
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I’m not sure I’m understanding your thoughts correctly here. There are no tier 3 navy battleship variants. The OP is talking about a balance pass on existing navy battleships to possibly bring them in line with pirate battleships, so he does not have to come up with role bonuses for T1 battleships. I believe all the pirate variants have role bonuses, and it seems fair to request role bonuses for navy variants.

IIRC, historically in the age of sails, pirates modified and improved the ships they stole. The navies of the day had to also modify their ships to compete with their pirate counterparts. This is the cat and mouse game represented in EVE with pirate and navy variants of battleships. Both sides should be fairly close in power, but that is not the case currently with navy ships. The pirate ships are far superior, such as the rattlesnake, machariel, etc… And that is possibly Arthur’s motivation with this thread, to make the navy ships more competitive. If you are still against the idea, that is fair, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But if you find the idea intriguing at least, I would urge you to suggest your ideas for role bonuses to be constructive.

2 Likes
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I like the Dominix suggestion 25% drone control range.

Mine idea is:
Navy Apoc 25%/37.5% targeting range. So we can make 200km Aurora Tachyon snipers better.

1 Like
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For the Typhoon fleet, it has the largest drone capacity of any Minmatar ship. Assuming you don’t get rid of the Turret bonus, it’s role bonus would basically needs to be unrelated to turrets or missles. This make me think that it should either get a drone bonus (speed, and/or tracking/optimal) or a defensive bonus, like extra shield booster %

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agreed on ditching guns on it altogether A) they are subpar against ship own missile capabilities B) it try to occupy space already filled with rest of minmatar / angel battleships.

however adding a TP bonus or focusing ship as a missile platform is a mistake making it basically another caldary ship with a odd name on it.as i suggested before i hope CCP will grab opportunity to do something fresh with a ship and try to utilize ship 2nd strength ie large drone bay and modify it slightly…something along speed and tracking of them(drones) would fit ship fast nature without stomping on gallente typical hp/dmg buff to them.

this is hot

spot on

cant say i like this it is just beefed up tier one domi very same thing CCP didn’t want to do and i agree, ship is a heavy brawler / heavy dps when guns are included in fit i would make sure you want to fit them range bonus on guns would help there or something.

dont mind where you are going with this except an opinion of mine that something is very wrong when dual DMG bonus on a ship still make you do less dmg than both typhoons maelstrom tier one tempest vargur machariel…well basically anything that can fit a cannon on it self.

1 Like
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Made some tweaks to the Navy Scorpion, Tempest, Typhoon, Armageddon and Apocalypse. Still not sure about some of these, so please let me know if I’m going in the right direction or if you’d change anything.

I’m really stuck on a bonus to distinguish the Navy Scorpion. Shield hit points will probably be too op, but I guess there’s also a rate of fire bonus for hybrid turrets? (similar to the Typhoon)

1 Like
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Problem there is it doesnt fit with minmatar. They dont have any drone bonused ships, for a reason. Theyre primarily projectile with secondary being missiles. If you go drones on the TFI then that would mean minmatar pilots need to fully train 3 weapon skills to fly all their ships effectively, which is a bit silly.

Missile application is important (t1 has missile application bonus) on larger hulls and instead of going with the same t1 bonus, the TP bonus would make for a better bonus. That being said, an EWAR bonus seems very out of place on just 1 navy battleship.

Maybe another route would be 10% reduction to signature radius per level. So at lvl5 it would half the sig radius from 320 to 160, which might help it sig tank against other battleships or possibly capitals (esp if you use an afterburner).

1 Like
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50% sig reduction! Even 25% would be huge.

It already has bc level sig radius.

19

Fair, for some reason i thought bc’s were like 220-250, but i see some that are 300. So yeah 25% would be more than sufficient (240m, which makes it bc sized, instead of cruiser sized).

I was comparing to a panther which sits at 280ish and wanted expand on tinkering with that value on a BS, but 160 may be too much… on the plus side, you could make a sig tanking battleship fleet doctrine against missiles XD

1 Like
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The point im making is that Navy BS are based on the normal ones. Putting role bonuses only on the navy ones, but not on the base variant, would simply buff navy ships beyond the normal ones. This would make normal ones less inetresting as navy versions already have buffs over normal bs. Also roles bonuses are consistent. Look at BCs they have the same role bonuses for their T1 and faction variant.

Im not against it, but i dont think that it does make much sense to move some bonuses from the ship into the role. If you look at pirate ships their role bonuses are somewhat special.