im sure it has come up many times but here is my question: why do caps and battleships not have point defense? it could take up a rig slot or something like that and does only light to medium amount of damage. yes a smart bomb is an option but i want to experience something where i see PDCs firing at incoming threats like in The Expanse. or maybe they could just be like the standup versions but way less damage.
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This is needed. like the man said , the damage could be light so as not to be OP. The idea alone of a vindi filling the skies with a myriad of light turret fire along with its main weapons gets me a lil wet.
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So if the mechanic already exists, what you actually want is a reskin for smartbombs to be multi-targeted point defenses?
Yeah, the Vindicator isn’t yet good enough at blapping small targets, what with its 90% webs and plentiful drones…
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As a side note to this idea… One of the core concepts of Eve is that “bigger is not always better”, especially in PvP. That is the reason we have a healthy mix of people who PvP using frigates and cruisers, but also in battleships and capitals. The bigger you go, the more you risk, and the more vulnerable you get to small things that can get under your defenses. The smaller you go, the less you risk, but also the less impact you have. What ship you use is not just determined by what you can use (due to SP/ISK limitations), but also by what you should use against the available targets.
By introducing more mechanics through which big ships can crush small ships more effectively, you are asking for the PvP landscape to get reduced. You can see this effect in miniature with the introduction of Rapid Light Missile Launchers. Frigates can happily fight cruisers normally, but as soon as a Caracal (or worse, Orthrus) arrives, nobody is going to bother – their RLMLs are essentially big red “go away, frigates” buttons. Even with just a few ships getting such modules, the foothold of frigates as a viable PvP ship class gets tenuous.
As such, I would argue that if new (and effective) “point defenses” were introduced to all large ships, that would doom small ships to irrelevance and reduce Eve PvP to groups of large ships slowly kicking each other in the shins until one falls over. That is boring.
Also: 
https://forums.eveonline.com/c/technology-research/player-features-ideas
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Battleships already have (at least) two weapon systems. It’s entirely up to the player how to use the secondary system.
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Why? Because we’d absolutely drown in frigate tears…
I personally think a point defense system is an excellent idea.
Let Battlecruisers (light weapons) and Battleships (light or medium weapons) use the four slots normally reserved for T3C in the fitting window. No additional CPU, bonuses or powergrid.
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Battlecruisers are already fairly efficient at killing small ships. The extra damage they put out balances the application issues that cruisers have, and aside from that they just have a bit more tank than cruisers, at the cost of speed.
Battleships have neuts, smartbombs, drones, rapid light launchers, stasis grapplers, and the ability to fit more ewar than a cruiser/battlecruiser, all to help your drones and/or primary weapon system kill the little ships that dare get too close. If you can’t use those advantages to help clear light tackle, then hold out for friends while your larger tank keeps them at bay or think twice next time about undocking that fit.
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I’m all for this idea as long as there is one for each race and they have exactly the same damage output per second as the racial equivalent. Weapon-firing is just a visual effect, so why the ■■■■not?
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For the most part I see where you’re coming from but I have to be vastly against the idea due to already existing imbalance between caps and sub caps. This and other things such as this would make it even worse and further cap proliferation which is already way out of hand.
The only way I could support something like this was if at the same time there were modules in the game specifically designed to fight caps, especially for battleships as that is where the line is drawn between those 2 groups of ships, but others as well.
If not that, then there would need to be some fundimental game changes and combat mechanics changes to compensate.
Smartbombs done!
Smart bombs are not recommended for high-sec, though.
I see your point.
how about reducing every system sec by 0.3
this would drastically reduce the high sec systems and this would be far less of an issue
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I think changing system security is an entirely different can of worms.
I’m with @Shaela_Malukker on this one. CCP has actually done a pretty decent job giving battleships more tools to be relevant in a broader engagement envelope. Too much more and they become too good of a tool that negates much of the hard-worked balance in this game.
Yes, it’d be fun to pilot a battleship with more interesting point-defense. I’d actually enjoy having it. But the threat of subcap inbalance is probably too much.
Now, if you could find some magical perfect balance…I’d love a defense battery that took up a utility highslot…was a turret (but didn’t use a turret slot) and had the same basic stats as the various smartbomb sizes…with the tradeoff being you have to lock on to use point-defense whereas smartbombs are just click and enjoy.
Yes that would be a joy. But balance… :\
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Who cares about sub-cap imbalance? No one really flies anything larger outside of a cruiser solo because there’s no point - you just get spammed by a mass of cheap frigates. Trying to balance everything around frigates and destroyers is what’s destroying content in this game and relegating anything larger than cruisers to large fleets.
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Perhaps. But, there’s a sticking point of subjection…in that I don’t see a problem with that. The big difference between battleship PvP and smaller ships is that smaller ships reposition quickly all the time, and battleships need to be organized and in position (relative to each other and the fleet, not necessarily to a static point in space) early-on because repositioning is not as much of an option to them. But heck, spread out the big guys like a WWII heavy bomber formation and they can help cover each other.
And to directly answer your question, I care about sub-cap imbalance because it took dozens of people hundreds of hours over the period of years to give us something better than “bigger is better” which is how EvE started out.
To an extend I might agree with you on too much emphasis on destroyers, but that doesn’t mean we need to upend everything else that has some decency to it yet.
EVE could stand a bit of upending. Four light weapons wouldn’t defeat a small gang of frigates. It would give a battlecruiser or battleship a bit more of a fighting chance, though.
Four? How many utility highs do you…
…you’re thinking about putting them on your Kronos, aren’t you? Well, okay. I’d save at least one [utility high] for a heavy neut. Maybe two if you could fit it, it’d be nice to have a second neut cycling one-half out of sync with the other.
Actually, I was thinking they could just expand the fitting window to include the four additional slots normally reserved for T3C. That way you just place the additional weapons there if so desired.
Four for each type of battlecruiser (light only) and battleship (medium only). They could be turret or launcher.
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