I agree. The balance issues would skyrocket that’s for sure. But it is fun to think about.
In their high slots, or in their hypothetical secondary rack?
Their high slots are typically empty. They’re ECM boats, not intended for solo use. And generally pretty terrible when they are used solo.
If you meant their “primary rack”, they’re hilarious in pipe bombs. Full rack of smart bombs, target spectrum breaker, and burst jammer. When they do finally die, they’ll have caused so much utter chaos to be well worth the lossmail.
If you meant their secondary rack, I’d go with hybrids as they’ve already got launcher hardpoints.
I’m comparing a HAW dread ball with “these” dreads. A HAW dread ball will absolutely wreck a subcap group. Even frigates, if there’s enough webs and paints.
Ergo, you can throw HAW and XL dreads into the same ball and end up with an unbeatable group. Add burst jammers to firewall fighters, and they’re extremely hard to kill.
The “point defense” secondary rack would give them something useful while not being nearly as powerful as before.
A shitty subcap fleet will still get mopped up by them, same as the current meta, but a supported subcap fleet will be orders of magnitude better, and really not have any issues combating them.
In the end youre still dealing with changing weapons types, which we have in Tier 1 weapons in all groups, instead to undersized guns/weapons.
With the dreads and most capitals combat refitting is a thing, especially now with citadels, and smaller weapons systems take up almost no space compared to large capital class turrets and systems thereby allowing combat refitting to take place as per usual based on immediate threats and enemy fleet comps. CCP has already judged that combat refitting isnt necessarily a good thing by nerfing the ability to refit caps while under fire. This too is such a case.
Bring subcaps or support to take care of such targets instead of making an EHP beast be given the leeway to refit at will for almost any situation.
As for subcaps, give the Tier 1 weapons a balance pass to do exactly what you are proposing. Invert the sig radius curves and skew them slightly and increase tracking quite a bit and you will get damage application curves suitable for what you are suggesting with all the appropriate trade offs.
This would create a two fold bonus in fitting as well as in gun/weapon usage.
But to add more slots for PD is silly and creates a balance nightmare where essentially you are stepping on too many ship types toes. Yes this IS the logical reality behind actual real life Battleship, carrier group, etcs designs. To plug as many defensive holes with appropriate weapons systems as possible. But this is a game and cannot afford such “realism” simply due to its nature.
So to shoehorn additional weapons systems onto ships is impractical and stupid when you have the available systems in place.
While IRL it’s true ships like the Iowa class battleship had 20 5" guns and a bunch of 20mm and 40mm cannons do deal with smaller ships and aircraft, from a game design perspective, it’s easy to understand why CCP didn’t go that route. If they did, bigger would almost always be better. Sure, I’d like it if my Lvl 4 mission boat could fit a rack of small guns to deal with frigates that get too close, but I’m ok with their design decision.
I’m not sure it would be that bad. Remember, the way this thread is currently rolling, we’re talking about a lot of ships, not just dreads and battleships. For example, consider the new danger that carriers would face. Defanging them would become incredibly simple… battleships with fitting bonuses to medium turrets? Their fighters would get SHREDDED. Both on approach (large turrets) and when they’re in gun range (medium turrets).
At that point, the dread offers a very important role providing part of anti-subcap stuff.
Yes you absolutely CAN (and in the interest of gameplay SHOULD) support your caps with subcaps.
But caps have jumpdrives; apart from blops, subcaps do not. Which means that any effective capital group needs to either pre-stage their subcaps (boring) or have a bridge titan (kind of elitist - I’ve got bridges available to me when I participate in fleet ops, so I’m not disadvantaged, but other smaller groups are).
By allowing a capital group to support itself, you might see them in deployments more often. You don’t have to get your subcaps out to keep them from dying in a fire.
Sort of true.
From a capital standpoint, battleships would be a mixed bag. Dreads would face-■■■■ them six ways from Sunday. Buuut, battleships would face-■■■■ carriers and their fighters in an excellent orgy of death. Thus, dreads would support carriers against battleships, but carriers would support dreads against supers (space superiority) and things like HICs/dics/cruisers… stuff that the dreads either lack the punch or tracking to kill.
From a subcap standpoint, battleships would be very dangerous to (battle)cruisers, but still be inept against frigates and destroyers. Both of which can make quick work of them.
I dont think going smaller than battlecruisers would be healthy. Battlecruisers would offer the flexibility of being very dangerous to frigates and destroyers while being woefully vulnerable to battleships or significant cruiser swarms (and of course carriers).
Cruisers of course would be a threat to frigates, destroyers, and battlecruisers, while having the mobility to dictate range control over battleships.
So effectively you are arguing you want the best of both worlds while having zero downside?
Forcing choices onto people rather than giving them all the options at once has and should always remain a hallmark of Eve. Your choices have consequences. This should apply to fitting options.
As for dreads you yourself stated the point that HAW weapons “rip to shreds” with enough TP and webs. I think that just about does it.
As for reworking the Tier 1 weapons Im all for it. But never for a jack of all trades sort of option.
Last I checked, getting blapped by a dread was not the best outcome to a fight?
What I’m saying is that dreads and carriers would be forced to work together, otherwise a battleship group would counter carriers perfectly and a bomber or cruiser group would counter dreads easily. That’s exactly the kind of mixed-doctrine stuff that I feel makes the game MUCH more involved.
The only thing I’m forcing here is more in the way of “if you don’t bring a mixed comp, they’ll own you. If you can’t fly your own ship and fight what you’re best at killing, you’ll get owned by the fleet that can”.
Yet all of what your asking doesnt need such a large work around with “mid grade” high slots and smaller weaponry but can be done through a rework of the Tier 1 weapons systems to make them effectively those scaled down weapons systems already. It would use an existing weapons system.
Your way simply gives two available fit options at the same time. You could fit your BS for long range L turrets AND medium PD weapons and be able to do everything at once instead of being forced to fit one OR the other and sacrifice the other fit.
So tell me how well a battleship doctrine with L and M turrets will fare against a battleship doctrine with just L turrets? Or destroyers for that matter. If they can apply at all, it’s gonna be utter ■■■■ application. The destroyers on the other hand, will be able to dictate range, engage and disengage at will, and apply their dps perfectly.
Given that you will have to increase PG/CPU to fit these M guns, if not you will always have to downgrade your turrets. Yet most downgrades within an N+1 fleet style archetype will still do what you need to do dps and tracking wise. So given all things being equal then both fleets will only be susceptible to N+1 issues the same as currently.
As for against smaller fleet comps well thats what you have scouts, FCs and rewarps for. Its what heavy or other tackle is for so you can pin, dictate range and then destroy your opponent.
Simply giving a fleet both options is silly as it gives far too much flexibility. Sure in real life that would be the case. Choices have consequences… kind of like my posting history!!
If I have 20 anythings and you bring 30 anything elses (with the understanding that N+1 basically just brings “bring extra dudes to do X”) the 30 will probably beat the 20 unless the 30 made some very poor choices.
A battleship having PD able to engage a brawling cruiser will not make it immune to frigates, destroyers, sniper cruisers, or battlecruisers. Even brawling AHACs, the worst possible match up, would be roughly at parity. And in that case the cruisers have the advantage of mobility.
Battleships would therefor still need support from smaller ships to fill in the gaps. The gaps are still there, they’re just different.
Yet your way of doing things also gives each battleship L turrets as well as the ability to engage smaller targets.
L long range turrets and small close range M guns gives a large engagement range. This would mean only a short to medium range envelope where the L turrets cannot track well and the M would range out too.
Explain to me how a frigate is not able to engage every target.
Now explain to me how a current battleship is able to engage every target using it’s standard weapons.
The short answer is the frigate can engage anything, the BS can’t. Yes I’m sure you can come up with examples where this isn’t true but for the most part it is.
It’s well known and CCP themselves have outright said that Battleships are weak in the overall meta, and adding a secondary rack that lets them fight smaller ships effectively is an option to balance this. A battleship with 4 M turrets is not going to slaughter everything smaller than it. It’s EHP is offset by it’s lack of mobility, which means it isn’t mitigating any of the damage that a cruiser would, so the raw numbers aren’t as impressive as they look anyway. But it isn’t going to be as helpless as it currently is.
Yes and I am saying you can do this without adding additional slots by reworking the Tier 1 weapons forcing a choice which is more Eve than simply adding more power creep to BS.
In this ideology youll have to up the PG/CPU to handle the M slots or give a huge role/ship bonus to compensate for it. Which is going to give BS a huge fitting advantage over their current usage while also giving them the ability to now effectively engage smaller targets.
I for one do not underestimate the playerbases ability to break this idea very very badly.
It’s still a choice either way though.
You are giving up mobility for the EHP.
And in this case it’s a ship class that is severely weak in the overall meta that we are talking about buffing. Even if there are a few specific fleet use cases that doesn’t make the class overall in a healthy spot. So buffing a group of ships that are underperforming up to the average level is not power creep.
Especially since you can take those ships that are doing very well and not give them much of a secondary rack.
Everything you advocate can be done with a mobile depot and another rack of turrets in the cargo hold even on the fly in a quick swap. Just NOT in active combat or at the same time.
Which again, brings us back to the point that your battleship can not engage a full range of ships while frigates & cruisers can without refitting.
And is one of the major reasons that battleships are weak in the meta.
Now obviously this is just a point we disagree on, and I don’t think we are going to make progress here. I already know about the options you are putting forward, and I don’t believe that they do the job properly.
