Something that’s fallen to the wayside in the past few years despite changes to battleships and the changes to Tiercide we’ve seen is the state of Disruption battleships, namely their lack of introduction beyond the initial battleship “tiercide” of the old laser Armageddon becoming the a drone and neutralizer battleship.
This comes up again because despite the balance focus being back on battleships (frig escape bays, manufacturing, etc), there has been 0 discussion on the dev’s part for actually going through with updating them. Only the Scorpion and Armageddon fall into this class, when every other ship class that’s been balanced or introduced has been released to all four races.
Imagine the uproar if they released Attack Battlecruisers or Tactical Destroyers for 2 empire races instead of 4.
With that said, I have some proposed reworked bonuses for each of the ships, including for Black Ops battleships, being the equivalent of t2 Recon ships for battleships, to reflect their natural progression in the skill tree.
-Dominix
Gallente Battleship bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to drone HP, and damage per level
7.5% bonus to drone optimal range and tracking speed
Role Bonus:
75% bonus to Heavy Warp Disruptor and Heavy Warp Scrambler optimal range and capacitor usage
The Dominix is already fairly powerful as a drone platform, so taking advantage of the fact that it doesn’t have any bonuses to turrets or launchers, giving it a bonus to heavy warp disruptors and heavy warp scramblers already falls in line with where it can best allocate its power grid. Moving the sensor dampening bonus to its drones makes it an optional choice for secondary ewar, keeping its power curve for a t1 battleship down, and forcing it to choose between damage and ewar without sacrificing mid slots.
-Typhoon
Minmatar Battleship bonuses per skill level:
7.5% bonus to Target Painter strength
5% bonus to Rapid Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile, and Torpedo launcher rate of fire
Role Bonus: 25% bonus to Stasis Webifier Optimal range
The Typhoon already benefits from a using a target painter, so it would be sensible to swap its application bonus for a bonus to target painter effectiveness. I wanted to keep the range bonus to webifiers comparatively small, but useful within the range of torpedoes, while still providing a useful fleet ewar ability.
-Scorpion
+1 launcher, -4 turret hardpoints
Caldari Battleship bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to kinetic Heavy Missile, Torpedo, and Cruise missile damage per level
25% bonus to ECM Target Jammer and ECM Burst optimal range and falloff per level
Role Bonus:
100% bonus to ECM Target Jammer, ECM drone strength
The Scorpion has long languished without any bonus to damage, and locking a damage bonus to kinetic akin to the Drake I think best balances its power curve in relation to the other missile ships.
-Armageddon
Amarr Battleship bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to drone HP, damage, and Tracking Disruptor Drone effectiveness per level
7.5% bonus to Energy Neutralizer & Energy Nosferatu optimal range and falloff per level
Role Bonus:
25% bonus to Energy Neutralizer energy usage and cycle time
The Armageddon is already in a fairly solid place, but giving it a minor but useful bonus to neutralizer effectiveness helps it scale better as the go-to t1 ship for energy neuts without stepping on the Bhaalgorn’s uses.
For Black Ops battleships, although they’ve received a buff to their resistances, they haven’t had their bonuses altered since their inception. Although they serve a vital role with Covert jump bridging, I think their hull bonuses need to be overhauled.
-Sin
Gallente Battleship bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to drone HP, damage, and Sensor Dampener drone effectiveness per level
10% bonus to drone optimal range and tracking per level
Black Ops bonuses per skill level:
20% bonus to Heavy Warp Disruptor and Heavy Warp Scrambler optimal Range and Capacitor usage
125% bonus to ship max velocity when using Cloaking Devices
Role Bonus:
• Can fit Covert Cynosural Field Generator and Covert Jump Portal Generator
• No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
50% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue
This is more or less scaled in line with being a straight upgrade to ewar effectiveness, in line with the ecm strength scaling of the current Scorpion and Widow.
-Panther
+6 missile launcher, -5 turret hardpoints
Minmatar Battleship bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to Target Painter strength
5% bonus to Heavy, Cruise, & Torpedo Launcher rate of fire
Black Ops bonuses per skill level:
7.5% bonus to Stasis Webifier optimal range
125% bonus to ship velocity when using cloaking devices
Role Bonus:
• Can fit Covert Cynosural Field Generator and Covert Jump Portal Generator
• No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
50% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue
Receiving a slightly larger, but not oppresive, range increase to its webifiers lets it scale with the Typhoon, while providing valuable bonuses to target painters.
-Widow
Caldari Battleship bonuses per skill level:
5% bonus to Rapid Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile, and Torpedo launcher rate of fire
30% bonus to ECM Target Jammer and ECM Drone strength
Black Ops bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to Heavy Missile, Cruise Missile, and Torpedo max velocity
125% bonus to ship velocity when using Cloaking Devices
The widow is in a fairly decent spot, but suffered greatly from the ECM changes. Moving around its bonuses and adding ECM drone effectiveness helps bring it closer to its former glory, without being as hideously oppressive.
Role Bonus:
• Can fit Covert Cynosural Field Generator and Covert Jump Portal Generator
• No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
50% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue
-Redeemer
+250m3 for Drone Bay
Amarr Battleship Bonuses per skill level:
10% bonus to Large Energy Turret Damage per skill level
7.5% bonus to Large Energy Turret Tracking Speed per skill level
Black Ops bonuses per skill level
50% bonus to Heavy Combat Utility Drone HP, optimal range, and effectiveness per skill level
125% bonus to ship velocity when using Cloaking Devices
Keeping its drone bonuses strictly limited to Combat Utility drones, the Redeemer retains its role as the gunship among the black ops ships, and giving it a fairly unique role with the usage of combat utility drones.
EDIT: given the popularity of the idea to give them covops cloaks, how would the community feel about an alternate proposal of adding another t2 blops variant with covops cloaks and ewar, but no covert jump bridge? They’d scale accordingly with recons, possibly giving current blops dscan immunity.