Second Gen Attack Battlecruiser

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Alpha Level outline for second series of Attack Battlecruisers
They will fill the same roles as current Attack BCs (Bashing, ganking, making cool kill compilations on Youtube), but with the unused BS sized weapon systems.

This is assuming a glass cannon type ship with 8 highs, and ~8 mids + lows combined.

I know I lack the knowledge to do a decent full ship fitting so I will leave that to smarter people and just try outlining the bonuses with some reasoning behind them.

Amarr: Torpedos (Super Heavy Bomber)
Skill Bonuses:
+Torpedo Damage
Role Bonuses:
Torpedo Fitting(PG/CPU)

At max skills 8 T2 Torpedo Launchers with standard missiles give you a volley just under 5k and 500DPS at 20KM max range without mods or ship bonuses. A Neutron Talos puts out 541 DPS so you may need to cut the number of launchers or adjust the slot layout/EHP. On the other hand, they are still torpedos and being bumped can be enough to speed tank them some times.

Caldari: Cruise Missiles
Skill Bonuses:
+Cruise Missile Velocity
-Cruise Missile Flight Time
+Targeting Range
Role Bonuses:
Cruise Missile Fitting (PG/CPU)

An attempt at a Cruise Sniper. The bonuses should be balanced to keep the range around the same (~150 km with T1 missiles) but lower the flight time down to something resembling a turret’s application. I am worried this might see too much use(oppressive fleet comps), since having your missiles hit people 200km in before you fire the next volley of missiles may be extremely appealing.

Gallente: Sentries
Skill Bonuses:
+Sentry Damage
+Sentry Control Range

Cheap sentry platform. Expect to see it used in gate camps and drone bunny fleets as a glass cannon alternative to Domi’s. Still an Attack BC so dies if you look at it funny. Worried this one might get out of control also.

Minmatar: Medium Autocannons (bear with me for a second)
Skill Bonuses:
+++Medium Autocannon Rate of Fire
+++Medium Autocannon Ammo Capacity
—Medium Autocannon Reload time

Role Bonuses:
-Medium Autocannon Tracking (Tracking on par with Large Autocannons)
Ammo Hold

Coming up with these, the Cruise, Torps, and Drones were easy to think of but I was left with what to do with the 4th one. Since Torps fell with Amarr, I thought what would a Minmatar Attack BC use if not Large Projectile weapons. Why not medium projectile weapons that hemorrhage high explosive bullets at things?

The idea for this one is a Attack BC that has a bullet with your name on it, we just aren’t sure which bullet it is. The tracking penalty is to prevent it from DAKKAing everything, so you can’t just bring a fleet of these and expect to dps down frigate swarms orbiting you. Ammo capacity bonus(not sure if this is possible, I think it should be though) is to make sure you spend time firing instead of only reloading, and the ammo hold is so you can hold all your bullets you plan of giving away.

This one I doubt will see use but the concept is fun at least so maybe it will get considered. Plus it’s the most Minmatar design I could think of, just throw bullets at the problem till it goes away!

Thoughts and comments are welcome. I know that some of the numbers and slot layouts will need to be tweaked, especially the missile boats.

1 Like
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Cruise missiles are not viable in pvp on account of their travel time. The time between redbox and the volley landing gives the target plenty of time to broadcast for reps, plenty of time for logi to lock and start repping. The Caldari variant would thus be a subpar choice to an artillery platform.

Existing Stealth Bombers use 3 torpedo launchers to the exact same effect as what you describe, while having covops cloaks and way higher mobility - no reason to use the described Amarr variant. Sure these would have higher tanks, but ABCs are not known for their survivability.

The Gallente version is an Ishtar. Or a Myrmidon.

The Minmatar version simply makes no sense… a medium gun platform with shitty tracking and a high ROF. The reason large platforms have shitty tracking is because they have excellent range where tracking becomes less of an issue. All you’ll see with this ship is a bunch of missed and glancing shots.

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Hence the bonuses to Missile Velocity and Penalty to Flight time. The idea was bring it down to a 4ish second flight time instead of 20 seconds at max range.

The Amarr ABC would have higher alpha than the other current ABCs making it the best choice for freighter ganking and PoCo bashing. The point isn’t to replace stealth bombers but to expand the weapon systems ABCs have access to.

I know but you need the full cycle and sentries make sense for gallente and there isn’t a good option I can see for minmatar so I came up with something that seemed fun.

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They’d be traveling faster than light missiles at this point. Even 4 seconds, however, is more than enough time for logistics to start pre-repping. As a suggestion, I’d actually suggest RHMLs over cruises. Nice and bursty, good application, would need far less of a bonus to become workable. It would have burst rather than alpha/range, which means it wouldn’t conflict with an arty tornado.

You’d need to limit their magazine capacity however, as they’d get very out of control very quickly.

Expanding upon ABCs is all fine and good, but torpedos would simply work. Building an ABC expressly for ganking seems like a very useless role when ganking is already quite successful. PoCo Bashing can easily be accomplished by bombers, and while both are glass cannons the ABC is far harder to exfil from a sticky situation than bombers.

Both of which are flaws to the overall concept. Gallente already have hybrids, which are their only hardpoint weapon system, and Minmatar already have large projectile turrets, which is what the ABC is - a glass ship with really big guns.

Both of these feel like “well… ■■■■… we’ll just give them xyz because we can’t just not give them a version of this ship”.

As said, the Gallente one offers nothing over an ishtar - it is inferior in literally every way (unless you make the damage stupidly high, in which case they’re simply OP).

The Minmatar one, you’ve successfully created a brawling glass cannon. Also known as the first to die, even if it could hit things at close quarters.

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You’ve stumbled onto the problem with all of these yourself.

  • Torp abc is perhaps the closest to being ok, but like you say its not gonna get more effective torp launchers as the frying pan.

  • Have to give the cruise abc the pirate bonus of mordus, something that is meant to be unique.

  • Mobility is the whole point of abc’s and you want to give one sentries?

  • You couldn’t think of one for minmatar so you came up with some bastard child of a ship…

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This is an understatement. We are talking about cruise missiles traveling at 37 KM/s at all V to get the 148 KM range in 4 seconds. It’s getting close to 50MN MWD ceptors.

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Here’s a thought, rather than adding new racial ABCs, why not add pirate ABCs? I mean… if new ABCs should be added (which I don’t think they should at this time).

The thought of a Sansha ABC running scorch mega pulse lasers with a 100mn AB fit (and the 150% bonus to speed) is absolutely terrifying.

A Mordus legion ABC running torps would have an excellent place to run extended range points along with velocity-improved torpedos.

Guristas and Serp would be a hard sell, their bonuses don’t really fit into an ABC all that well. At least, not without completely clashing with existing ships.

An angel ABC would be very hard to box in, which would certainly add an interesting roaming choice.

Blood Raider ABCs would have webbing range and neuts, which could certainly be useful.

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Do we really need “nano-pirate-BS”? Because that’s what those would end up being. High mobility Nightmare, high mobility frying pan, high mobility Machariel…

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No, we don’t. Just offering guidance on a future direction that the OP could choose to go, which may gain more traction than the original OP. Constructive criticism and all.

I agree that most of these would be cancerous. Especially the Sansha one… an ABC moving somewhere around 3k/s with large pulse lasers is as I put it, terrifying. On the plus side, you’d never run into an Orthrus or an Imp Slicer ever again.

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Indeed. Pirate ships are already ‘attack’ type ships.

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I would LOVE to see pirate BC’s all designed as ABC’s, the serpentis ship would be cruiser murderer for sure

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Why would amarr use torpedos. We use lasers.
All amarr ships should be laser primary, drones second.

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The Prophecy would like to have a word with you. There seems to be a queue forming, as the Dragoon, Armageddon, and the King of Khanid are right behind.

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All the bastard ships.
That fat turkey is an abomination to all things gilded in gold.

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