I’ve brought up this idea separately in a few posts about capital ships and battleships, so I figured it warranted its own post.
I’d like to propose slightly re-aligning supcap warp speeds. (All values given below are for T1 variants.)
Frigates: 5 AU/s
Destroyers: 4.5 AU/s
Cruisers: 4 AU/s (up from 3 AU/s)
Battlecruisers: 3.5 AU/s (up from 2.5 AU/s)
Battleships: 3 AU/s (up from 2 AU/s)
Capital Ships: 1.5 AU/s
Titans and Freighters: 1.37 AU/s
Mining Barges: 3 AU/s
Industrial Ships: 3 AU/s
Industrial Command Ships: 2.7 AU/s (Porpoise) and 2 AU/s (Orca)
This change would accomplish a few things:
More consistent decrease in warp speed among subcap classes (i.e. every step up in class is a 0.5 AU/s step down in warp).
Increase Battleship warp speed to make roaming in them less painfully slow.
Increase the utility of subcaps, and in particular Battleships, over Capital Ships.
Maintain the overall balance of warp speed differences among subcaps, even if the absolute differences are a bit lower (i.e. frigates and 'Ceptors will still be the fastest ships generally, but not so much so that they totally eclipse larger subcaps).
Industry and mining would be largely unaffected since haulers and mining ships aren’t getting any sort of speed boost.
A few other things would likely need to be looked at in conjunction with this change, particularly:
Cruisers and Battleships with bonuses to warp speed (Macharial, Cynabal, Proteus, Victorieux Luxury Yacht, et al.). Should those bonuses be adjusted, removed, or left as is? (I have no particular feelings on this.)
Cap required to warp for the ships getting a warp speed boost. Should it be increased or left as is? (I think it should be increased. Can’t get something for nothing.)
Ships with a Covert Ops Cloak. Should they all take a hit to warp speed (e.g. -0.5 AU/s off of their base warp speed) like stealth bombers? (With the base warp speeds increased, I think they should take the hit. Otherwise, no, they’d be too slow.)
Should T2 ship classes (aside from Covert Ops variants) universally get a warp speed boost, and should it be the same for all T2 variants? I think there is some interesting opportunity here to further tweak/differentiate between T2 variants. There’s already some differentiation here with certain classes ('Ceptors, Blockade Runners), but can/should we have more? (I have no particular suggestion here, but I’d love to see a discussion.)
Thoughts, comments, suggestions, and even flames are welcome.
Battleships don’t need to warp slower than cruisers, they align slower which makes them warp over distances slower anyway.
CCP forgot about align speeds when they did the warp speed changes so battleships got hit twice.
So you can just bring everything up to a 3au warp speed, and not adjust anything else.
There are way too many variables - rigs, implants, skills, hull bonuses can all influence alignment time and/or warp speed. In my opinion, this is great. If you want a battleship that warps at 3AU/s get a Machariel!
These aren’t bad ideas, but they don’t mean anything unless capital jumping is adjusted. That’s the problem.
Force projection at this point is: “I have an entire army brigade that I can send to anywhere in a spilt second within X range, and they can go much farther with a little time.”
The penalty for doing this should be higher, or something. All your suggestion does currently is have subcaps fly faster to their deaths.
My preferred option is hyperspatial rigs actually, I use them liberally.
Think about it this way: what did CCP do to Damage Controls and hull resists when it was obvious to everyone for a really long time that an overwhelming majority of combat fits were using them?
Right, they changed how they work to make Damage Controls less ubiquitous. I think we have a similar situation here with subcap warp speeds, which is why I proposed tweaking things a bit.
My point wasn’t just “rah rah, buff battleships!”, it was about changing the fact that if players ever do roam in battleships (which isn’t all that often from what I gather), they typically require certain fits or hulls. Adding a little extra differentiation between caps & subcaps, and mixing things up among the T2 lineup were just added benefits.
One of the key tenets of all warfare is that it’s generally harder to trap more mobile forces. Sure, if you’re talking about a pitched fight against a fixed target, all being able to warp faster does is get you there faster. But think smaller-scale.
Cyno-jammed systems? It sure would be nice to have faster-warping battleships to get in quick and wreak some havoc before a capital force can be rallied.
Skirmish warfare? In the current jump drive meta, faster warping battleships would make excellent anti-capital skirmishers. (I know, it’s unusual to think of battelships as skirmishers, and I loathe drawing parallels between EvE and IRL navies, but given the force structure in EvE, battleships are really much more like cruisers in modern naval terms.)
Shall I go on?
Having heavier subcaps, battleship in particular, warp faster would do nothing but erode jump drive projection. They would be harder to pin down, and they would provide an intermediate level of escalation that is 50% more mobile (in strategic terms) than it is currently, both of which would make capital ships less overwhelmingly appealing options. Plus, they would empower smaller entities to project power without needing to rely on capital ships, which could slowly chip away at the notorious Blue Donut.