I was thinking the other day - the one subcapital ship we don’t have a T2 version of is the all-dps, paper-tank, big-stick battlecruiser! You know, the Oracle, the Naga, the Talos and the Tornado. The T2 versions would use XL guns! They could have 3 High slots for 3 XL turret hardpoints (or less, never used/seen someone use XL turrets, dunno how powerful they are) - like a mini dread, but without being able to deploy into siege mode.
T2 Talos with XL Hybrid turrets, T2 Oracle with XL Laser Turrets, T2 Naga with XL Cruise/Torpedo launchers (missile love) and the T2 Tornado with XL Projectile turrets. This way, they’d get to keep their “big-stick in the smaller hull” shtick, and people would be able to try out XL guns without entering into the capital investment. This should expand the XL market a bit, and add some more variety to things! Their added price with no insurance and thin tank should help keep things balanced, I guess?
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could add a SECOND T2 big-stick: the mythical sub-cap fighter carrier! Only a single fighter squadron, though, and restricted to light/support fighters, or things could get out of hand fast. This second idea could probably be implemented on a T2 Battleship instead, though, idk.
Yay or Nay? Discuss.
Tried creating a new “ships” tag but it’d only let me pick from pre-existing ones, so I picked redesign. Hope it’s ok.
What role do they fill - other than power creep that would require rebalancing a lot of other things in the game!
How do battlecruisers realistically fit XL weapons? A Tornado has 1000 MW powergrid but a XL projectile weapon requires 125,000 MW!
I suspect these things would be popular for structure bashes but limited use for anything else - the XL weapons can’t hit anything smaller than a capital ship!
I don’t believe it’d require balancing anything else because of them - they have a super weak tank, and a very specialized role, not unlike the current T1 big-sticks, but with more risk, investment and reward: being T2, they’d require substantial investment and skill train to get to them properly.
Right now, these battlecruisers can fit 8 Large guns without breaking a sweat - replacing 8 Larges by a couple XL doesn’t feel all that unrealistic.
Pretty much, like bombers: capital ganks and citadel/poco bashing. You could use it as the ultimate sniper/gate camper if you add tracking modules or have a friend assisting you with remote tracking boosts.
XL guns don’t do as much damage as you obviously think they do (check out an un-sieged dread). So these ships will need huge bonuses to do more damage than a t1 abc.
Then theres the missile problem. The whole reason a naga has guns is because of travel time. A missile ship that is built for range has to wait ages for its damage to apply. Then when a target does die, any missiles that are still mid flight to the target are wasted. Thats a lot of missiles when you’re using a bunch of these ships at range. It’s far far more efficient to have guns.
A subcap carrier is a dominix. Stop it. Everyone just stop already!
The balance problem with these ships is isk printing. If they do more dps and have better range than battleships, they will be used to warp in at range and convert dumb rats into isk at a ridiculous pace. They will be harder to catch than a capital in null (especially a sieged dread) and in hi-sec there are missions they’d finish in a few minutes (and i read that ccp were thinking of removing accel gates from missions).
Sorry, but fighters aren’t capital drones anymore, they use completely different mechanics and need micromanagement. We won’t stop.
I agree with the rest though. Large guns already need 95% powergrid reduction, equipping them with XL guns would need them to have a bonus that gives over 99% reduction. At that point it’s easier to say it’s free. Even I say that this would be ridiculous. It may could work with battleships but definitely not with battle cruisers.
I think we never even needed the T1 versions of those.
Whenever you have an idea about a cool new ship or class of ships, please think about which role they would fill that isn’t already being filled by another ship class. And once you have figured it out, consider putting it out there alongside with your idea, so people can see where you are coming from.
This part is quite important, as right now, about every role in the game I can think of is already filled, and introducing new ships comes with the danger of making already existing ships useless, which would be a waste.
If you want to sniper-gatecamp? Use a battleship.
Want to bash a structure? Bring Dreads. Or Bombers. Or Battleships. Or anything that can dish out DPS, really, the structure won’t start kiting anytime soon.
Want to murder a supercap fleet? Bring a supercap fleet.
So how is this balanced and/or why would anyone use this?
Something super expensive but super squishy sounds pretty worthless, and if someone does find a way to use them then it’s probably imbalanced because you’re talking about a ship with Faction Battleship levels of DPS, considering the existing T1 hulls already have 8 guns plus damage bonuses.
Why would anyone ever fit XL guns to a BC sized hull? First off, that’d look ridiculous. A single XL turret is roughly the size of the saucer on a Barghest.
Second, they can’t shoot subcaps worth a crap, and without the damage bonus from a Dread their DPS and damage are utterly terrible.
You can’t add enough tracking to an XL turret these days to actually deal damage to subcaps, because the signature resolution is terrible and they have a damage malice when shooting subcaps. You could do it with HAWs but those are basically just clusters of Battleship guns.
There’s no need for something this niche, let alone for the dev time and effort an entire new ship line would require.
Well, what looked decent at first may actually have more problems behind it than I expected! Didn’t think about those concerns before, good that I posted, so I could learn about them for future ideas!
Yeah, it’s more of a ‘want’ than ‘need’, and this subforum is called Player Features and Ideas, and this certainly is one, however bad it turned out to be.
We could move these ideas to a T2 Battleship hull instead, what do you guys think?
Except low-key it would be useless because 3 t2 XL guns out of siege only do like 1k dps unless you give them a damage bonus. Also have you seen the size of capital hardpoints compared to a BC?
No, just no. If you want a dread go buy one, they’re cheap as ■■■■ right now.
We could stay with the subcap fighters idea then, or give the BC/BS a single XL turret, but make it super boosted, idk. Just trying to think of something we could pout as a T2 bigger-guns thing.
Thanks for being open minded instead of sticking to your idea like it’s Custer’s Last Stand.
Admitting your idea has problems is the first step to coming up with something actually good and workable.
It’s called a Pirate Battleship, pretty much.
We don’t really need a Battleship sized HAC. HACs and AFs have enough trouble with having a role. A Battleship version would pretty much be either powercreep or pointless.
If you’re stuck on the XL guns idea that’s just not a great move. Either it’s a super cost effective way to kill Caps, and therefore probably OP, or it’s not effective enough in terms of either cost or pilots and therefore not really worthwhile.
Also keep in mind that an XL turret is almost as big as a Battleship, so it doesn’t work in that way too.
This is another horse that’s on its way to dead from all the beatings. There’s just really not much reason for this since it would be pretty close to OP in High Sec, and in Low and Null it’s not cost or numbers effective. You’d be better off having the pilot in a Carrier in pretty much every way.
This is a stupid question, frankly. Torps on a bomber are pretty good and don’t look ridiculous. XL turrets can’t shoot sub-caps pretty much at all and I really wasn’t kidding when I said that one cap gun is the same size as the front frying pan on a Barghest. At that point you’ve more got a ship mounted to a gun than a gun mounted to a ship.
In short your attempt at equating XL guns to Torpedoes and this hypothetical ship to a Bomber doesn’t work, at all.
There’s basically zero reason to put HAWs on a subcap. A full rack of 8 guns on a Battleship does more damage than a single HAW turret with a Dread’s sieged damage bonus.
Also Dreads don’t have a damage bonus, they have a Siege Module which provides a damage bonus. Besides which you’re not going to see CCP make a cheaper ship that does Dread levels of damage to Caps on a subcap platform. That would be ridiculously OP in general and would cause some pretty significant grief for the parts of the meta that include High Sec in general, structure bashing in particular, and probably a fair bit for Capital Ships, since training into XL guns with a T2 Battleship is about the same training time as XL guns on a Dread anyways.
You’re slightly overestimating the size of the capital weapons. According to the preview window the largest guns are the capital artillery guns (263 m), while the smallest are the XL torpedo launchers (134 m).
The average length of a battleship is about 1 km, the Barghest seems to be the largest with 1767 m. If anything, we could see really interesting designs if we would put oversized guns on battleships.
That’s how you “equip” ships with mass drivers in other sci-fi, this is a thing actually.
Those measurements aren’t accurate and I’m really not, park a Barghest next to a Revelation sometime with the guns deployed. You could just about fit one XL turret on each side of the front pan, but it would look like someone stuffed a poker chip through an egg.
EDIT: Someone put this lovely comparison together http://i.imgur.com/JiT3kBD.png I think that pretty well demonstrates the core problem here…
I think they could fill a useful role as a subcap counter to small cap fleets. Right now, a single well-fit dread is essentially invulnerable to, and able to gank anything short of a strategic fleet or other caps. Nuets are sort of an exception, but very high cap fits are possible, and capital ASBs are a thing, so that limits their usefulness a lot.
However, I can see tons of ways these could be abused, from arty versions suicide ganking in highsec, to ratting, to hit and run volleying tactics against battleship fleets. There would need to be some burned in, hard pre-nerf so they would be strong at their intended role but unable to perform other, abusive roles. I would say they should have to use a bastion module to fire (60 seconds of non-movement) that can’t be used in highsec and they can’t fit high-angle guns.
When it comes to your second idea, I’ve always wanted the Typhoon to be that ship. Not because of lore or even utility (I think it would be overpowered unless it’s damage was nerfed to the point of uselessness), but just look at it. It looks far more like a drone boat than the Domi ever has.
) and the T2 Tornado with XL Projectile turrets. This way, they’d get to keep their “big-stick in the smaller hull” shtick, and people would be able to try out XL guns without entering into the capital investment. This should expand the XL market a bit, and add some more variety to things! Their added price with no insurance and thin tank should help keep things balanced, I guess?
