Blog Banter 76 - Flagships

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 76th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Blog Banter 76 - Tanky McTankFace

At fanfest CCP Fozzie proposed a potential new ship class. Let's call it the fleet commander's flagship for now. This is to try and prevent "FC Headshotting" where the opposing fleet knows who the FC is and alpha's them off the field leaving the rest of the fleet in confusion and disarray. Fozzie mentioned a ship with a great tank but no offensive abilities. Is this a good idea? Is FC head-shotting a legitimate tactic? If CCP do go down the route of a "flagship" how might this work? Also is a new ship the answer or is there another way of giving an FC the ability not to be assassinated 12 seconds into the fight without letting players exploit it? 

Banter on...

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Back in Blog Banter 70 last year which was about Dreaming, I talked about my dream of a Flagship

As a Fleet Commander, one thing I find myself doing when not in actual combat is listening to my scouts, looking at maps on Dotlan Maps, and trying to picture where all the ships of my fleet and known enemy fleets are located. It can be tough sometimes, and this is one instance where I think it should be tough as the skills and expertise of the FC and scouts combined can make the difference between a successful fleet and a complete debacle. 

That being said, at a certain point the number of chess pieces on the board as fleets and parties grow can become very unwieldy and it would be nice to have the option to command from a flagship with the tools to allow a fleet commander.
What tools you asked?

I want a ship with a command deck map that I can use to visualize the battlefield from my scouts and fleet automatically. It would connect with my fleet's transponders and my scouts d-scans and grid visuals to feed into my screen a map of known and previously known ship locations. It would also allow scouts to tag groups of ships as hostile or neutral or friendly, and give up to date status on my fleet position and composition. 

I think it should be tied to a ship, a tech II battleship based on the Rokh, Abaddon, Hyperion, and Maelstrom, so that the reward of having so much information at your fingertips is balanced by the FC having to field a delicious target. (PS make sure the Command Map mode does not work under cloak or in station or in POS bubble.) You want it balanced so that not every fleet includes one, but only the Super-Serious-Internet-Spaceships fleet includes them.

However, my vision of a Flagship above is not quite what this blog banter is about. My idea above is about a strategic command deck I suppose, whereas this banter is focusing on a field tactical command deck, the former about the bigger picture and the latter about the current local situation.

In that regard, I really like what the Command Destroyers have done for the small ship meta. They are extra tanky for destroyers giving me a more solid platform to command from, reducing the fear of headshotting a titch while also providing an easy link boost (which will become extremely important when on-grid AoE links are a reality) as well as the very cool tactical ability of a Field Jump Generator. Overall it has been a great Flagship for frigate and destroyer fleets.

I would like to see something of the same vein for large fleet types. When you get to cruisers or bigger, the command destroyer has a weaker tank and less likely to survive the conflagration, and will outpace the slower ships trying to approach for a tactical jump. But a larger vessel, say a Tech II version of the Attack Battlecruisers focusing on a big Tech II battleship level tank and Field Jump Generators instead of battleship level DPS could work really well. Alternatively, revamp one of the sets of Command Ships currently seeing little use in game to include less DPS but more Field Jump Generator.

At the end of the day, the best defense is being an unknown FC ;)

Commanding Attention

Command ships used to be divided into a "Field" and "Fleet" designation. The former was intended for front line combat with only marginal warfare linking ability and the latter was designed for pure warfare linking and marginal damage.

The end result was that the Field command ships were easily replaced by cheaper battlecruisers and cheaper/faster HACs and the Fleet Command ships only brought value to large enough fleets that only really occurred in null sec. That's not to say that some Command ships didn't see use; the tank and gank ability of the Sleipnir was legendary and the Astarte had some fans... but overall they were a dying breed.

On top of all of that, warfare linking strategic cruisers gave more bang for the linked buck while being harder to probe out and giving bigger bonuses. Doh!

CCP's response to this issue in the rebalancing initiative was threefold. First, they changed the bonuses that strategic cruisers got to 2% for warfare linking strength per level of racial defensive subsystem down from 5%. On the other side, Command ships all got a 3% bonus to warfare linking per level of Command Ships giving them the theoretical raw bonus advantage.

Secondly, in order to make all boosting ships more attractive, they balanced the warfare links and extended the bonuses each racial ship had. So Caldari ships give bonuses to Shield and Information warfare; Gallente has Skirmish and Armour warfare, etc.

Finally, they consolidated Fleet and Field into one hybrid class where they have impressive battlefield performance AND the ability to fit two warfare links without sacrificing their damage output.

So the verdict? Well, beyond some complaints about the homogenizing of the class and the continued emphasis on combat over support ships, I like these changes. If nothing else it makes them have obvious reasons for taking them in place of battlecruiser or HAC in normal combat. They are still massively expensive compared to other options but at least you are only trading off replacement cost and some mobility to get the  enhanced boosting capability. I'll have more to say on cost of HACs and Command Ships another day.

So let's look at a couple ships. First up is the Astarte since I have one in my hanger gathering dust and I want to see what I can do with it.

Astarte

Astarte

Boasting over 900 DPS with faction antimatter and drones (Void pushes it over 1000) along with a solid tank from the dual reps, this fit would be used in small gang skirmishes to bring the hammer on tough targets like bait battlecruisers and pesky Mallers and Vexors. And extra flight of light drones to deal with tacklers, and two links to make the gang that much harder.

Of course, local repair has issues and only really works with small numbers of opposing forces and this ship is no exception. And running everything, even with the cap booster running full tilt, is not going to last long.

For that matter, for the price a hard hitting Talos might do for a fraction of the cost, minus the boosts. So your mileage may vary.

Vulture

Vulture

I've always loved the Ferox hull and started as a hybrid pilot so I've always had a soft spot for the Vulture but damn me that thing sucked harder than a vacuum on "Remove Face" mode. So how does it fair with the changes plus the new railgun stats?

Right away you see its doing 578 DPS (all skills V of course) at optimal of 40 km (falloff 15km) with faction antimatter. Tracking is unsurprisingly low of course. More interesting is the 168km optimal (19.5 km falloff) with spike ammo and the tracking computer set to range for 335 DPS. Overwhelming? No, but not shabby.

Is it enough to make me want to try one out? No, not really. The massive tank is nice but it won't save you if the enemy lands right on top of you. The blaster version has nice range projection with null but really the Naga with large blasters and null has similar range anyways. Overall, I don't see prices of the Vulture spiking (HA! Pun unintended!) any time soon.