Thoughts on battleships

[McNeo]

I actually agree with one battleship per faction. This would be the best way to see less battleships, and more fighters, gunboats and cruisers. As it stands, cruisers are nearly useless due to the fact that just about any well piloted gunboat can take one down. I am not in favour of such a massive armour increase, but maybe 7 times instead of ten. This wont make it too much work. The Cap armour mk VIII on a RH BS with the 10x base armour anyway, thats around 40x (correct me if im wrong) armour that it has now. I think the RH BS has around 700k armour now, so 40x700000 is 28 million armour. Bit too much imho. with your suggestion, i think this value should be around 23 million armour. (this is my opinion on your suggestion)

I like the idea quite a bit. With the battleship liscence on the faction battleships.

I would proceed by posting on the forums, a topic such as "All battleship pilots post here!" and compensate those who are not in a faction with money. Only those who post there though, as those with battleships have had more than enough time to know that the forums are there. Alot of work, but its the only way to implement this kind of change without a player wipe.

And yes, right now, the battleships are pretty underpowered, as are the cruisers. The gunboats are balanced, as they do their intended job well enough. However, they do a host of other jobs, such as cruiser killing, and in pairs, battleship killing. This really shouldn't be the case. So battleships and cruisers need their shield taken away and a pretty sizable armour tank (sorry for the EvE reference...).

IMO, the highest cruiser armour should be: 10 million (or thereabouts) with armour cap VIII. Possibly around 25 million for the most heavily armoured battleship. The gunboats should recieve a doubling of its base armour, but no other changes...

Also, now one of my ideas from not so long ago.

Can we make the battlecruiser PLEASE be a battleship killer as its only use (as I suggested before, 2 fixed cruiser forward guns, or with that armour tank, maybe 3) but only 2-4 normal cruiser turret slots. This would make it an integral part of strategy against enemy flagships, whilst making them useless to the average freelancer (who, as suggested earlier, should not have anything larger than a cruiser if these changes go through). I really don't like the idea of BC's being just bigger cruisers.

My opinion, as I wrote it.

EDIT TIME!:

@Doom: The mass of a ship in space would be much more, due to the fact that construction in space is done with no gravity restraints. Therefore, if you look at a star destroyer from starwars, and compare it to a TIE fighter, you will find that the Star destroyer is a lot heavier, bigger and more massive than the Aircraft Carrier in relation to an F22 Jet (bit confusing, what I mean is that the ratio of mass of Star destroyer : TIE Fighter is a lot higher than Aircraft carrier: F22 Jet.)

Also, nevermind moving 50000 tons through water, try getting a ship weighing in at 5 billion tons to move. That requires a lot of power, to go at any decent speed. You will keep accelerating, granted, but the rate of accelaration will be pretty slow...a lot slower than an Aircraft carrier's now.

@Epyon: Maybe not removing the shield, but making it like an asteroid barrier. Not useful for much else (same as gunboat shield?) except stopping low-level NPC attacks and the asteroids...

@pipsqueak: You do realise, that a RH BS would have 700000x400 armour... thats...over a quarter of a billion armour! That, its silly, imo...