Battleships
Reason: Version 20.09 Release 2022-10-11.1. Frigate Escape Bay restrictions adjusted Patch notes
| Ship Types |
|---|
| Small |
| Medium |
| Large |
| Capital ships |
| Non-combat |
| Ships by faction |
Battleships (BSs, rarely BBs from US Navy terminology) are the biggest, heaviest sub-capital combat ships in EVE Online. They are correspondingly expensive, with even the cheapest battleship hulls selling for hundreds of millions of ISK. Tech 1 battleships are standard tools in higher-level PvE combat, are used in some large fleet doctrines in PvP combat, and are sometimes also used for solo or small gang PvP.
There are two classes of Tech 2 battleships: Marauders, which are specialized for mission-running, and Black Ops battleships, which can either transport fleets of stealthy ships across long distances using covert cynosural fields or open the door for friendly capital ships to join a fight.
All battleships also come equipped with a Frigate Escape Bay, enabling battleship pilots to stay in a fight after their battleship explodes.
All battleships (except Praxis) have a role bonus known as the "battleship role bonus": 100% bonus to Shield Extender hitpoints, 50% bonus to Armor Plate hitpoints, 5% Additional bonus to Reinforced Bulkhead hitpoints.
Since Battleships use large weapons that poorly against small targets like frigates, all battleships (except Marshal) have a drone bay, allows them use drones to engage and kill enemies that they cannot hit with ship weapons.
Tech 1 battleships
In PvP, Tech 1 battleships can mount great buffer tanks and can deal very high DPS when fitted for short ranges. When mounting long-range "sniper" fits, battleships can fight at the very longest ranges possible in EVE's engine (as far as 300km), while still dealing effective DPS. Such sniper-fit battleships, commonly the Apocalypse, Megathron, Maelstrom, Tempest and Rokh, have at times been the backbone of fleets used to fight for territory in nullsec. One battleship is something of an exception: the Caldari Scorpion, with its bonuses for ECM, is the only Tech 1 electronic warfare battleship.
Battleships' weaknesses are low speed and agility, combined with slow locking speeds, poor tracking speeds on large turrets, and poor damage application from large missiles. Battleships, therefore, struggle to force smaller ships to engage and to kill smaller ships even when they can be pinned down. However, in partial compensation for this, battleships also have access to certain heavy-duty modules such as the Stasis Grappler, which can easily spell a death sentence for small ships that stray too close. Battleships are the primary reason why it is commonly said that "bigger is not always better" among EVE ships: they are SP-intensive to use efficiently, are much more of an upfront ISK investment to field than cruisers or battlecruisers, and when used improperly, they can easily fail to either do their job or survive retaliation.
In PvE. battleships are also the standard class of ship used to run Level 4 missions solo since they can fit active tanks good enough to survive lots of DPS over a sustained period of time, while still dealing out enough damage to complete missions reasonably quickly. (Unlike with smaller ships, this tanking ability is a necessity: their large size and low speed make evasion nearly impossible.) Battleships fitted to solo Level 4 missions usually rely on light and medium drones for defense against smaller NPC targets.
Amarr:
- Abaddon: Monstrous tank and decent damage.
- Apocalypse: Sniper.
- Armageddon: Drone boat moonlighting in long-ranged energy neutralizers.
Caldari:
- Raven: Missile ship. Longest-ranged cruise missile platform in the game. Most effective Caldari BS for many situations. Standard PvE L4 mission-running battleship.
- Rokh: Caldari sniper. Longest railgun turret range in the game, alongside the Naga. Thick shields. Can still be nasty with a good blaster fit at close range.
- Scorpion: ECM boat, low DPS. Can shut targets down from 150KM. Often armor-tanked to open room for even more ECM. Not a solo or PvE ship. Generally highest-priority target on grid.
Gallente:
- Megathron: Sickening amount of DPS at close range. Also used as a sniper. Commonly used for rolling wormholes. When fitted with railguns, sometimes called a "Baltec", in honor of its most famous pilot.
- Hyperion Close-range blaster gunboat with an active armour tank bonus. Commonly fit with 2 or even 3 armor repairers, but does not scale into larger fights as its local repairers make it less receptive to remote repairs.
- Dominix: Drone boat. Versatile: lots of grid/CPU/capacitor. Good for remote repairing allies or neutralizing enemies. With multiple flights of T2 sentry or heavy drones, can also do a lot of damage. Standard L4-running Gallente BS. Works well solo or in groups.
Minmatar:
- Tempest: High DPS, gank over tank. Good sniper, or fitted for speed as 'EVE's largest battlecruiser'.
- Typhoon: Cruise missile and sentry drone sniper, or close up Rapid Heavy brawler. Commonly armor-tanked.
- Maelstrom: Also used as a sniper. Standard PvE L4 mission-running battleship. Strong active shield tank.
EDENCOM:
- Thunderchild: Unique Vorton turret that hits multiple targets per cycle. Can apply as much damage as a HAW "dreadnought". Has extremely long range.
Triglavian:
- Leshak: Very high DPS after spool-up and good base stats give it performance (and price tag) similar to pirate battleships. Utility high slots make for powerful smartbomb and neutralizer support. Surprisingly low-mass.
Empire faction battleships
The "Navy Issue" or "Fleet Issue" battleships are, with the exception of the Scorpion Navy Issue and Typhoon Fleet Issue, souped-up versions of the normal battleships, with extra slots, more hitpoints, more fitting room, and so on.
- Apocalypse Navy Issue: Range bonus for lasers plus the huge capacitor makes for a popular mission runner.
- Armageddon Navy Issue: Interesting combination of bonuses to large lasers, large missiles, drones, and energy warfare. Has a large drone bay and can utilize a full fight of heavy drones. Weak powergrid favors rapid heavy missiles.
- Raven Navy Issue: Popular for blitzing missions as fast or faster than a Golem (but not as good for salvaging). A full 8 launchers, and improved damage application to small targets.
- Scorpion Navy Issue: Not an ECM platform, but a missile brawler. Extremely thick shields.
- Dominix Navy Issue: Keeps its use as a drone boat, retaining the Dominix's bonuses to drone damage, hitpoints, and tracking, but trades the range bonus for a bonus to hybrid turret damage and armor repairer amount. Designed as a brawler with fearsome DPS and frankly ridiculous tank.
- Megathron Navy Issue: Megathron Mark II. Gains a utility high but otherwise works the same.
- Tempest Fleet Issue: Tempest Mark II. Gains a low slot.
- Typhoon Fleet Issue: Gains a second utility high and a 5th heavy drone (with 125mb drone bandwidth), with damage bonuses to both turrets and missiles. No accuracy or application bonus to either, but able to output hefty DPS with either weapon type.
Pirate and non-empire faction battleships
The pirate faction battleships are more unique, requiring two races' piloting skills and bringing unusual tactical combinations to the table.
Barghest: Very fast battleship (second only to the Machariel) with very fast, hard-hitting missiles and long-ranged warp disruptors. Rare blueprints lead to high price. Not generally used in PvE.
Bhaalgorn: Tough and powerful capacitor warfare platform. Not much use in PvE.
Machariel: Fastest battleship in EVE, increased warp speed, and capable of dealing lots of damage with autocannons or extremely high alpha with artillery. Popular for PvP, and for PvE, where it rivals the Vargur's mission completion speed.
Nestor: A curious ship with bonuses to hacking, exploration, and logistics. Tough armor, low mass, and large drone bay make it popular in small-gang wormhole PvE and PvP, and as a logistics platform in Invasion fleets.
Nightmare: Good laser platform. Combines shield tanking, lasers, and the Sansha afterburner bonus. Arguably a better mission runner than the Machariel for factions weak to EM. Also popular for high-end PvP.
Praxis: A limited-edition ship, but common enough that it sees frequent use. Does not require any racial battleship skill training, and can be fitted with any type of weapons or defenses. The ultimate "jack of all trades" battleship, though generally inferior to some other battleships in each specific trade.
Rattlesnake: Caldari-style shield-tanking, Gallente-style drone bonuses. The only battleship that can mount a really effective passive shield tank for PvE, and often seen as one of the best mission-running and ratting sub-capital ships in the game.
Vindicator: The ultimate Megathron, and the be-all end-all of non-Triglavian subcapital DPS. Very popular for Incursions and Invasions. Webifier strength bonus allows it to all but completely immobilize targets, allowing perfect accuracy for itself and its allies. Webs can even allow anti-capital dreadnoughts to hit subcapital ships.
Tech 2 battleships
T2 battleships are very specialized hulls with a different focus than their T1 counterparts. In particular, each type of T2 battleship is centered on a particular module or ability usually reserved for capital ships.
Marauders
- Main article: Marauders
Marauders are T2 battleships designed to be damage dealer with a strong local tank. For that, they can fit the Bastion Module which doubles the rate of fire, the local repair amount, improves resistances to damage and EWAR, but at the same time has drawbacks such as making the ship immobile, not receiving remote repairs, and giving a weapon timer. Besides that they have additional strong hull bonuses.
- Paladin - Armored laser platform, extremely resilient and surprisingly capacitor-efficient.
- Golem - Shielded cruise missile platform. Very unusually, has a strength bonus to Target Painters, either to improve its own damage application or in rare cases to improve its allies' application
- Kronos - Armored blaster platform that can make blasters project out to railgun ranges.
- Vargur - Shielded projectile platform favoring chain-micro-jumping to force enemies to keep approaching it. Twin application bonuses allow it to hit both close and long range targets.
Black Ops battleships
- Main article: Black Ops
Black Ops battleships (also "BLOPs") are designed for covert operations behind enemy lines. For that they have the ability to jump, bridge, and conduit jump to any cyno especially covert cynos. Black Ops gameplay usually means: jump in, kill the target, get safe, jump out. Covert cynos help a lot with stealthy movements in hostile space as they are not systemwide visible like hard cynos.
- Redeemer - Least commonly seen in combat, but able to fit the largest cargo bay for storing jump fuel, or the thickest armor if a tank must be held.
Widow - Greatly diminished in popularity after the ECM overhaul, but still sees use on the rare occasion where heavy ECM is an important utility to a fleet. The best option for the aforementioned Escalation-running strategy.
Sin - The only Black Ops commonly used for hunting other battleships. Able to attain destructively high drone damage and neutralization strength, making it a significant threat to most subcapital ships if fought solo.
Panther - The fastest of the Black Ops and the most able to move around while holding its cloak.
Marshal - Able to use any form of weapons, and comes with a unique bonus improving its local repair modules based on the pilot's Security Status. Long-ranged tackle, and extremely fast warp drive. Also extremely expensive, 6 times the price of any other black ops for the hull alone.
Rare/unique battleships
- Apocalypse Imperial Issue
- Armageddon Imperial Issue
- Megathron Federate Issue
- Raven State Issue
- Tempest Tribal Issue
Frigate escape bay
The Frigate Escape Bay is a unique cargo bay, introduced in the March 2020 update[1] and present on all battleships. It enables a battleship to hold one fully assembled and fitted frigate or some classes of frigate.
Ship types that fit a Frigate escape bay are:
Shuttles, Corvettes, Expedition Frigates, Interceptors, Covert Ops and Stealth Bombers do not fit despite being frigate sized or smaller. None of the ships that can fit an Interdiction Nullifer can be placed in a Frigate escape bay.
Astero is classified as a Frigate rather than a Covert Ops, and thus it is the only ship that can be put into a Frigate escape bay with a Covert Ops Cloaking Device fitted.
Oddly you can put a Venture in a frigate escape bay as it is a Frigate too, and it is the only ship that can be put into a Frigate escape bay with a built in +2 warp core strength. It, however, has a longer align time than most frigates, and it is ill-advised to push a Venture in a battleship.
If a frigate is inside the bay when the pilot ejects from the battleship, either the battleship is destroyed or a manual ejection is committed, the pilot will be ejected in the frigate instead of their capsule.
While a pilot is in a frigate, attempting to board an unpiloted battleship with an empty frigate escape bay will load that frigate into the battleship's escape bay.
Restrictions on ships stored in Ship maintenance bays are applied on Frigate escape bay too: a frigate stored in the Escape Bay can only carry ammunition, fuel isotopes, strontium, deployables, modules, rigs and mobile warp disruptors as cargo.
History
20.03 Release - Build: 2013787 - 2022-03-08 - "Road to Fanfest" Update (Patch Notes)
Brand new Role bonuses have been added to all battleships (excluding the Praxis).
- 50% bonus to HP from all Armor Plates
- 100% bonus to HP from all Shield Extenders
- 5% additive bonus to all Reinforced Bulkhead modules, for those with discerning tastes.
18.04 Release - Build: 1706308 - 2020-04-15 - "Surgical Strike" Update (Patch Notes)
- T1, Faction and Pirate Battleship base hp increased by 10%
- T1, Faction and Pirate Battleship base scan resolution increased 30%
October 2019 Release - 2019-10-15.1
Every Cruiser, Battlecruiser and Battleship now warps faster than before.
- Warp Speed increased from 2 AU/s to 3 AU/s (+1 AU/s)
