Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Black Ops new Role could follow more under the definition of Black Ops or "Black Operations". A generalization of the meaning of Black Operations, is to accomplish a goal and then deny it ever actually happened. This would give a back bone to the idea of local chat cloaking and other roles of such. Even things such as Killmail hiding could be involved, as Black Operations usually entails covering your trail

Much of this would not be too overpowered as for a Black Ops ship to enter a system without using a stargate another entity must enter the system to drop him a Cov Ops Cyno for him to enter the system. The module employed for the task of cloaking you from local and visual surveillance may come with some penalties, some ideas I had included a base -90% Warp speed bonus that could have a skill boosting it to a less annoying -75% at level 5 (From the base 3.00 au/s the resulting speeds would be 0.30 au/s and 0.75 au/s, the skill would probably be a -5% boost after level 2)

Other restrictions could be inertia and speed reductions, possibly a large fitting requirement, and definitely a fuel use. Fuel should use a lot of cargo space and come at a large consumption rate, rendering any Black Operation short and sweet. I think that even so, the use of a Black Ops should be complete in it's stealth, with one of either the Ability to jump mid cycle with its 'super cloak' (I was thinking of calling it "Black Ops Cloaking Device" or have no time lag to activate it after jumping.

Also, I feel there should be a way for a suspecting alliance to discover if they are being watched. Also, based off the anticloak idea thread, POS module could be employed for the role, a disrupting pulse would render any Black Ops Cloak in the system useless for a short amount of time. Although, this module also renders Black Ops unable to jump out of the system and depending on the cycle of his useless cloaking system all of his constrictions still apply leaving his inertia, speed, and warp speed inadequate for evading interception and destruction. Even so, an enemy fleet still has to probe down the slow, powerless Black Ops battleship before their opening closes and the POS module goes in to a long cool down. I think this POS module should use a large amount of fuel and have a fairly long cool down to stop alliances from randomly pulsing it when they feel like it. Of course it should require sovereignty and be a 1 per system module

In my own personal opinion this should only be useable in Null Sec to further restrict use and so it can be countered effectively. Another restriction would be fitting a normal cyno generator on the ship to prevent a completely unexpected hot drop, although I think a cov ops cyno generator would be fine, but you would need to drop cloak to do it.

Thanks for reading

Edit : Nikk Narrel's comment of a fleet cloaking device gave me an idea. A Black Ops could employ the role of and Area of Effect cloaking device for fleet members, several restrictions would apply. To activate the AoE cloak no neutrals may be within a certain range of the Black Ops and the Black Ops is rendered immobile while the cloak is active. The main use for this would be to hide a small fleet from D-Scan, but because of the large disruption in light a small anomaly can be probed down to bring a curious eye a few dozen kilometers of the fleet. The large cloak would also be partially visible as a disruption of light, as if you were looking through warped glass allowing the group to be uncloaked once the neutral gets close enough.

Thanks for the move, I'm not very good at putting my posts in the right spots.

I like this idea, currently Black Ops battleships are hardly used. As said at fanfest, there are more titan pilots than Black Ops pilots. I think it would be balanced to reduce the warp speed, and increase time to align, plus the fact that it's on a time constraint with it's fuel or it risk's discovery. The Black Ops jump range forces it to use more fuel to get there and have less fuel to stay longer. It sounds good to me.

I don't like the idea of cutting the effective range that black ops have now. As it is, to make round trips is a pain unless you are really close to your target or unless you have a few blockaid runner alts following with extra fuel. However, I am all for more stealth in the ops. Black ops should be a stealth platform not just an expensive tanking sniper no one wants to use for the cost vs performance. I'd be happier if the black ops, being the only ship in an ops fleet without one, could simply use a covert cloak.

I actually did a thread on this a while back, here is the main essence

We are on the same page, I'm comparing my idea to yours. In the world of a Black Ops fleet of dozens of combat able ships hidden entirely would be to much, the one or few combat impaired Black Ops ships wouldn't be especially since it would prevent them from fitting a normal cyno generator.

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Also you're dumb, Blops BS are not "one trick ponies only used for their bridge."

I would only be okay with an AoE cloaking device if the ship using it (like your BlackOps) is mostly immobile like a Heavy Interdictor, carries a massive sig radius on par with 100MN MWD, and is not also cloaked. A visual effect showing there is an active cloaking field would help too.

Sig penalty makes it easy to scan down the ship if you're trying to use it to hide a gang at a safespot, and the lack of cloak for the Black Ops in use makes it an obvious trap and sitting duck for gate-camps. Doubly so if you can see there is an active cloak field.

Why shouldn't it be cloaked, and why should it be obvious there's a cloaking field active? Because the tradeoff for having an entire combat gang cloaked without gimping their combat effectiveness should be a reduction in the ambush effectiveness. If you don't want anyone to know you're even there at the gate, use regular cloaks and take the combat hit. If you want to keep your combat effectiveness, then you must make it obvious that you're there.

From the perspective of a victim, they would see the Widow and the active cloaking field, but would have no idea if it's a couple BC and a ceptor behind it, or a massive hellcats fleet. All they see is the Widow sitting there hiding a whole lot of something.

Heck, it might even be a good idea for a Black Ops to bluff using the field. Put up the field and hope the neutral doesn't call you on your bluff and figure out you're actually alone.

I had 2 Redeemer class for years. They got sold around a month ago. I didn't want to but denial is a dangerous thing in EVE.