Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In a nutshell, a new ship-type:

Heavy Stealth-Bomber.

A Tech II variant of the tier two battle-cruiser chassis, give it the ability to mount 5-6 capital torpedo launchers, with the same explosion-velocity and range boni as frigate SBs get to their torps, along with cov-ops cloak capability, T II resists and EHP, and the ability to mount an infini-point, but scripted only--to tackle my favourite ship-type--and of course, covert jump-bridge transitting-capability.

They would retain at least a 25m^3 drone-bay, and have a free high-slot to mount a neut, to help deal with little nasties.

Maybe covert-cyno capability as well?

I would think this could use some pretty heavy skill requirements:

CovOps 5, all the pre-reqs for the infini-point, Battlecruisers 5, the capital torp. skills, Cyno Field Theory 5 if covert-cyno capable, and really good missile- and general-support-skills go without saying...It would give higher-skilled pilots who really love the idea/concept of BLOPs something new to train for, newer pilots something to be inspired by as a medium/long-term end goal, and the BLOPs-based gang more targets, ideally without needing a huge fleet of paper aeroplanes.

(And yes, I think the Drake would look awesome in black/red trim, with oversize missile-pods and engines)

Discuss, please.

I think they should have the cloaking ability, to get through gate-camps, and to remain in line with the role of the other clandestine-ops ships (Frigate SBs, Force Recons, etc.).

The regular bomb-launcher, yeah...Maybe mount more than 1? Otherwise keep those unchanged.

On the other hand, though...:

The "heavy bomb" is a concept that's been bruit'ed about as well...IIRC, the main damage of bombs is affected by the target's signature radius...Maybe give heavy bombs a minimum signature resolution to keep them from insta-popping anything of smaller sig-radius than say...A MWD'ing cruiser, or even battle-cruiser--that should keep it from being OP.

Did you even read it ?


Not a bad idea in general, but much less tank to no tank, and add a Heavy Bomb Launcher The bomb hits sub caps for very low damage, but carriers and up get hit for a significant ammount, on a level of.. 10 heavy bombers could do maybe 10% total hp dmg on a carrier or dread. With maybe a high cycle time on it, or room in cargo for a max of two.

Would be nasty to imagine a blops fleet 20 heavy bombers decloaking and face raping 10 dreads with little to no support fleet. Obviously if there is a support fleet, the heavy bombers would die, very fast. No drone bay on heavy bombers, at all.

Just as an example, a drake on eft with 7 citadel torps does 722 dps, obviously you cant fit them on a drake, but it gives you an idea on what the dps of heavy bombers would be like, and i would suggest citadel torps ONLY. Sniping caps at 200km seems dumb.

A kinda of anti-capital blob sub cap, were noone would dare fielding caps without a significant support fleet, which is what ccp is aiming for right now.

Since when are any CovOps ships "IWIN" buttomns? They never were, and never will be, even the tanky force Recons that can effectively solo, or the cloaky T3s.

Remember, this thing's fighting capital/super-capital class ships, and is at least BC-sized, so fighter bombers are especially a threat once you light off the MWD, and a flight of fighters would be arguably just as, if not more, dangerous to it, as they could catch it more easily.

Oh, and you really need to learn how missiles work:

Missile damage is determined by the target's velocity vs. your missiles' explosion velocity, and the target's signature radius vs. your missiles' explosion radius (of the two, target v vs. explosion v is the larger of the two, but signature radius is still significant. Note that this is the target's absolute velocity magnitude, irrespective of direction or of his velocity relative to you.).

With maximised skills and no implants (Guristas issue torps--not cheap, I imagine?), the citadel torps have an explosion radius of 2000m, and an explosion velocity of 12m/s (all numbers from EFT). Assuming the same per-level bonus to torpedo explosion velocity that frigate sized SBs get, at max skill that would add 50% more, or now 18m/s...

The only way this would hurt a sub-capital class ship is if a MWD'ing shield-tank BC or BS is multiple-webbed down to a crawl with its' MWD cycling.

Most things smaller, faster, and/or non-MWD equipped would simply shrug this off and outrun the explosion by several orders of magnitude, even with a few target painters on it.

The fighter signature-resolution is now not being nerfed, according to further dev-posts in that threadnought (Post #931, page 41).

This is a very good thing, btw, as carriers would have lost a significant portion of their incredible versatility and combat-functionality, especially vis-a-vis smaller corporations, smaller gangs, and well-off solo players, otherwise.

well there is a few problem i see with this first is with this new BC. for one only cald titan can carry this much citadel laucnher ... even the dread only carry half that and they big @$$ ship too boot so here what i would see that would make more realalistic.

It would be either this a Bc that can use Compact citadel torp and those would have a fit like this

Hi = 4-5 (2-3x compact Citadel Torpedo Launcher + 1x Heavy bomb launcher + 1x cover ops cloak )
Med = Amarr/Gallent= 4 Caldari/Minmatar= 6
Low = Amarr/Gallent= 6 Caldari/Minmatar= 4

if the compact version is out then it would go for normal Siege launcher and the fit would be as follow:

Hi = 6 ( 4x siege Launcher + 1x Heavy bomb launcher + 1x cover ops cloak )
Med = Amarr/Gallent= 4 Caldari/Minmatar= 6
Low = Amarr/Gallent= 6 Caldari/Minmatar= 4

or go for siege with 2x bomb launchers

Hi = 7 ( 4x siege Launcher + 2x bomb launcher + 1x cover ops cloak )
Med = Amarr/Gallent= 4 Caldari/Minmatar= 6
Low = Amarr/Gallent= 6 Caldari/Minmatar= 4

and yes for the cover cyno like all the other cover ops ship

as for skill goes it would look like this:

10% bonus to torpedo explosion velocity and flight time per level
20% bonus to torpedo missile velocity per level

Covert Ops Skill Bonus:
5% bonus to bomb (Race) damage per level
15% bonus to torpedo (Race) damage per level

Role Bonus:
-99.65% reduction in Siege Missile Launcher powergrid needs
-99.5% reduction in Cloak CPU Use
-100% targeting delay after decloaking

Note: can fit covert cynosural field generators and bomb launchers (or heavy bomb laucher)

well the compact citadel torp is what the fighter bomber are using atm (that the real name of those torps)

as for the infini-point i would have to go for a other ship cover ops capable but not the same one since it would be to powerful so by having a other ship like a frig t2 similar to Electronic frigate with the a dual role of captial interdicting and restricted to cover cyno
( to prevent hotdrops cap fleet) or a module that is a amagram of the 2 ( black hole beacon ) this beacon would act like the HIC field with a small radius to prevent a single ship and at the same time act also like a cover ops cyno

Ps the skill tree is the one from Stealth bombers

First - it's an upgrade to the stealthbomber - that's a very fragile ship.

Second - you aren't talking about an upgrade to EW style ships but an upgrade to a damage dealing ship - not even a DPS class damage dealer but an alpha-strike style ship.

A bomber can easily fit 3 rocket launchers or 3 missile launchers. A BC hull would easily replace those 5-6 capital launchers with medium class HAM's or HML's - that's a good deal of firepower from a stealthy ship which isn't matched in the cruiser EW cloaky versions and those ships are CRUISER class hulls.

2 classes of ships in the game have the ability to drop cloak and instantly start to lock: Black Ops and Stealthbombers. Whereas it's not stated that this ability would be granted it is implied by the "upgrade" comments.

As such, you end up with a hurricane class hull, able to fit 5-6 HAM's, coming close to a smaller ship: Drop cloak, lock & pop. I HAVE such a hurricane fit with 36k EHP, 2 sebo's and it'll lock a frigate in under 2 seconds to nail ships trying to slip through a gate camp.

With the ability to lock such ships, using medium class launchers that hit frigates 'decent', cruisers 'well' and anything larger for full effect - you just fielded the ultimate cloaked DPS team "bring more" to offset lost damage and small ships roaming will never see it until it pops them.

As stated "smaller class" being any frigates or cruisers.

Lastly capital ships don't hit smaller ships well. they don't lock them well at all either - so suggestions that this class ship needs more tank to drop cloak, drop a payload and warp out seems off. The capital wouldn't be able to lock you before you fired and warped so there is no real argument that it needs more tank, any more so than a stealthbomber needing more tank to punch at a dominix - drone boat.

Overall - not a good idea. It has too much room to put in that "I win" I'm talking about for lulz hunting of others, which no other ship in the game could match - not by fitting as you outline with citidals but by fitting missile slots with smaller launchers.

If there were a way to prevent this miss-matched fitting, then perhaps a discussion but not this generic.

In truth, considering the massive damage boosts from battleship to capital weapons, you really don't need very many citadel torps on these things. 2 with a bomb launcher would be just fine, especially if they had some damage and/or explosion radius/velocity bonuses, this, among other things, keeps them lighter than dreadnoughts in the weapons department, which I think is a must for these to work. Plus, if you limit them to a very small number of really powerful weapons, it eliminates the ability for the ship to fit smaller weapons and gank smaller ships.

Personally, I'd rather see them without the cloaking bonuses, as a purely offensive platform for anti-capital/heavy BS weapons. So I definitely agree that they should be focused towards that instead of cloaking, cynos, and/or capital interdiction.

I do agree that a tier 2 Battlecruiser skinned up for a heavy bomber role would look awesome.

So:
+1 on Heavy Bombers
+1 No cloak/cyno/interdiction
+1 Remove warfare links
+1 Battlecruiser equivalent tank (but not assault ship, they don't need THAT much against their intended targets)
+1 Limited high slots and launcher hardpoints
+1 Some velocity/radius mitigation (but don't go overboard, these are still citadel torpedos)
+1 Bomb Launchers, or Heavy Bomb Launchers

Did I miss anything?

The gap between battleship and capital class weapons is far greater than the gap between frigate and battleship weapons.

Just on projectile weapons, a battleship equivalent has something around 2 times the dps of frigate turrets (not counting damage loss from lower tracking/sig resolution), whereas capital projectile turrets are 30+ times the damage of battleship turrets.

Therefore I think 2 Citadel Torpedo launchers are quite enough, or perhaps 3-4 of these 'compact' launchers that have been mentioned.