Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Black Ops Battleship Rebalance Suggestions

The current state of the black ops battleship is a mess.

The class is plagued by a myriad of different bonuses of which some are utilized and others are completely useless. This is no secret, either – the CSM are well aware of the deficiencies which are present within the class and CCP themselves consider the class lame.

There is no shortage of examples for why these hulls are deficient, for example:

Widows provide the same jam strength of a Falcon, comparable damage to a Manticore, and no bonus to jamming range as present in the T1 Scorpion hull.

The Sin’s drone bonus is in stark contrast to the Black Ops’ inane ability to cloak, and the potential to use sentry drones is seemingly contradicted by an agility bonus which would suggest a much different combat style.

Furthermore, the Panther gains a questionable velocity bonus on a primarily Artillery wielding platform, while the Redeemer gains a capacitor bonus on a hull that will almost always utilize a cap booster.

This hodgepodge of bonuses on the different black ops battleships gives no clear benefit towards a distinct play style beyond the homogenized and unique ability to use covert jump portal generators, effectively turning the ship into a mini-Titan. Using the black ops ship in this role is quite common, and will frequently see the specific ship using cargo expanders in the lows and rigs to maximize both the amount of fuel carried and the number of bridgeable ships.

Although quite effective – reaching cargo capacities upwards of 5500m3 before fuel bay – this removes the necessity for the blockade runner as a support ship entirely, while simultaneously and completely crippling the black ops’ ability to be used in combat without refitting.

How are black ops currently used?

If black ops battleships aren’t being used in ways that are congruent to their specific bonuses, this begs the question of how are they being used in actuality on TQ. Despite being the runt of the family, they are currently used in several various ways: Remote repair modules used to repair cyno ships, smartbombs for clandestine pipe bombing fleets, energy neutralizing “Bhaaldeemers” for anti-capital warfare, and of course the incursion Widow to draw and maintain NPC aggression.

Is this to say that black ops battleships are never used in direct PvP combat? No, of course not - Alliances and Corporations do exist that fight with black ops on a regular basis, and they have earned my utmost respect from doing so. However, most of these groups will drop an overwhelming number of these ships onto a solo target - most often on PvE fits or Industrials. Even when this does occur, the flaws in the combat capabilities of these ships are hard to be ignored as can be demonstrated in this engagement by Black Legion.

Although 28B ISK was destroyed in the fight against sixteen Mackinaws, an Orca, and an Obelisk, one of Black Legion’s twenty-one black ops were destroyed during the engagement. Furthermore, the black ops battleships did not use their own built in jump drives to engage the target, but were instead bridged by a Titan along with a handful of bombers and interdictors. This means that the black ops were not used for the unique bridging ability, role bonus, or hull bonus – and many of the kill mails show 25M ISK bombers out damaging the 1B ISK battleships. So why were they used at all? There is no clear reasoning, and this simple fact must change before the black ops hulls are properly balanced.

To recap: the current iteration of black ops battleships is too weak to engage in active combat, have bonuses that are neither useful nor utilized, have poor damage application compared to similar hulls, has a unique ability that cripples the ship when actually used, and has equal (or fewer!) bonuses than the T1 hulls they are based on. With this in mind, it is abundantly clear that the hull requires a dramatic change, but how can this be done?

What changes do the CSM and CCP want?

This very interesting quote was included in the 2012 CSM minutes.

There are two quotes I would like to pull from this segment and discuss, the first of which:

“Alek stated some reservations about having bridging-only black ops, arguing that simply bridging and flying around cloaked was a bit boring – they should want and be able to fight.”

I agree with this sentiment entirely, and my initial proposal is based upon the ability to both bridge and fight without sacrificing the ability to perform either function. This is critical to encourage the usage of this ship in a myriad of environments, especially hostile ones, which was the ship’s intended purpose when it was released in the Trinity expansion.

The creation of covert black ops battleships

“[CCP] stated that their vision for a future [black ops] revamp was that it would include two lines – a combat-oriented [black ops] and a bridging/covert oriented one.”

The proposed changes to the black ops that I outlined above would roughly fall under the “bridging/covert oriented” design, however I disagree that a covert ops cloak is necessary for the ship class to be functional and balanced. Being that a black ops ship’s main method of transportation is (and should be) by cynosural fields, the ability to warp cloaked is a bonus that is not required.

However, if it were to be included, the possibility of solo black ops would instantly become reality. Although this would drastically increase their popularity and usage, there are too many variables to judge whether or not it would be completely overpowered. In my opinion this is a moot point, as regardless of effectiveness or balance, this goes against the very concept and purpose of bridge capable black ops.

The description of the current black ops clearly states that the purpose of black ops battleships is to “stealthily plant reconnaissance forces into enemy territory,” meaning that a specialty cyno ship must be sent in advance to the destination. These are ships that are meant to be very hard to catch, of which the strategic cruiser is a recent and notable addition to the list. The interdiction nullified subsystem allows for unmolested travel and the covert reconfiguration allows for cynosural field generation, covert bridging capabilities, and cloaked warp. It is this kind of ship whose functionality would be broken without the use of a covert ops cloak.

Under no circumstance can I imagine black ops requiring the ability to fit a covert cloak beyond hunting solo or in a small gang; however, conducting PvE in hostile territory would become feasible much in the same way that covert Tengus in Venal are a common sight. There is certainly no group benefit in true black ops fleet (this is a multiplayer game, after all) in having the bridging ship able to warp cloaked – if anything it provides a much needed vulnerability to a class that would otherwise be nigh uncatchable.

On the creation of a second racial black ops battleship

The most important statement from the quote deals with CCP wanting to include an entirely new line of black ops ships – one for each faction – specifically a dedicated “combat-oriented’ black ops; and although I don’t view this as a necessity for the success or balance of the class as whole, here are some ideas on how this could be accomplished.

The most likely possibility would be to go ahead and create the entirely new line with original bonuses and attributes directly benefiting damage and tank, with no EWAR or support bonuses. This assumption is based on the precedent set by the introduction of the bastion module for marauders.

Regardless of the methodology used to create the new line of black ops, or capabilities for the hulls, I believe the focus of a pure combat-oriented black ops must be carefully selected to ensure there is no overlap in the roles played by bombers, recons, or (the proposed) black ops. Much in the same way that bombers utilize their stealth and oversized weapon systems to attack larger targets, I believe that one of the combat black ops’ role can be found serving as an anti-capital platform. This would involve a module that provides the following bonuses to the ship:

• Dramatic increase in damage, either through a RoF buff or a straight damage multiplier.
• Decrease in optimal range, falloff, targeting range, and scan resolution.
• Decrease tracking to prevent damage application against fast moving or smaller targets.
• Decrease signature radius to mitigate damage from dreadnaughts.
• Increased resistances, with decreased cap recharge/quantity to prevent self repair.
• Immunity to targeted EWAR, but unable to receive any kind of remote assistance.
• Warp drive (and MJD) disabled for duration of cycle, however mobility unhindered.

The bonuses that the module will grant have been chosen in order to maximum this ships effectiveness against both dreadnaughts and triage carriers, while mitigating if not eliminating incoming damage from those sources entirely. However, the ship in this mode would be extremely vulnerable against sub capitals, as it would be helpless to apply damage to lower hull sizes, and the inability to repair itself would lead to an early death if tackled. Ultimately, this would require the remainder of a conventional black ops fleet to clear the field of potential threats to the ship proceeding with the assault.

That's an awful lot of reserved...

Good stuff here. Hope it gives CCP some idea or direction.

I understand the desire to make black ops actually viable for engagements, and for the most part they are just "mini-titans". Their combat effectiveness is pretty limited and not ideal. Bonus rebalances are definitley in order, but I feel as though it might be too much of a stretch to make them significantly more effective in combat. I think the problem might not be in the ships combat effectiveness, but perhaps in the lack of utility. Changing their logistical effectiveness might be a more beneficial way of balancing these ships. At the moment, their usefulness seems to be bridging and thats about it. Balancing the black ops to fill a niche on the combat field just feels wrong to me. Improving the overall support capabilities of the black ops seems to be the way to go.

Not a fan of a speed bonused gallente bs, otherwise I like these ideas.

Jayne is right blops need rebelance and i hope it may be part of the Winter Expansion ,
or in a Winter Expansion 1.1 Patch .
And i hope they will be reasonable.

Despite that I'm still yet to participae in "real" black ops fleet (c'mon BB dudes, do you even fly when my timezone isn't about to go to sleep? ), I feel that this thread should get some more attention. Original post outlines an outlook at what blops actually are and should be, something that is even quite eductional for people not in touch with this sort of activity.

Something I wanted to make my uneducated comment on is SMBs on "support" blops. Fitting of bombers is pretty tight and is very dependant on the task at hand. This means that allowing them to refit during ops will have an impact on their possibilities. I guess that this may be enough to be considered a buff to cloakies, but since it's already quite possible to get needed fits ready at some station and then bridge to destination, capability of doing just that off a support BlOps won't be a groundbreaking buff to their potential.

That said, easier logistics can be quite important still and can provide some new capabilities for the class that look rather exiting. For example, think about mid-class wormhole roaming with balck ops gang (note: T3s may be revamped in the future, including cloaky configurations that IMO should be on the list of ships capable os using black ops SMBs, so that this idea doesn't look too ridiculous in the context). Some interesting possibilities and good chunk of immersion there I think.

Hopefully, I will be able to refine some thoughts on "combat blops" a bit later so that they are worth posting here. Meanwhile, I have to go and I hope that this bump will start some discussion on the topic at hand.

Yes, I think that subsystem changing shouldn’t be allowed. Then again, considering that solution to subsystem swapping without docking suggested by CCP looks more like workaround that still requires a ship to be temporarily removed from space, I think that doing that at SMBs is still out of question anyways for technical reasons.


That is a problem somehow, but since you probably will only need one ship for refitting purposes and maybe a BR to actually carry spare parts, it looks somewhat feasible. Of course, I wasn’t talking about something like “combat covops battleships” roams.

Speaking of which, I think that one way they could be implemented is to take T2 painted “tier 3” hulls (as unused) and combine some combat and racial EWar bonuses on them (possibly couples with ability to fit covops cloak, depends) without making them a powerhouse. That could be one way to balance them out while making them work (here I’m deliberately suggesting alternative to the proposal in the OP for diversity’s sake).

That, however, brings up some probems:

1) If we combine those bonuses for “combat” versions, “support” versions become glorified jump bridges with SMBs. Not good, and probably reminds you of something.

2) More controversial point is if those ships will become BS-sized “solo/small gang pwnmobiles” (as long as BS size even allows something along these lines in the context of modern EVE). Ships may look somewhat suitable for that, especially if by “EWar” we mean secondary racial EWar. On the other hand, we had certain T3 configurations with this reputation, and they mostly were reasonable to deal with (although I expect some aspects of them being toned down).

3) What’s about jump drives on them? Should they have it or is it possibly a retreat mechanism too good, especially if those ships are given covops cloaks? Compromise option may include shorter jump distance on them with ability to be bridged by “support” BlOps if needed.

Still throwing around some random ideas and bumping this thread more than anything else though.

Maybe notification in BB mailing list suggesting to visit this thread can help with making this topic more popular?

It was in the CSM minutes that this was reference, not in an actual dev blog or forum post. I believe I've hyper linked it as a source and discussed it - I'll go back and make sure I actually included that.

\o/

In regards to the Widow, I highly doubt CCP Rise will be up for buffing anything related to ECM, so we'll have to see!

Once can only hope.