Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Black Ops battleships were one of the best additions to the game in a long time when they came out. It was a new meta for small/medium sized gangs to play around with and the ships are fairly flexible for each race.

Initial problems were wicked fuel use, short range and small fuel bay.

Then we had a partial update:

Range increased to 7.5LY at JDC 5 - that is ok
Fuel bay increase so we can bridge more ships.

Problems remaining: T1 tanks and sub t1 hp coupled with mass 50% higher than base ships (for no good reason I might add) and a speed bonus while cloaked that borders on absurdly tiny.

Proposal:

Reduce Black Ops Mass by half (75M or so) because please please oh please I live in a wormhole please. and it would still be heavier than a nestor. Give them more flexible cpu/grid amounts so that there is less of a chance that people know what you will bring. That might even mean slot layout changes for the Redeemer so it can fit a shield tank without being laughed at. Alternatively...make more BLOPS bs hulls.

But mostly reduce the mass and examine each of the BS in terms of the bonuses it uses and not wanting to die. The Widow needs another low slot and the redeemer another mid. *figure it out*

The sin's intertia bonus seems silly for something already so damned heavy and slow. So either pump that up so it warps like a cruiser at level 5 or maybe give it something different like a warp speed increase per-level or a rate of fire bonus for the turrets for MORE DAKKA.

The speed bonus per level should amount to the ship having AB or MWD like speeds while cloaked. Something approaching 700m/sec or so. At that point the inertia bonus would be interesting. At this point however it looks more like a failed experiment at making ducks bark like dogs.

The nestor is 56M KG. Significantly lighter. I am splitting the difference. The speed boost while cloaked seems appropriate to me since they can't warp cloaked. OMG they might have a fighting chance on a gate camp!

I don't care about their ability to burn out of a bubble with a single MWD burst. Its more useful with that speed to be a covert sniper and re-position after a volley or two. It is no more OP than the standard cloak mwd trick every t1 hauler does. The big difference being this is a T2 specialized hit and run ship. Hence the tanks not being very good. Give them more ability to maneuver over more tank and they would be fun.

They shouldn't just move at *slighly better than normal* while cloaked. They should be able to get around the battlefield while cloaked. -50% mass is a lot of a reduction but have you seen how slow the nestor still is to warp when you put two plates on it? The only big difference it will make without a large agility change is in going through W-space.

Yep...the sin for example has 4K less raw armor than the dominix. But its heavier for no damned reason. It doesn't have the drone tracking bonus either. It doens't need it btw...but its just an example. Most times black ops Bs's are dropping at knife fight range and should be optimized for this or the ability to be a harasser. Which is where more speed would help at engaging and disengaging.

There must be a reason jump drives are mounted only on capital ships.

So i think the extra weight is something normal since its another piece of equipement the other versions of the hull dont have.

Same with armor, i think its fair to assume that you will have to sacrifice a few things to be able to mount a capital jump drive into a BS hull.


My alliance use BLOPS only doctrine with an RnR set up (with triage ready to jump) to gank gate camps and other "soft" targets and we are doing well and tbh if you just want an heavy assault BS with a jump drive that wont happen.

Just stick to gank and the likes and you should be fine ...if you want something more competitive then buy a titan and sit on it with a faction BS/T3 fleet ^^

I would love using a Blops in Wormholes, but you would need to lower the mass to make it viable in any way.

Reduce Mass, buff tank a tad, change up wierd bonuses like agility and speed on Sin and Panther respectively. And move the speed while cloaked bonus to a role bonus (or give it Covert Cloak).

If they do not give it a Covert Cloak I would like to see a role bonus that removes the scan resolution penalty. It is ridiculous that I can start locking instantly but I am still penalized for locking speed.

exactly, the 2 most annoying things i have with mine, is the fuel cost to bridge bigger ship than a SB, and the squishyness

DPS seems ok to me, i see mine (sin) more as a support than a dps boat anyway (but that is personnal)

thing is, if there is a chance for a more or less serious fight(I.E. anything else than a gank), i will just not jump along, because i will be primary and die faster than the stealth bombers, that would be ok if it was a 100 or 200M BS, but with it's current price, no way

also regarding the sin, give him some PG goddamnit

Imho what would make a BO really interesting would be ability to bridge in a ship of any type ( if it would dry the BO fuel bay when bridging a single BS then so be it), change would be simple but it would make a BO considerably more desirable even if rest of the stats would be kept the same.

You know that alot of alliance both in low sec and null sec fight with their BLOPS and are not as risk averse as you guys in this thread seem to think.

3 examples :

- snuff box blops fleet

- UCF blops fleet

- NC. blops fleet

I mean i remember a fight we had where we fought another BLOPS BS fleet with our own and killed 3 or so.

BLOPS are fine as it is and (maybe) require a few tweeks but they are good at what they do.

If you want a T2 tank then bridge in a cloaky Proteus, almost as much dps and much more survivable and T3 resists. Blops need a covert ops cloak with its 5 second decloak, not more gank. If you must have more gank instead of dropping 5 blops on a ratter, drop 10, you just doubled your dps and tank... albeit at a cost.

I like them as they are, but I agree about fuel use for bridging other ships. I find it almost funny that a fully fit, PLATED stratios takes up less bridging fuel than the BARE hull of a covops loki.