Ships & Modules

Seems to me that all of the Black-Ops are quirky, and more like overgrown Battlecruisers with special abilities rather than true Battleships. Given all the points about the Falcon being a superior ECM boat, why not forgo the ECM all together and go full tank n spank? Combined with Arazu/Rapier tackle and any number of torpedo-bombers, I think the Rapid Heavy Widow doesn't look so bad. Here's a fit I slapped together:

https://o.smium.org/loadout/18617

Perhaps it would be best if you would just stop thinking.

So this is more of a review than anything else.

Let's begin with: maybe I just don't "get" the widow but it's terrible. Legitimately bad.

A quick list of ways the widow is terrible:
1. Rook has similar bonuses, is a shorter train, faster and has double the base lock range and locks faster.
2. Can't covop cloak -- this alone is enough to warrent NEVER flying this ship. EVER.
3. Weapon systems are bonused incorrectly. ECM gets no range, the jam strength is identical to a max level falcon/rook while taking substantially longer to train. Missiles get ROF and no application.
4. The ship has only just barely better than capitals lock time.
5. It doesn't have the right slot layout to fit any appreciable tank and do it's job properly. It starts off with 50% of the tank of any equivalent battleship which is inexcusable given how fickle it is.
6. HUGE sig, bloated way out of control. 450 at base for "the last word in clandestine warfare". Yeah ok. Like flying a B-52 is subtle.
7. ECM deserves its own topic for how horribly broken it is: it doesn't work properly. RNG based PVP weapons is a horrible idea when you don't even deal damage and nothing you do by piloting can compensate. Arties and ECM share the same cycle time but arties can account for transversal while ECM you just hit the button and if they don't fire YOLO you wasted 990mil. GG.
9. No bonus to the TSB (target spectrum breaker) perhaps the one ship that should have gotten a bonus doesn't have it. Stupid.
10. Is incredibly slow.
11. Glorified jumpdrive platform. Why even design this ship? Just give that functionality to titans.

Yeah the widow is patently terrible. It should be trademarked as an example of how NOT to design something. It doesn't even do it's one gimmick well (ECM).

How to fix the widow?

Well first of all fix ECM. It should produce ghost signals. Delete the TSB and make ECMs break locks and then produce ghost signals within 5km of the ship. The module should produce 1 ghost for every full point of ECM it has. Therefore a bonused ship with 5 points of ECM produces 5 ghosts. Or rather a maximum of 5 ghosts depending on the number of locks and jams the target has applied to it. Rather than outright disabling an enemy you force them to guess what they're shooting. Ghost signals show no damage but always display the same hp as the host. This is how ECM works in real life and should be transliterated to EVE. If CCP can't do it, then DELETE ECM and replace the bonus with something more useful (whatever that may be).

Secondly the widow should get a 20%/level ECM range bonus. Replace the ******** cloaking speed bonus with this.

Thirdly give it (and all blackops) covops cloak. These ships do not share force/combats and don't need to. That just makes things even more convoluted and you'll still see one brand of ship never getting flown. D-scan immunity will never fix the on-grid deficiencies this hull suffers which is precisely why it's never used in actual combat.

Fourthly would be just general small increases to its speed, tank and lock speed/range. Not every ship should be arbitrarily nerfed in order to impose an insane sense of 'balance' by forcing them to fit fitting mods just to do the job they were designed for. That's ridiculous and something we see a lot in caldari hulls especially, they can't even fit hull appropriate mods withouts without fitting mods or rigs while gallente get grid to spare nearly every time.

I don't claim to know the answer but I think I know the problem and the problem is that the widow doesn't have anything to make it better than another ship doing the same job save for being a covert jump bridge which is a pretty sad state of affairs.

EDIT: after a bit more indepth review the widow actually has higher stats than the base scorpion in 2 cases but has 18km base less lock range and aligns at half the speed. This means than when a widow fits a t2 cloak it has less lock range, less lock speed and loses out on manueverability. Not to mention only having 66% of the hp of a scorpion which means a 50% increase in hp to match it. In other words a widow must fit tanking modules to survive at all while a scorpion can get away with concessions through naturally higher EHP (not to mention 25%/level ECM range)