Ships & Modules

(edited because holy fun times did I write a bunch of paragraphs no one cares about.)

I'm taking a look at what's out there, less in a "what should I plan for now?" sort of way but rather in a "This is what I could do at some point, given my current skills and interests." Maurader class looks amazing, and I see myself working towards it at some point. But Black Ops Battleships? I get a fair amount of use of an Arazu, and I could certainly see some of what I'm seeing in the Sin class being useful for myself as well as in small fleet situations with my corp, at least in Eve Fantasy land.

And then I find a page about them, and granted it's a few years old (2009 by the looks of it) but it claims that Black Ops ships are terrible, and the Sin class is arguably one of the worst of these ships.

Well then.

But things change in three years, right? Maybe? Also, I don't see exactly WHY they are allegedly that good, although by the looks of it it's an issue of cost vs effectiveness combined with engagement range.

Does anyone out there use one of these, or choose not to use one but have an informed reason as to why one shouldn't? Does anyone have any fits they'd share to give me an idea of what I might be missing to fly one and what I should be aiming for, assuming I do decide to go this route?

Thank you in advance.

Boring story and you ask a vague question about the Sin at the end. Short answer - if you don't have 5-10 friends in covert ops ships, then you don't need a black ops. Period. Discussing the Sin vs Panther etc is kind of pointless otherwise.

There is a reason for that. They are terrible for anything outside of bridging a fleet around and then waiting until it is safe before coming in behind them to get them all out again.

It's been a while since i've really had the chance to use them but i've gotten a few hundred kills in black ops battle ships. Redeemer and panther are best. widow is ok if you don't fit jammers and have TPs being bridged along (via rapier etc) but mostly things die before torp dps catches up. Sin has the same issue with drones, but can actually be pretty decent as a "solo" ship if you're just dropping on crapfit solo ratters.

nah. I've been gone for a while, joined the navy and done a few deployments. the rest of the guys either quit eve or joined PL a few years back.

Black ops battleships have one good singular purpose which is jumping into cyno jammed systems and popping the cyno jammer after bridging other black ops into the system to add dps. A strategy I'm fond of is sending some meat in through a gate and when the defenders commit capitals and are distracted by the meat drop a small fleet of black ops and knock out their cyno jammer and bam now your caps are invited to the party.

The sin is the rarest ship I've seen only 2 in 3 years in eve but I sure see tengu's every 25 seconds.

Some time back there was a guy using a Panther as a substitute to the (pretorp) Stealth Bomber, for prowling lowsec and instapopping static frig hulls. He has a few vids on YouTube under the username ARGH28 like this one.
It's an expensive and very narrow niche play method, but actually a lot of fun if you have the patience. Tried it myself a few times in W-space.
The Panther can do 10k+ Alpha, and like all Blops has no decloak-target delay.
It's also capable of 800m/s+ when cloaked. If you're silly enough to fit an Estamel cloak to it, that its

Hit me up in game and i can give you some tips :)

I had never seen a black ops ship until a few weeks ago when i was clearing a random radar site with an alliance mate, all of a sudden pop, falcon appears with a Panther by its side, they got me down to deep deep structure before i managed to get support there and drive them off.

What im trying to say is, if used well they can scare the crap out of an unsuspecting pilot and lead to some nice kills