Player Features and Ideas Discussion

+1 Wholeheartedly agree. I'd also like to suggest making the Nestor a battlecruiser so there's no conflict with the existing Black Ops battleships potentially having a Covert Ops cloak down the road and dropping the price on the Nestor accordingly.

Thanks you for this contribution. As per the instructions in the original post, please define "insane dps"?

I have not seen a stratios fit that can outperform a covops T3. I am wondering if I have missed something?

You assert that we "do not need" another covops ship in the game, and I agree with you. Eve has survived for a long time without the Nestor, or indeed the stratios or astero. However, the addition of these two ships has certainly added a new dimension to my gameplay so I welcome them.

My feeling is that the Nestor could add another fun dimension if its cost was closer to its value. I am also keen for the storyline to be followed (my little foible I know).

My assertion is that the Nestor's actual battlefield power would not be increased in the slightest by making it covops-capable in the same way the stratios is (i.e. limited capability). However, it would allow a fleet containing Nestors to choose their engagements, which would increase its desirability.

Note that covops fleets are just as capable of being outwitted as visible fleets - we see that in w-space all the time. I do not think that covops would usher in a new tier of power, I think it would simply make the Nestor something we can envisage using in the 'real' (TQ) universe.

Of course if I am proven wrong, the change can be undone. It's not unheard of for ships to change roles in Eve.

However, after long and reasoned thought (and experience of covert ops) my view is that this would be a positive change to the game.

Well, we have a test server. It would be a trivial thing to alter the database settings for the nestor on the test server and ask some players (or even devs) to try out some scenarios.

So, to tackle your arguments one by one:

1. No battleships...covert cloak... The narrative of the sisters line of ships is that they figured out how to do it on T1 hulls. No other T1 hull has the covops ability - even at frigate level, so there is a precedent for it to be available at battleship level in this case.

2. metric based on w-space... Covert ops warfare can go wrong in k-space too. I agree that it's more difficult to de-cloak a covops on a gate than on a wormhole, but its by no means impossible. It happens every day. And remember that a Nestor has a much longer align time than a bomber or covert cruiser. Traversal of k-space would not be much safer than in any other battleship.

2a. I am not arguing for an ability to bridge covert cynos. Merely to warp cloaked and move at full (110m/s) speed when cloaked.

3. put it in and try it... I am not arguing for this blindly. I strongly believe it will work well for all.

4. If it's proven to be overpowered.... it will be iteratively nerfed, like motherships, titans, dreads, drakes and so on. The entire community has adapted to these changes and subscriber numbers have not reduced.

5. ...just to prove what they are saying... This can be proven on Sisi. No one has tried it yet. A large number of players disagree. Developers are bright people, but they are not demigods. It's entirely possible that they are mistaken.

I will re-iterate a very important point:

I have not seen one reasoned argument from a Dev (or from a player for that matter) *why* a covert-capable battleship is any more overpowered than a covert-capable cruiser.

Please by all means put forward an argument, backed with factual analysis. Opinion simply isn't a strong enough argument to uncover the truth of the matter.

No.

Thank you for your contribution.

Could you please explain, for the benefit of all, why you hold this view?

It could be that you have some insight unavailable to me.

Please remember to illustrate your position with reasoned argument, backed with empirical data.

I'm tired of the "no battleship..." argument. Make it a battlecruiser already.

This is the only thing that would justify it's current price. It may not be the only direction for the ship, but it's the most interesting one and the only one that won't invalidate the massive currency investment people have already made into them.

I am not opposed to it, on the condition that the recloak delay and targeting delay remain at their full length (30 secs before skills, iirc).

Decloaking a battleship-sized target before it escapes a bubble at battleship-slowboat speeds should be trivial for any competent gang- and even some incompetent ones. Ratters are already impossible to catch so any benefit this gives to carebears is minimal. This will not affect nullsec in a significant way.

I think the Nestor needs to be adjusted in general.

Exploration bonuses on a BS hull? Who is going to be hacking cans in a BS? Who is going to bring a BS into hostile/neutral space to run sites? Who would even do it in space they "own"?

Anyone who would have the ISK to buy, properly fit, and use a Nestor to run sites already has all the tools they need to run said sites without the need for an incredibly expensive faction BS hull floating around.

Retool it as the only BS in the game that qualifies as a covert ops ship. Let it jump/bridge to covert cynos, and let it warp cloaked. Have it be the only means of bringing logistics in a Covert Ops fleet, as this role is currently only filled by people bringing along logi drones.

This thread is not asking for the Nestor to be a bridging ship. This is not part of the proposal in the OP. This thread kindly requests that you either support the OP or explain why it is bad for Eve, using reasoned argument and empirical data.



Neither the stratios or the astero allow the creation of black ops bridges. Nobody who is advocating the fitting of a covert ops cloak to a Nestor is advocating that it becomes a BLOPS bridging vessel. That is an entirely separate function.

Now that I have allayed your concerns on that score, are you able to comment on the reasonableness of allowing it to warp cloaked ONLY. In the same way that the smaller sisters ships can?

I fear that this discussion has too often been polluted by feat of BLOPS bridging, when no-one is arguing for it. It's not on the table.

It's not creating bridges that's an unwanted side effect, it's being able to bridge battleships through a blops.





TBH, if it has to be changed, I think it should have the same bonuses regarding cloaking as the current black ops, and both the nestor and the blops ships be able to use prop mods (or at least afterburners) while cloaked. Would satisfy the apparent need to put the nestor in line with the others, and would give a needed buff to the blops without making them OP.