Ships & Modules

Teircide has done some weird and wonderful things to ships more recently my Paladin became a powerhouse tank for level 4s.

Have the devs announced anything about what they are doing to black ops ships? Mainly because I want them to do the same thing to the redeemer that they did to the Armageddon. That is make a Energy neutralizer version of the widow

Please post link here if they have.

It would completely change the black ops class. But I hope they change them into "super-bombers" with capital class weaponry.

Death to all supers?

A bigger version of stealth bomber sounds nice - but why replace if you can add.

But how would they jump if they don't have something to jump to?

Make Jump Portal Generation apply to Black Ops so that they don't go through fuel that quickly when bridging people. Also would give people a reason to train the skill further than lvl1.

I'd rather use stront than topes that is for sure.

EDIT: Deleted double post

Where did he say this?

Splitting blops into 2 distinct roles (bridging and combat) was mentioned, though I too cba to go find it.

I would not support using stront for blops bridging fuel because Strontium Clathrates require 3m3 per unit, whereas isotopes require only .15m3 per unit. You would be reducing your available fuel load by a factor of 20. Clearly this would be a bad idea.

But all this talk of fuel types and volume is moot, since it is isotopes that are consumed to actually bridge a ship, and the Jump Portal Generation skill only reduces the amount of fuel consumed to activate the portal, not to ships bridged through the portal.

Fuel consumed to bridge ships is governed by the Jump Fuel Conservation skill. However, the skill, or perceived lack thereof, is not the cause of the fuel consumption problem.

Both portal types have a hidden attribute, module fuel consumption factor (or some such) that governs how much fuel is consumed to bridge a given mass over a certain distance. A better option would be to reduce the module fuel consumption factor for covert portals to a much lower level, similar to that of a titan bridge. Currently, covert portals use 135x more fuel than titan bridges because of this. Prior to the blops buff last year it was 180x.

http://www.ninveah.com/2009/09/eve-master-class-jump-portals.html

The article above is a bit dated. But it is one of the most comprehensive and accurate blops portal articles I've ever seen. The current mass consumption factor of covert portals is 1.35x10^-7 isotopes. It used to be 1.8x10^-7. In contrast a Jump Portal Generator (titan bridge) is 1x10^-9.

Good stuff. See I didn't know about the activation vs bridging thing or the hidden attribute, but the point remains that despite this buff (or unnerf, i guess) to the isotope per kg requirement it's still not enough.

If you run a Black Ops fleet where you bridge people around you have to have a fuel truck with you. Technically this is cool, it forces some strategic planning and all that kind of stuff, but the fuel truck is either an alt that does nothing but follow the fleet, or a player that does nothing but follow the fleet. Suffice to say it's not very involving! I think reducing the factor to 1.20*10^-7 (roughly half of what it is now) would be probably be enough.

Also yeah no, despite my reference to the Jump Portal Generation skill earlier ITT no way in hell would I support using stront for anything on Black Ops, isotopes are enough of a pain already. I was rather suggesting that there be a further way to reduce the usage of isotopes when bridging people, but simply tweaking the attribute would probably do the job instead.

All in all it's really the fuel aspect that remains an issue IMO, aside from some small fitting issues here and there the class and the ships themselves are actually in a pretty decent position. They don't need more tank or firepower, they really really don't need a covert ops cloak and their jump range is fine - I mean I'd support more jump range for sure, but I don't think it's needed for the class to thrive.