Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yes, but you can drive players just as crazy with a shuttle, so long as they don't realize you are harmless.

In other threads, we have had first person testimony explaining how they went into a system, and noone bothered to actually verify if they were even cloaked, let alone considered dangerous. Noob ships, not even loaded with a cyno, have managed to lock down systems before.

Using a full fledged BLOPs for this seems a bit overkill, to me. But I gotta give you this much, it has style.
The limousine of AFK cloaking, as it were.

Scouting is another issue, as you really can't warp onto grid without exposing yourself. Knowing you can't warp cloaked keeps you in the dark by necessity.

If it keeps the covert cyno, I can see it as the centerpiece for an underground railroad network.

It would still be risky, since the covert cyno as well as the bridging functions would expose the operation to hostile scanning, and players would suspect only high value things to travel this way.

I could see this happening.

tl;dr "But what about wormholes?"



Ok first of let me say that I really like the idea of BLOPS BS's being able to jump around without the need for a cyno alt.

tl;dr I really enjoy blopsing
Let me also point out that I live in a C5 wormhole and really enjoy having a couple of guys sit in our home system while we move a (couple of) scout(s) through nullsec looking for ratters to pounce. When we find somebody, we will jump out into NullSec and immediately jump. This gives us the advantage of not really being called out in any intel networks because there is just 'that one guy in a cloaky nullified T3 / Force recon'.


Now let me point out some things forth thinking about.
The way you describe it (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that you say that my jumpdrive could lock on to any star in jumprange. I would assume this is also true in wormhole space (yes, wormhole space actually has regions and constellations).
I would also assume that we define constellations/regions (among other things) as systems that are somewhat close to each other.
What this means for w-space is either of the following:
1) You argue that all wormhole systems are really really really far away (out of jumprange) from each other.
2) Wormhole space would have to actually get mapped out, creating distances between systems in one constellation/region.
3) You take the easy way out: 'Because of unexplainable/unreasonable/unrealistic mechanic X, physics do not apply in wormhole space, so your ship can not lock on to a star, like it can anywhere else.
Yes - I know, one explanation could be, that your ships does not actually lock on to stars, it jumps to wherever the ships map tells the ship a star is (Completely unrealistic, considering all galaxies move around at vast speeds all the time).

Personally, I don't think jumping between wormhole systems would be an issue as a Black Ops BS can't use covops cloak and is also not really build for scanning (you have a 1bil unbonused scanning battleship). For this, you could plant a CovOps scout in the systems in jumprange before and hotdrop carebears whenever they jew (no local muaha) the thought of this makes me salivate like crazy. I don't think the carebears would like it as much as I do though.

Just thought I should bring this up. I know wormhole population is only 5% of all eve players, but at a little over 2500 systems, we are 'bigger' than HighSec (1090) and LowSec (817) - assuming these numbers are not outdated. Anyway, I thought I would bring the impact on wormholes up right now so we can brainstorm this stuff now. If you guys are generally open to the idea of jumping in between wormholes, we can also talk about the effects of wormhole anomalies (black hole, red giant...) on jumping.

Hope I made you think and the wall of text isn't too long.

I like it. +1

It would break wormhole space by letting the biggest groups dominate entire wormhole regions. A mass reduction may encourage blackops use in wormholes but wormholes need something special before it's too late.

The best chance this non-cyno jump idea has is to keep it simple:

1. blackops can jump to a cyno or to a sun within range
2. when jumping to the sun you land on grid within X range of the sun exposing you to the risk of a sun camp
3. a sun jump requires a large amount of capacitor
4. the ship can't cloak for 10 seconds after a sun camp

One blackops change that some people in my corp would like to see, is a massive increase to the cloaked velocity bonus.

If by 'novelty' you mean a new role and ability that it did not have before that does not affect any current mechanics or abilities, than yes, that's exactly it. This is why I think it's a good idea. Basically: Change nothing that currently exists and Add one new feature for the ship. CCP is more likely to do that, I believe, than anything that completely modifies the entire covert-cyno mechanic. I say that because I don't think there is anything wrong with that mechanic.

We might just have to disagree on this one

I see it this way. If the black ops can fit a covert cyno, then only ONE black ops ever needs to make this type of jump. After that, it can just light a covert cyno and everyone else can jump to it normally. I believe that if this cyno-less mechanic is to exist, it should be something that all black ops in the fleet need to be forced to use if they want to use it at all. That is, if black ops are going to move around this this way, then it's going to be black ops only.

If it doesn't land on grid with the sun it will either be massively OP/unstoppable or ccp would have to put it some frustrating mechanic like not letting the ship move or cloak for a period of time so the enemy has a chance to deploy combat probes. You have to think of things from a fleet and solo perspective with an suggestion like this...

I doubt you will see massive fleets camping the sun constantly in the hope that a black ops ship will jump in but if a solo black ops does jump to a sun that is defended, it has a good chance of killing tackle or just escaping with a MJD.

If a massive fleet of black ops jump to the sun that is inadequately defended, the blackops fleet will decimate the opposition and jump out to a new sun.

I think that sounds pretty balanced.

It's definitely possible to adjust this to just landing on-grid at the sun, but, as you say, that can be camped.

As you suggested, moving from system to system, off-grid, sounds like a bridge too far, and I agree.

I do believe, however, that there should be Less risk than bringing in a covert T3 and lighting a covert cyno. Thosecan be probed down, but you need to know to look for it. Plus, the ships jumping to it have almost no risk of being caught, as they simply cloak upon landing or warp away. The best you can do is get the cyno ship. One ship.

My original suggestion was to force the landing black ops to stay uncloaked for a short period of time. Such that the only realistic way of being caught was someone already having their probes out to look for you. But, if you're all landing at random locations, then they best they can do is catch one ship.

This raises the question:

Is it overpowered to have black ops (and black ops alone) enter a system with zero risk?

They cannot warp cloaked. And, with the mechanic I suggested, they have to expose themselves to probes if they wish to jump out (though again, hard to catch them in time [10 seconds?], but it might force a fleet to gather together before jumping out in case someone gets a warp-in and they don't want to risk losing one ship). And they, again in my version, cannot light covert cynos, so you're only dealing with black ops here.

I agree that it's powerful, but OP? I'm not sure.

The gist being: Yes, you cannot stop black ops from moving around system to system, unless you actively try to probe them down as they uncloak to leave the system. Zero risk to get in system. A small risk to leave.

Ok, I think we are hitting a philosophical difference.

You are trying to keep the BLOPs from becoming more powerful, by making it pay for this ability in the form of neutralizing any advantage it has over relying on a cyno ship.
It has to choose between going into the field, or sending more cost effective ships in it's place, (for many likely roles).
This seems to me to be likely unused by many pilots, simply because the ship will remain too expensive to consider in those roles.

I am pointing out, rather, that I feel the BLOPs is underpowered currently.
It is popular perception, that in the normal use of this ship, it is nothing more than a means to bridge covops shipping.
A poor man's titan, in some ways.
Keeping the covert cyno along with random system placement at least retains that logistical role, and enhances it.
I think this has been missing, and it is balanced by needing to place this expensive ship in the field to use it as such.

Yes, I appreciate that the BLOPs has what I term novelty uses, extraordinary ways to play it.
But, I stress this detail, these are not ordinary, because they are not practical.
The BLOPs hull with reasonable fittings is simply not cost effective to use as an attack ship, if risk above a certain level exists.
And yes, while we can somewhat scout by using D-scan, it is a tasking work-a-round to do so, relying on bookmarks off grid unless you wish to risk exposure.

TL;DR: If you want this ship in the field more, then it needs a practical purpose to be there.
One that justifies the risk to reward ratio that has been hung around the hull of this expensive sub-cap.

Hehe, seems a lot of people are hoping for a "star drive" these day, which is cool.

I'm a sucker for BSG-style blinking (or any anime prior to that show :P), but there is simply too many ways to abuse. I did not read the thread through yet but I'm certain blobbing would be easy. I understand you still need cyno to call in buddies but I'm guessing it will not be hard to call in two BlOps.

It would be great to see more of these intrusion-style gameplays, but I find it very contraproductive if it gets too much of "WoW Rogue'ing". Cloaking still needs some attention in terms of balancing, as do cyno-bumrushing, where it is just too easy to overwhelm single targets with ease. So, there have to be limits. However, this is not about BlOps or cyno so this is just a comment on my side.

Intrusions via FTL in any way is awesome and Black Ops really need so extra ways. But with this suggestion of yours should come at least plausible penalties.
As you said, Bl-Ops blinks to a new starsystem at a random spot. That would be too easy if it can immediately cloak up. I'd say you'd have to built in somehting like a penalty-vs-skill where you cannot cloak for like a minute or two; the higher whatever skill, the less time you need for recallibration (which is common on any other cloaky ship).
Likewise, it would be good if we could also see more reliance on cloaky fuel trucks - that could possibly blink too.

After a rough skim of the thread, I see a few already worring about balancing so I can stop here hehe. I still find though that this can be greatly abused but just having a fleet of them. Either cloaking OR cyno needs some re-balancing, but that's just me.