Ships & Modules

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)

no it doesn't. It has standard t1 resists.

Funny thing is... I managed to 1v1 a Navy Dominix on the test server with a Widow, no links or anything. True solo. Never under-estimate the power of a full-on ECM tank. It can pretty much permajam anything. Before the warp speed changes, it could sit at warp distance, full-speed aligned, and be on top of you in seconds. Now the interminable deceleration time makes this almost impossible except against the most afk of players.

The speed bonus while cloaked makes it move faster while cloaked than uncloaked. For a BS, thats pretty cool and actually useful. If you can't find a use for it (insta-warp upon decloak), you fail.

All that being said, having its bonuses split up so much means it can't really do a lot very well. I would like to see it refocused.

Yep you are right, one of the best looking ships perhaps, has 0 use apart from being a bridge. Sad really as it takes so long to train for as well :/

Widow is the same as every other ECM boat in the game. Its a force multiplier that's nice to have with your gang.

Obviously the Panther's and Redeemer's will be doing all the heavy lifting.

I've only taken my widow into combat once. Was watching a gate so I could move a T1 hauler into low. Hauler comes in. Rapier decloaks. I decloak and go for the Rapier. Redeemer decloaks and goes for me. I am rainbow fit with ECM mods in the lows and just enough tank to slow down drones. I have good ECM skills. Minmatar ECM + another on the Rapier and Amarr ECM + 1 on the Redeemer. Very quick permajam. I win. Opponent was overconfident because I was just one widow and fought to the bitter end. Sucks for him.

Widow really useless?

Except you know, his ship jumped itself into system instead of needing a bridge.

The Widow is outclassed by the Sin, Panther, and Redeemer. However, having a jamming blops or multiple jamming blops is very underrated and very useful. Especially when things go south after the hot drop. It's not meant to dish out dps nor is it meant to be a tanker. It's a jammer just like the scorp.

The only people who whine about how BO are "useless" and "bad" are the ones who have no clue on how to use them properly or haven't used them at all but are looking for some pwning machine that fits their fantasies about some sort of awesome ship.

Anyone who says the BO need Covops cloak to be "viable" is either dumb or a lying hypocrite (probably both). Anyone who is sane and knowledgeable realises that giving BO Covops cloak would be hilariously overpowered to the Nth degree and for that reason should never exist. Anyone who thinks he has some valid logic for why it should get covops cloak should be added to the "never to be listened to again" list so I'm going to do just that; OP should never be listened to again, on anything.

There's a difference between "well, some BO are in need of some balancing or help and it wouldn't hurt to give it all a rethink" and "HOLY SHITBALLS BO SUCK LOL, GIEF COVOPS CLOAK SO I CAN SOLO ROAM TEH SKIES!!!!" like the OP is doing :)