Ships & Modules

Maybe I'm a noob, but how exactly will further jump fatigue reduction help here? Once you show up in local of the region you want to operate in, the countdown is ticking ...and the time between targets was long enough usually to skip fatigue in the ops I participated in.

Rebalancing black ops battleships cannot be truely discussed unless you also bring up the issue that black ops battleships can dock back into stations with the bridge open.

getting slightly realistic here you are opening up an artificial singularity through to another part of space and as such those forces should be extremely damaging to a station at the range its performed.

but from a purely game balancing perspective there should be a risk associated to opening a bridge, whether it be a titan bridge or a black ops bridge. Currently that does exaist for titans but there is no such associated risk for black ops battleships doing such things on the undock of a station.

Agree with OP.

i agree in large parts with temp.

im not totally sure which exact changes would be best for blops but if CCP would be able to lift the gameplay quality of the blops to that of bombers and maybe create some synergy between all jumpable cov-ops ships id be very happy!

No. ******* get rid of local completely.

#Death to all spreadsheets

The only people that are crying about removing LOCAL from 0.0 are people who are crap at PVP and are not really interested in PVP but are interested in safe and calculated GANKS.

They want free kills that's about it. PVPers have shown that local is worth jack **** as well as intel channels 0 help. It's so easy to catch Mauraders, BS, Ishtars and Carriers as well as Supers that are ratting it's not even funny.

If you don't like Local there is WH space for you, enjoy it.

If BLOPs get the 90% fatigue reduction then they'll be in a good place where a jump every 10 minutes makes you think about picking a good target.

They were in a pretty balanced spot before Pheobe but now it's just terrible, drop someone, afk cloak at a safe for an hour, drop another target, afk cloak at a safe for an hour, repeat.

The other stuff is interesting and has it's own merits but fixing the fatigue reduction up to 90% would be an easy/immediate quality of life fix.

First a disclaimer. I have lost exactly 2 ships to hotdrops (both BLOPs) ever. I also have Black Ops V trained and have used it. Personally I dislike the entire mechanic behind hotdropping, and would be happy if it was completely removed from the game. The main way I've seen it used involves a bunch of characters sitting in a POS or docked up completely safely while your bait/scout goes roaming for targets. If the bait gets taken, you either bring overwhelming force instantly, or if the fight wont go well for you, you just don't show up. I know the idea behind BLOPs is to be a mobile force behind enemy lines, but in my experience, it just doesn't happen. They get used as taxis (prefatigue) or as gank ships. Roaming simply doesn't happen.



CCP added jump fatigue specifically to stop you from flitting all over the map willy-nilly. For you to come here and complain that a change is working exactly as intended seems somewhat silly. While I'm sure it would be nice for your roams to be able to ignore jump fatigue while roaming null, the simple fact of the matter is that as soon as you make any kind of exceptions for jump fatigue we are right back to those ships being used to teleport all over the map (see: nullsec using t1 industrials to bypass fatigue) and the fatigue change is useless.

The T2 resistances are largely a moot point IMO. I have literally never seen BLOPs used in anything other than a completely one-sided stomp, in almost 6 years. It is not uncommon to see 10+ BLOPs battleships dropped onto a single cruiser. Why does being squishy matter if the fight is over before it bagan anyway? in a 10 vs 1 fight, you're going to kill the target so fast that your lack of T2 resistances just doesn't matter.

The class split was something that Fozzie (or was it Rise?) have talked about before. I think their idea at the time was a combat version and an EWAR version. I have no opinion on this one way or another.

Here's a counter proposal for you:

1. Jump drives and jump portals removed from BLOPs and Cov Ops completely. Skill points reimbursed.
2. Warp speed increased to 3 AU/s (cruiser speeds) for BLOPs BSs
3. Cov Ops cloak.
4. T2 resists and a base HP buff. Put it in line with the T1 BSs.

This way you can still go roaming, but you have to put your shiny gank ship at risk to do it, and you can't instantly appear out of nowhere on your target's face and nuke it down.

Agreed

Black Ops really need to be more of a viable choice than they are atm. There are many ways in which they can be brought up to speed. In addition to a 90% jump fatigue reduction, which would go a long way in making me want to fly one, I suggest a warp speed and acceleration role bonus. Furthermore, change the cloak speed bonus to a role bonus and give all of them ewar bonuses for their respective race. The black ops skill should improve damage application and improve the ships racial ewar modules effectiveness. Webs for minnie; tracking disruptor/neuts for amarr; resebo/point range for gallente; ecm for caldari. This will make black ops more useful in various situations outside of bridging ships. All other black ops ships could use an extra turret hardpoint except the redeemer.



P.S.
If CCP should remove/delay local from nullsec then I foresee a good amount of residents instantly leaving; I'm guessing anywhere from 35% to 50%, if not more, would move to highsec and lowsec, especially with the force to fight/fw-esque changes coming during the summer.
Whether or not it's a good idea, I can't really say but I don't see the nullsec economy taking off with these kind of changes.