Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Surely this would be so laughably situational that it might as well not exist?

Yes, this is a very situational suggestion, but the combat capabilities (LOL) of BLOPS is also very situational, so now we have another very situational use of the ship, maybe increasing the usage.

Reason needed: more BLOPS need to be blown up. Or used for anything other than a bridge for that matter

Problem trying to solve:
1) Not enough BLOPS blow up.
2) Will give something to tell the ones who whine about AFK cloakers: tell them to go manually find the ship with a BLOPS.

I am still trying to come up with a way to make EAFs more useful, but so far nothing comes to mind...

There's already a buff coming for the blackops, why not see what that does for them first?

The best time to give ideas for small (almost insignificant) features such as the one I proposed is before they go and do a major rebalance. I am simply giving an idea for an additional small change which could be made, and might add some interesting new tactics to the game.

This won't significantly nerf covert cloaking (as does not give exact distance data, so locating the ship will still take a while, even if it is on the same grid), and will probably take a few hours to locate a ship at a safespot with this method, so is not really that much of a nerf to AFK cloaking either, just change safe spot every couple hours (ie don't go afk longer than 2-3 hours with a hostile BLOPS in system).

I have no problem with that method of finding a cloaky, might actually be faster to use that w/ an inty + fighters than a BLOPS with my method (so long as the cloaky was seen on D-scan before it cloaked and went AFK)

What's the problem with allowing BLOPS to provide covert related intel? iirc they can already detect covert cynos in system, so why not cloaked objects?

I have nothing against them, I am simply making a suggestion which adds an extra use for Black Ops, as well as an additional tactical tool for PvP.

Only nerfs bombing runs by a few seconds warning and only if the target of the bombing run has a BLOPS (fragile and expensive), as for the spies, they are already seen in local, this just gives you a vague idea of the general location of them (if they move every 2 hours or so, they will be completely unaffected by this change).

AFK cloakers already make safe spots to cloak at (or at least should...).

Technically, with some time spent (probably on the order of 2-3 hours minimum, expected to be much more than that) this method will allow for the location of ships in the middle of a system, by using the same method to locate cans anchored in the middle of nowhere, but with the downside of requiring a slow battleship instead of an interceptor/covops.

With the current timer that limits D-scan spamming, this will take quite a lot of work to locate any afk cloaker, thereby not usually being worth the time, especially since if they move every few hours, then all the work finding them is lost. Only really really paranoid people with access to BLOPS will use this to find the average afk cloaker, and if they are the kind to whine about afk cloakers, will probably be to afraid to use this method anyway.

edit:
The first response to this thread is the most appropriate when concerning most players, as they will see it result in too few tactical situations to be useful. If it were not for the fact that BLOPS are going to be rebalanced soon, I probably would not have even considered posting this idea here.

On the point of fragility: If a bombing run is done successfully, then the chances of the BLOPS surviving is much lower, as the alpha would kill them regardless of if they are inside a 100 man fleet.

They just need to set up just off the grid of the fight (ie less than 0.1AU from the fight), then the BLOPS will not know whether they are going to bomb or not.

For the BLOPs detecting them sitting there, if the fleet spent all of its time running from non bombing fleets or scouts, then it would not be able to get any objectives done (ie if they are defending something, they will continually be warping away from it).

Maybe couple this with another nerf to the directional scan's refresh time, but that would then result in many more complaints...

You can't get a warpin, but you can locate the target to within a grid or two (the same way used to locate anchored cans at safe spots), then fly drone assisted frigates all over the place till it decloaks.

Any suggestions on how to keep a similar idea but not make it too powerful? So far a scan duration limit seems most reasonable, but would hinder any normal use of the D-scan as well.