Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That was my point, that the listed uses are completely irrelevant.

Additionally, I use my black ops on this character for bridging, and Bombers Bar rarely ever uses black ops in combat for a multitude of reasons - first and foremost being the opsec issues relating to completey public and open fleets. That being said, this is not my only character.



This is currently impossible without using a HIC, which means it wasn't a black ops gang.

I also see nothing in the remainder of you qualitative assessment of the ship class that could not be done equally well or better by ships of the non cloaking variety bridged in with a titan - which was how BL executed their gank using Panthers, and how I'm willing to bet would have been done to catch any mothership while using a (primarily) black ops based fleet.



Sin: All the black ops have the same amount of slots. They also have the same amount of slots as a faction battleship does, but is missing a rig. I don't get your point here.

Redeemer: Which is fine, until the target decides to shoot back - having less EHP and comparable DPS to T1 battleships. The only way this is combat effective is against defenseless targets that can't shoot back or in the blob which you seem to indicate don't exist.

Panther: Bumping capitals was not a designed purpose, and those aren't "utility highs" they are meant to be filled with things like jump portal generators, cloaks, and cynos. This is a role that I should have specified in my original post as a way that people have learnt to compensate due to unaligned and generally useless bonuses.

Widow: I have to agree that it is both mainly used in small gangs, AND is crippled by the need to have black ops 5 to even match the jam strength of a Falcon. However, I contend your point that a 900 dps widow while remaining jam capable is possible. Assuming you're using a damage control, you have three low slots remaining - you can achieve ~900 dps if you use 3x BCS and rage torps (which do not have good damage application), but this would severely reduce your jamming capability as you couldn't use SDAs. If you try to accomplish a increase in jam strength from rigs, it will reduce you shield, which will already be a low slot tank (by number of modules) due to the requirement to have a MJD and the jammers themselves. I could go on, but it's a just a simple case of conflicting bonuses EVERYWHERE. You can't do both at the same time.



I would be absolutely thrilled to get my hands on this sort of resource. The more information and examples I can pull from, the better, especially those with video footage and comms recordings. I've sent you an evemail.

I didn't consider the relatively new MJD mechanic. As far as I am aware, the MJD can only cycle while uncloaked. If you are caught in a bubble and decloaked, odds are that you are in a very bad situation. The scram does stop the MJD, so if you were decloaked odds are that you are within scram range of the decloaking vessel. That said, if the interceptor did not fit a scram then it is probably a bad interceptor and you deserve to get away with MJD. In that light, I don't think MJD makes that much of a difference as to impact the cov ops cloak worthiness of the BLOPS BS. The fact that the MJD can free the BLOPS BS from a disruptor means that the tackle delays the escape during MJD spool up, but that should be enough time to get a scram on it as it is no more time than after a deloak in a bubble. So, interesting point, but the MJD doesn't seem to me to present any issue to the argument for the king of BLOPS to warp cloaked.

1. Nyx was tackled with Mobile buble while BO's that came through cyno simply bumped his alignment. Panthers executed ver nice bump. Around 100 BOs were bridged in to melt him. in 20 minutes after that we brought more tacklers in with regular cyno next door. But initial tackle and gank was made my recon lighting Cov Ops cyno in cynojammed system. As for BL, it was regular titan bridge onto regular cyno into non cynojammed system.
2. Role of Black Ops BS is gank capital ships. You can read that in dev posts for BO introduction. Those ships fulfill their role perfectly. Now question is will CCP extend this role. Moment CCP introduced BO, capital kills were equal to titan/supercap kills today. Now there is more profit in ganking a ratting battleship rather then carreier. Supercaps and Titans are safe under cynojammer. Will CCP let BO pilots tackle supers and titans?
3. Every T2 ship has 2 rig slots and I don't think it'll be changed, but rig calibration buff would be amazing. Right now it does not allow to fit for example 1x T2 damage rig+T2 trimark.


P.S.
Some nice fraps of BO gangs incoming soon :p

You can already effectively accelerate to warp while cloaked and then warp as you're decloaking since Black Ops Battleships have increased cloaked velocity.

The point of cloaky ships is to move around undetected, Black Ops can't arrive on-grid undetected but can make up for it in other ways. Currently they don't but just letting them fit a covert-ops cloak wouldn't solve the problem.

The bridge/jump range has already been changed. Also CCP stated over here that they're next on the rebalance list after Marauders meaning we may see them get some attention for Winter.

If you want a cloaky command ship there are T3s, adding command skills to these would be highly unwieldy since they don't currently require any. For a well coordinated cloaky fleet you don't need to see other ships in fleet (at least now that you no-longer decloak each other) and I feel like changing this would remove some of the skill from using these ships.

Overall T2 ships are supposed to be somewhat harder to fit than T1 actually.



Got a source on that, because it's certainly not how they're used.

Sorry it took me so long to get around to this post, I had to think about it for a while.

First off, you reference "your proposal" for black ops, however I couldn't find it - if you could link or summarize I'd appreciate it.

In regards to EWAR blops with battleship dps: I don't see how having high dps (especially at black ops quantities) precludes the option to have additional support capabilities - especially on a support vessel. If anything the support capabilities fielded by these ships should be more important than the damage output itself, as bombers can easily supply comparable DPS in a much cheaper and maneuverable platform. In order to avoid overlapping roles, it need this combination of ewar and focsed dps that would make these ships have a specific combat niche while also encouraging solo work and other play styles.

In regards to the use of a covert ops cloaking device on a black ops for the purpose of "intelligence gathering" I must disagree once more - as intelligence gathering is suited almost specifically to the covert ops frigate which not only has the ability to fit a covert ops cloak, but is bonused to scanner probes. This is a niche already fulfilled.

In regards to the inability to use this ship for solo purposes: First off you have the 5 second delay on black ops confused with the cloaking REACTIVATION delay, there is no targeting delay at all. That, and my proposal would have included the removal of the scan res penalty from the improved cloak for black ops entirely further improving locking time. If this were switched to a covert ops cloak that would be a null point entirely. With a single sensor booster you could lock a cruiser in 5 seconds, or a battlecruiser in 4 - perfectly adequate for catching targets, although you would be biased towards big game. Regardless of how you look at it, it would be much more effective than you are implying.

In regards to my second proposal: First, this should not be the focus of my post - I've been attempting to outline the problems in the class; I only outlined an idea for a "new" blops class due to the CCP quote from the CSM minutes desiring such a scenario.

Anyway, yes, capitals are currently very vulnerable if unsupported, requiring only a handful of ships (30ish bombers in the case of a solo triage carrier) to take down in any relatively short timespan. However, the line I find most troubling is this:



I don't know who you refer to as "we" in this post, but I personally do not. I remind you of the in game description of black ops:

Black Ops battleships are designed for infiltration [...] behind enemy lines.

I've encountered numerous scenarios where a small spattering of capitals escorted by a small number of ships is taking down structures throughout various parts of space. I get this type of intel regularly, and sometimes we are able to respond. However, in the linked video we required nearly an 80 man fleet of bombers and recons to kill these two carriers, even AFTER their support had been routed from the field. We've even come across the scenario where we've had to call in dreadnaughts after finding that the bombers we supplied were simply not damaging enough, or in the case of fighting a thanatos in a wormhole where we literally had to wait until he ran out of stront so that we could kill him.

Small gangs are currently incapable of killing this capitals - unsupported or not - which lie in friendly territory.

I shouldn't need a titan just to take out a single carrier or dreadnaught, this makes guerrilla warfare conducted by smaller gangs completely ineffective and prohibative.
Travelling 7.875ly with "battleships, AHACs, bombers, and tier 3 BCs" is either impossible in the case of hostile territory or simply too slow to catch the capitals before they have left field.
Dropping a solo ship to kill a capital and it's support would be OP and is not what I suggested at all.

I look forward to your response.

Part I



Sorry, I assumed you read it cause IIRC you "liked" the post about a week ago. It is hard to remember who wrote what on these forums, though: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=274368&find=unread



Basically I don't want blackops BS becoming solo boats, and I don't want blackops BS completely eclipsing recons. I'd be a big fan of either:

1. Giving them a lot more out of combat support capabilities while keeping their current DPS / tank
2. Giving them more in-combat support abilities (recon-like bonuses) while trading off DPS and a bit of tank

I've worked with current blackops BS really extensively and like the way they currently provide quite a bit of DPS / staying power, but have definite tradeoffs in terms of tank (for the most part, they tank like an average battlecruiser). If you're going to give them more of anything (damage, ewar, etc) then I think they should be offset by some further reductions somewhere else... otherwise there's no reason not to just roll around with a blackops-only fleet.



Well if you want to get technical, a covert / nullified T3 is the ultimate recon device. That's not to say that covops, bombers, and recons can't do the same job pretty much just as well. This would simply give people another option-- one that trades agility, warp speed, ewar effectiveness, and (potentially) scanning bonuses in order to do other useful things like jump places, bridge stuff and actually do more dps than a recon.



I'm aware that blackops currently have no targeting delay after decloaking, but in my proposal, blops would get a covops cloak, which means 6 (for most people) seconds of recal plus a battleship locktime. If you want to fill the mids on your blackops with sebos to get good locktimes, you're going to be giving something else up (either a huge part of your tank on shield ships or a significant portion of your tackle / utility mods on the armor ones). If that's a tradeoff people want to make for "solo play" then that's up to them I guess. I still can't see a battleship being particularly useful, since it's already hard enough for cruisers (with superior agility, speed, and scan-res) to catch things.

You know just how to give me a covert nerdgasm, Jayne. +1 to everything, I hope CCP takes notice of what you've said.

As a long-time blackops BS user and nomad myself, I want to agree with you here: it would definitely be in my best interests for blackops to combine these attributes as you suggest. Would I jump in and use a ship like that? Probably all the time. The problem is that another part of me thinks that any ship I'd be super excited to hop into without having to do much hand-wringing about niche scenarios or potential shortcomings is probably overpowered.

I definitely agree though that certain hulls have some serious shortcomings that could do with correction-- the Widow just needs to be redesigned from scratch IMO, the Sin could use a big re-work (the drones don't really work with the tactics that flying a billion isk battleship favors), and the Panther is dreadfully under-tanked however you fit it. I think the Redeemer is easily the best-balanced of the existing blackops (it does good damage, fits a good-but-not-ridiculous tank, and has good bonuses) but I just don't think that going with T2 resists or larger-than-battlecruiser-sized buffers is a great idea.



Maybe, although I'm still not entirely sold on the need for an anti-capital platform...




I think we're just in disagreement here. The guys I play with do stuff like THIS and THIS on a pretty regular basis. You could argue that those are only ratting fits, but the reality is that a lot of the solo capitals you find in the wild are ratting or travel-fit. It's very rare for us to drop on a capital ship and not kill it: it happens, but usually only if we drop with lower numbers than usual or we drop in a very active hostile system.



I agree-- dealing with supercaps is very difficult for small groups (don't get me started on how much I would enjoy a covert-bridgeable Sabre), but in fairness supercaps aren't meant to be easykills nor are they encountered solo in the wild very often. Small groups of nomads are much more likely to encounter or pursue normal capitals, particularly ratting carriers. Ratting carriers don't generally present a significant challenge even for our 10-15 man blackops gangs, much less groups of 20-30. Given how easy it is to kill them already, I just don't see the need for a more powerful anti-cap platform.

Can somebody in here please explain me in some short sentences why you want:

A. Racial Ewar bonuses on BO
B. Ability to fit cov. ops cloak

Please keep saying "it'll be fun", but I assume that is not a proper explanation.

A) You have recons for that matter, Widow is only exception as well as Scorpion itself. It will be lame to actually have sort of Swiss army knife instead of ship. Widow has same jam strength as falcon but pays with crap tank for that. It is much easier and cheaper using falcon for that matter and most pilots do so.
B) This ship is designed to get on field through COVERT CYNOSUAL FIELD GENERATOR, There is absolutely no need in cov cloak what-so-ever.

My Sin align time 4.6 seconds without any implants or links.

I will repeat myself once again - Start using ship bonuses properly. Inability of doing so doesn't mean ship is lame, broken or needs some boost. That is T2 ship requiring a long training curve, so it is expected pilot flying it actually understands mechanics of the game and knows what is he doing.