Ships & Modules

When I first started eve as a little noobie running around Caldari space a few years ago, I looked at the market at all the shiny ships to see what they could do. Mind you, I didn't understand most of what they could do to begin with, but I did know one thing right away.

COV op's and BLK op's were cool.

Now that I'm not as much of a newbie any more, I'm a bit sad at the state of black ops currently, but I'm also aware that they have been the topic of many talks for a while now. I've figured that it's time for me to write down some ideas I've had, and corral everything into a relatively easy to grasp post. So hold onto your quafe, here we go.

BLOPS! WHAT ARE THEY (should be) GOOD FOR! (will be updated)

• Using their covert jump portal to move around fleets in a sneaky sneaky way, thus allowing fleet members to pop into system on a unsuspecting target.
• Being a 'big bad' scary cloaky thing, that is vulnerable if caught, but scary if it catches you.
• Being a 'boss' to all the little stealth bombers that one day hope to grow up into a Black Ops.

Pile o' Solutions

I want to be a capital but I'm not.

We've already seen how T2 Battleships can have their design pushed in order to reflect the long training investment, and power that actually being a T2 BS brings. This said, the BLOPS ships have always had the ability to jump in a fleet to a location, given they are the right ships. Now correct me if I'm wrong but when I heard that the new SOE BS was betting a shuttle bay, and the ability to have a med bay my mind was a little blown. Regardless, I think it's a perfect reason to enhance the BLOPS ships with something that gives them a bit more of an edge when deployed to hostile space.

First off, let them have cov ops cloaks.
Secondly, see below.

Kage Module(v1)

When activated, this module sends powerful electronic jamming emissions to some concord related modules on ships in the system, blocking their view of nearby pilots in fleet with the black ops ship.

Can only activate when the black ops ship is cloaked.

Reduces the cloaked speed by -100%.

If knocked out of cloak, can not target or move for 30 seconds.

"Developed by (pirates) in the darkest reaches of space this technology was captured in its early stages by (corporation) and pushed up unethical and certainly illegal ends. (I'm not good with lore.)"

To clarify, the module makes fleet members (or those on grid with the blops) not show up in local. While using it the Blops will be able to be D SCANNED, due to the massive energy the module requires.

While blopsing in a fleet is nice, I feet it loses plenty of cool possibilities besides 'Get in, shoot bomb, yay we did it.' With all the new player building things like yurts coming out, having a blops at the center of development like this would be a great way to set up bases in systems where people have not been D Scanning. This also makes the blops ship feel more like the 'leader' of the fleet, even more so if it can use other fleet assistance modules as well.

I want to be a capital and I am!

If we really want to get into sticky territory we need to consider leaving BLOPS relatively unchanged and instead creating a Tier 2 of the Tier 2 ship. In this case, a capital that requires blops 5, and the standard capital skills. I'll try and cover some racial ideas in another post here but for now lets consider general things.

It would utilize both the covert jump portal and the Kage Module listed above.

It would need a bay for extra blops ships.

It would need some utility that current caps don't bring to the table.

and that utility may be below...

Remote ECM Burst (v2)

Burst Radius 10-15KM

Range 50-90KM

Delay 45 Seconds

Strength 25

The above is just another idea. What I would like to see though is a particular weakness to dreads, and some strength against drones / small craft in the form of E WAR. Hopefully this will help make a sort of rock paper scissors relationship to keep things in check.

'Kali' Mass Cloaking Generator

Replaces COV OPS cloak.

Cloaks ships and friendly structures within 20-30km range of the BLOPS.

Velocity -100%

30 sec spool up time w/ visible effect.

Can change from COV OPS cloak > Kali cloak.

Does not grant immunity to DSCAN for cloaked ships.

Can work with the Kage Module (maybe).

Any ship not in the fleet entering the field will trigger an emergency power surge within the carrier, not only causing the generator to force shutdown, but also disabling all of its functions for 20 seconds.

This above is used around the idea of deploying in hostile space, though I am aware that most of these ideas are coming from someone with not much BLOPS experience. That in mind, I'll do my best to keep things updated as the discussion goes along.