Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Recons and Blops (and bombers/covops?) are still in the gutter and in need of a boost.

Looking at you, Pilgrim.

Don't know why people keep saying the pilgrim needs a rebalance. It's an excellent solo ship.

Same here

Black Ops Battleships badly need a role besides bridging bombers and recons. Biggest issues are as follows:

-Bombers due more damage due to faster lock times and are MUCH cheaper.
-compared to a T1 BS, a black ops is harder to fit, and has less EHP
-lack of BLOP logistics are at a significant disadvantage against a comparable conventional T1 fleet, even with more numbers
-you lose 2/3 of your cap just be jumping in, hope your guns don't use cap!

A clear role needs to be developed for this ship that justifies the cost and SP required to fly it. Side by side comparison of Maurauder vs BLOP is clear that these ships need some balance love. Even side by side comparison of T1 to BLOP is underbalanced (typhoon vise panther).

There should be some trade off, strength to weakness. But atm these ships are ALL weaknesses.

Nothing to do with cloaks. I'm asking CCP to finish the ship rebalance by fixing the ships which USE cloaks before rebalancing modules.

Expected AFK cloaker thread to flame.

Was disappointed.

I'll take it you don't fly BLOPS all but sin are great ships and there are cov ops logis that work for there role.

As for the SP thing SP should never be a balancing factor

This isn't really an advantage, allow me to illustrate:

Two fleets jump onto a battle in eve, fleet A is 20 BLOP'S (about 1.5-2B apiece fully fit) with 5 recons and some bombers. Fleet B is 25 T1 armor BS (say Dominixs) with 10 guardians. Which fleet wins? At the current level of balance, the T1 conventional fleet wins because they tank more damage and can bring logistics along with them.

Sure the BLOP BS can jump itself there, but once it gets there, it's worse than any T1 BS there. What good is a built in jump drive when everyone in their mother has a Titan to bridge in whole conventional fleets? Even BRAVE, the unofficial newbie alliance of EVE, has access to Titans to bridge their fleets.

Sure the case can be made for Cov ops cynos in jammed systems, but the BLOP fleet without inherent logistics can't tank a POS, much less a defending fleet, long enough to take down a cyno jammer.

The fact remains there isn't any role in game for this ship, besides bridging bombers, that can't be done better and more efficiently by another hull. This is by definition exactly what CCP set out to fix with the tiericide program.

I don't think the class should be balanced around being gank ships only and having no hope to survive a more conventional fight if it develops. Thats exactly what has made them into mobile jump bridges that rarely see combat unless dropping 20 strong on a mining barge in an empty system. The rest of the time, you're better off bridging bombers through.

Now, this can be approached in several ways: either make blops more capable of holding their own against a conventional fleet so they can be used to support the bombers, or make them fully focused on bridging, with greater bonuses to range/fuel use/logistics/whatever, while dropping their damage capability.

As someone who owns two of the hulls, I very much hope CCP take the former route, so that we no longer get outdps'd by two well fit bombers while costing 30 times more.


PS: it's the same catch as with supers... not enough die, because there are few situations where you'd want to field one outside of ganks and sov warfare. In the first case, you're pretty sure you'll melt the target and moonwalk out, in the second, you count on huge reinforcements if something goes wrong. Blops don't get the luxury of multi-million HP tanks, so there is little hope of the cavalry arriving, hence only the gank scenario remains.

Please roll drone damage into guns on Panther. I imagine some sin pilots would prefer a blaster boat as well.