Warfare & Tactics

I don't see any reason that these changes will have any huge effect on BLOPS groups or our activities.

In fact, forcing Rorquals out into belts gives us a much better chance of bagging one. Currently, you only catch a Rorq if they're dumb and slowboat out of undefended POS shields. At least, my only Rorq kill came because my scout alt found one slowboating out of his POS shields. In that instance, we threw Attack Battlecruisers through a wormhole to blap it.

Black Ops drops are excellent at providing a constant level of background harassment to AFK ratters and interdictions on alliance level backbone logistical work (eg: dropping on a Jump Bridge refueling freighter out hard at work).

I'm still hoping that we'll get a bit of a balance pass over Battleships in general and Black Ops Battleships in particular sometime Soon(tm). Just a T2 resist profile would be a great improvement to BLOPS.

One thing to remember: if you get into a standup fight in a BLOPS fleet, you're doing it wrong. BLOPS drops are an execution style gank, not An Honorabru Engagement. Bring overwhelming firepower, or don't drop at all.

The changes to carriers have, however, made carrier ratters all but immune to anything but the biggest of BLOPS drops. Your average BLOPS BS will cost the same, if not more than, a cheap ratting carrier.

this is why the rorq change is such a probblem depending on how long that invuln lasts there is no way you won't get into a standard fight

It remains to be seen what will happen and how it plays out, especially when multiple rorqs are ongrid and cycling shields.

Heck, the Battle Rorq may be just about to become the super-cap fleet's new Must Have support ship! won't that throw the cat amongst the pigeons?

as for avoiding the 'standard fight', BLOPS fleets are always careful about what targets they engage.

my first thoughts, as a blops HK pilot myself, is that prior to engaging a rorq fleet in 0.0, I'd want to bridge in a blockade runner loaded to the gunnels with bubbles and cyno inhibitors to do some serious prep-work, ping burning and scouting before landing tackle, firing the cyno and unleashing all kinds of expensive shenanigans.

Bombers, great thumping swarms of Bombers, would also form a critical part of my planning at this stage of the game.

oooh, can't wait. this could turn out to be great fun.

except the archon can get over 5M tank w/o using cap and a chimera can manage it's tank with 0 cap so long as it has one cap booster. tbh i don't know of any carrier fits that are dependent on cap considering they are passive and buffer tanks.

normally the largest our fleets get is 10

lol thats just it we were not able to kill them (since the change we have managed to kill a few thannies and one nid)

the ones we see flying archons do it for the tank other wise they use chimeras <- max dps fit still gets a monster of a tank ~9mill on the ones we use.

asking around some things we have found that will work for smaller groups like mine (again other than random drops on random ppl) is either hunting non rorq miners and non-carrier ratters. while it stinks that carriers will be off limit for the most part and we will not be able to take out rorq fleets anymore. we should still be able to cause disruption and that is all i was really worried about ^.^

thats a good pont i forgot about orcas and the new booster. for some reason i was thinking everyone who had the numbers would be using a rorq in null but after reading the thread it seems most don't want to put effort into defending them anyway.


as for carriers the carrier dps isn't the issue (fighters are a snooze to jam) just the time it takes we can't seem to manage to take them down b4 local spikes lol. but carriers may just no be doable anymore in small numbers and that's fine it will give us a reason to get bigger ^.^

no rorqs defiantly have a place corps just need to be willing to defend them 5 minutes is a lot of time to get a def fleet there and it means a small roaming gang is not going to be enough to kill a rorq any more b4 help shows up. and yes combat drones are turned off its basically a "time out" button

not to mention they still get better boosts than the orca and dont need to siege to do it. they only need to do that if they want the next level higher

over all i think its a good change

With carrier changes its almost impossible to hero tank a carrier with a blops, but doable with special fit armor blopses as well. The question as you have pointed out is how fast the support arrives. The thing is while you can get more tank in a tanked fit after the capital changes, most ratting carriers do not fit tank, which end up with less ehp compared to before the patch. So while only special fit blopses will be able to tank carriers, those blopses are generally better off vs carriers now.

If you wanna keep dropping on carriers with 2-3 people, and if you got balls and ISK, you can go supers. I know ppl who like to do that. Its gonna be even better after the changes since they are getting better range.

If you have 8-10 people, a bomber fleet (especially with focused void bombs) works wonders. A properly fit bomber is the same dps with a blops with much less risk taken. 6-7 bombers plus a falcon is enough to kill a carrier before backup arrives in most regions.

Personally I cant wait for Rorq changes since we can field 70-100 man on grid and deal with most of the response fleets people can get in 5 minutes in any region. If you have proper sized fleet with proper EWAR sup (4 falcons, at least 1 rapier an arazu) you can easily start taking `real fights` vs peoples response fleets. We even take most of the baits these days.

You guys can always come to Bombers Bar fleets to see how a proper blops whaling fleet works and have some NPSI fun. I dont think blops will cease to be fun after the rorq changes. For big groups its even better, for small groups rorquals never left their poses anyway. And if you are worried that people are able to save their miners, usually when we do small blops we dont find a few procurers worthy of dropping our blopses anyway.