Black Ops

[LordsServant]

Just my take on it from a W-Space perspective...

If this happens, you're just gonna end up with WH groups getting together a gang of 10-15 blackops + ~5 guardians, then going pikey and stealing everything not nailed to the floor at every POS they find.

WH groups will log back in in the morning to find that their awesome deathstar POS is now entirely undefended and rape bubbled for lulz.

While I think this would entirely hilarious (god it would be awesome), I think it's a bit OP and/or absurd. =D

[Vortex]

I'm posting from a worsmpace perspective. Any entity that is bored and large enough to drop a 20man BS/RR gang on a tower is going to take what they want if it isn't defended. They can already incap everything easily enough, rapecage + reinforce the POS, then come back to finish it.

The reason they don't is a bit long:

1) <C5: Dickstar POS are almost never worth the :effort: required to do this to. Blackops wouldn't change this sense they need to lock the modules to hack them, and they can't lock with jammers.
2) Its boring as fuck
3) >=C5: Dreads are a much better option if the hostile tower is really that juicy enough to warrant sieging
4) Its easier to defend vs. BO hacking than it is to succeed. You need two (progressively) harder hacks to put the module to data-reinforced mode, and then you need to come back some >24 hours later to hack it again. During that time, the enemy can come in and clear the D-RF state with their own blackops or T2 codebreakers and reset the module back to normal mode.

The system as I proposed would only see towers stripped with an inactive, inattentive, or bad playerbase defending the tower. That happens all the time already - sieging a poorly setup POS is not hard. In <C5 systems, a proper dickstar or shredder POS is simply not going to be worth the trouble - faction pos modules simply aren't worth enough isk to make stealing them economically viable. In a C5/C6 system, the wrong entity opens in, and they are bored enough... well... say hello to multiple dreads rampaging your POSs and bubbles everywhere. It happens - not often - but it happens. Blackops hacking really wouldn't change much for most wormspace entities past being able to salvage offlined towers + mods that litter half the wormspace galaxy atm.

[Seamus]

Bops are already +50% mass or so on a t1 BS, might even be double, cant remember. So even a C6 hole is 9 out and back in (moderately) safely.

[Cue1*]

I'm posting from a worsmpace perspective. Any entity that is bored and large enough to drop a 20man BS/RR gang on a tower is going to take what they want if it isn't defended. They can already incap everything easily enough, rapecage + reinforce the POS, then come back to finish it.

The reason they don't is a bit long:

1) <C5: Dickstar POS are almost never worth the :effort: required to do this to. Blackops wouldn't change this sense they need to lock the modules to hack them, and they can't lock with jammers.
2) Its boring as fuck
3) >=C5: Dreads are a much better option if the hostile tower is really that juicy enough to warrant sieging
4) Its easier to defend vs. BO hacking than it is to succeed. You need two (progressively) harder hacks to put the module to data-reinforced mode, and then you need to come back some >24 hours later to hack it again. During that time, the enemy can come in and clear the D-RF state with their own blackops or T2 codebreakers and reset the module back to normal mode.

The system as I proposed would only see towers stripped with an inactive, inattentive, or bad playerbase defending the tower. That happens all the time already - sieging a poorly setup POS is not hard. In <C5 systems, a proper dickstar or shredder POS is simply not going to be worth the trouble - faction pos modules simply aren't worth enough isk to make stealing them economically viable. In a C5/C6 system, the wrong entity opens in, and they are bored enough... well... say hello to multiple dreads rampaging your POSs and bubbles everywhere. It happens - not often - but it happens. Blackops hacking really wouldn't change much for most wormspace entities past being able to salvage offlined towers + mods that litter half the wormspace galaxy atm.

You're still adding another ship to the list of stuff you must have with you if you own a POS anywhere in EVE, and it's really for an arbitrary reason. I like the idea, don't get me wrong. But maybe adding a mod that you can use to defend against the D-RF attacks that isn't a BLOPs specific mod would be better.

[Vortex]

I specifically stated that T2 codebreakers should also be able to clear the D-RF state at a considerably long time interval. This makes BOBs highly desirable, but in no way required. At any rate, stealing pos modules still wouldn't really be a thing unless your POS just sucks and has some juicy faction mods worth ripping off - a weird combination (but god knows it happens occasionally).

[Cue1*]

I specifically stated that T2 codebreakers should also be able to clear the D-RF state at a considerably long time interval. This makes BOBs highly desirable, but in no way required. At any rate, stealing pos modules still wouldn't really be a thing unless your POS just sucks and has some juicy faction mods worth ripping off - a weird combination (but god knows it happens occasionally).

Reread the original proposal you had up and don't see the T2 Codebreaker thing, but yes, I think that would considerably help with the 'required ship' issue.

[ShoNuff]

I'm going to necro this rather than start a new thread since this thread has some decent ideas and there was a minor bit of love applied to the BLOPs already in retribution 1.1, and hopefully more to come in the summer patch. What would you like to see changed about the ships themselves?

I would love to see something like a 0m3 SMA, so that any ships with the correct jump harmonics attribute would be able to refit. In addition, some fitting/tanking tweaks would be welcomed with open arms.

[OrangeAfroMan]

More fittings, more varied roles, more tank/dps/options.

If they make a new line of BOBS I wouldn't mind if they were combat-oriented in that they couldn't bridge ships. The best use of BOBS is dropping the ships themselves and being able to bridge ships just makes them into blob-mobiles in the end.

[Ryan Air]

I'm sure a lot of this has been said already but..I'll resay it..say it..


Roles
Currently the BLOPS have 2 roles and 1 function. With this past change, BLOPS have turned into the poor mans titan. I think this is a great start towards giving them a true purpose. Small corps/alliance don't have to save up the 100 Bil needed for the ability to project damage.

Tracking - Amarr
Agility - Gal
ECM - Caldari
Speed - Mini

Those are the bonuses. With last years Aliance Tournament, there is only 1 logi support and that's for the Caldari. What if they gave them all some type of moderate RR ability. Bring back spider tanking BS's!...but no really. Double Damage 4 slot highs, bring up the EHP to 75% of that of the T1 counterpart (instead of half), make the last 4 high slots RRable with appropriate bonuses.

Amarr - Armor/Energy (same as the archon)
Gal - Drone/...honestly, keep it the jack of all trades like it is, just make the bonus something more usable.
Caldari, for the Shield/Energy (not sure about this one, it would have to many purposes on the field though with the introduction of the MJD, it doesn't have to sit at zero on the fight, instead, just MJD to range and start ECMing)
Mini - Shield/Armor (same as the Nid)

Doing this would make the ships have HUGE role potential. Give them bonuses of maybe half that of normal logi's. The fleet potential use (even mid fight when calling support) could help increadably.

Just some quick thoughts with me being at work.

[Ophichius]

I'm sure a lot of this has been said already but..I'll resay it..say it..


Roles
Currently the BLOPS have 2 roles and 1 function. With this past change, BLOPS have turned into the poor mans titan. I think this is a great start towards giving them a true purpose. Small corps/alliance don't have to save up the 100 Bil needed for the ability to project damage.

Tracking - Amarr
Agility - Gal
ECM - Caldari
Speed - Mini

Those are the bonuses. With last years Aliance Tournament, there is only 1 logi support and that's for the Caldari. What if they gave them all some type of moderate RR ability. Bring back spider tanking BS's!...but no really. Double Damage 4 slot highs, bring up the EHP to 75% of that of the T1 counterpart (instead of half), make the last 4 high slots RRable with appropriate bonuses.

Amarr - Armor/Energy (same as the archon)
Gal - Drone/...honestly, keep it the jack of all trades like it is, just make the bonus something more usable.
Caldari, for the Shield/Energy (not sure about this one, it would have to many purposes on the field though with the introduction of the MJD, it doesn't have to sit at zero on the fight, instead, just MJD to range and start ECMing)
Mini - Shield/Armor (same as the Nid)

Doing this would make the ships have HUGE role potential. Give them bonuses of maybe half that of normal logi's. The fleet potential use (even mid fight when calling support) could help increadably.

Just some quick thoughts with me being at work.

Mixing DPS and logi is generally suboptimal, and it doesn't mesh with the rest of the blops' kit. Consider the sort of ships they're designed to support. Fragile, low-resist ships with virtually no slots to spare for the resist mods that would make a logistics or spider-tanking setup worth a damn. At half a billion ISK a pop, running a full fleet of blops is -incredibly- stupid except for stomping on people so inept, incompetent, or underprepared that you could knock them over with anything, including a more traditional fleet at a fraction of the cost. If you're actually fighting someone competent enough that you need to spider tank your fleet to engage, whilst having the levels of DPS and e-war that a black ops fleet should have, then you're also fighting someone competent enough to bubble your (nigh-immobile) multi-billion ISK small gang and tear it to ribbons.

Making blops into suboptimal logi ships has no potential aside from generating stupid lossmails.

TBH they either need to be made into capital-sized bombers (citadel torpedos for you, and you, and you...) or be given some other unique battlefield role beyond 'bridge the fleet in, bridge the fleet out, bridge the fleet in and shake it all about'.

One possible idea I can think of would be to make them sort of 'covert synchronization' ships. Give them either integral or module-based bonuses that bolster cloaking. Improve speed under cloak, make your fleet immune to friendly decloaks/cloak blocking (i.e. You no are no longer blocked from cloaking or decloaked by being too close to a fleetmate), or even give the ability for fleetmates to see each other when cloaked. All of which would boost the utility of a black ops ship by acting as a force multiplier for the fleet it supports. Make it on-grid only, but applied under cloaking. (And give it the ability to use a covops cloak for fuck's sake)

Other random ideas for making them useful (disclaimer, I make no promises to quality for any of these, this is a random list with little or no thought towards overall implications on gameplay.):

Cyno disruption probes: similar to warp disruption probes but they block ships from attempting to jump to a cyno. Attempting to jump to an interdicted cyno would instead act as though the cyno had been destroyed mid-transit (i.e. random placement in system). Unfortunately this is probably bad due to making blops a must-have component of fleets.

Cyno collapse bomb: Similar to the above, but instead of being a persistent effect it's a one-off device that sends out an AoE pulse, instantly killing all cyno beacons within the area of effect. Cyno modules would still cycle/immobilize the ship as normal even if the beacon gets popped. Obviously needs fuel/cycle time balancing to avoid being complete bullshit. Also runs the issue of making blops mandatory at fleet fights.

Micro-portal drive: Generates a short-duration portal that can be used by any ship in the fleet (Or merely any covert cloakable ship in the fleet) to instantly jump to a spot 100km forward of the activating blops.

Citadel bomb launcher: Fires a bomb with a larger blast radius and correspondingly longer travel time. No greater damage, much greater swept volume. (Problem: Obsoletes bombers and/or makes them second stringers)

Cav blops: Make them all missile boats with a speed and agility bonus, -75% torpedo velocity +2000% torpedo flight time. (Problems: Fuck you I want cav Ravens back.)

-O

[Ryan Air]

I'm sure a lot of this has been said already but..I'll resay it..say it..


Roles
Currently the BLOPS have 2 roles and 1 function. With this past change, BLOPS have turned into the poor mans titan. I think this is a great start towards giving them a true purpose. Small corps/alliance don't have to save up the 100 Bil needed for the ability to project damage.

Tracking - Amarr
Agility - Gal
ECM - Caldari
Speed - Mini

Those are the bonuses. With last years Aliance Tournament, there is only 1 logi support and that's for the Caldari. What if they gave them all some type of moderate RR ability. Bring back spider tanking BS's!...but no really. Double Damage 4 slot highs, bring up the EHP to 75% of that of the T1 counterpart (instead of half), make the last 4 high slots RRable with appropriate bonuses.

Amarr - Armor/Energy (same as the archon)
Gal - Drone/...honestly, keep it the jack of all trades like it is, just make the bonus something more usable.
Caldari, for the Shield/Energy (not sure about this one, it would have to many purposes on the field though with the introduction of the MJD, it doesn't have to sit at zero on the fight, instead, just MJD to range and start ECMing)
Mini - Shield/Armor (same as the Nid)

Doing this would make the ships have HUGE role potential. Give them bonuses of maybe half that of normal logi's. The fleet potential use (even mid fight when calling support) could help increadably.

Just some quick thoughts with me being at work.

Mixing DPS and logi is generally suboptimal, and it doesn't mesh with the rest of the blops' kit. Consider the sort of ships they're designed to support. Fragile, low-resist ships with virtually no slots to spare for the resist mods that would make a logistics or spider-tanking setup worth a damn. At half a billion ISK a pop, running a full fleet of blops is -incredibly- stupid except for stomping on people so inept, incompetent, or underprepared that you could knock them over with anything, including a more traditional fleet at a fraction of the cost. If you're actually fighting someone competent enough that you need to spider tank your fleet to engage, whilst having the levels of DPS and e-war that a black ops fleet should have, then you're also fighting someone competent enough to bubble your (nigh-immobile) multi-billion ISK small gang and tear it to ribbons.

-O

Mixing DPS and logi is indeed normally a bad idea. Spider tanking BLOPS falls into that catagory. If resists and overal buffer values were raised by 75% though to that of the t1 counterpart, your looking at 150-175k EHP ship basis where providing the sustainablity and survivability of a sub optimal logi could be considered.

You seem to be kind of counterdicting yourself with your thoughs on it though. They are fragile, agreed but there purpose is to get in and get out. Not to warp at all or warp while cloaked. The objective is and always has been when flying BLOPS to find people that are inept, incompetent, and underprepaired. Hit, kill, leave. Not for susstained combat but for targets of oportunity. If they had more staying power on the field, that would be a diffrent story but currently, they don't. Sure we can jump all kinds of far now but we still are only looking for targets of oportunity that can die in 5 min or less. Having a sustained fight in a BLOPS is silly, bad...dumb.

If they had a half ass logi ability than they could/would serve a purpose in a lot greater aspect than now. Now...you HAVE to jump in a carrier or two to protect your guys. The tactict still hasn't changed though, get in..blap, get out, not to get in..fight, than warp around cloaked for the next target. Logi (or ANY functionality other than speed and agility...honestly...useless stats for a quick reaction force like BLOPS are) would allow for multi level support. Think of it as a mini Archon, mini Cap Bat, Mini, quick reaction force. It costs around .75 of a carrier hull, it has 100% less of a commitment of dropping a carrier into the battle and wouldn't force the same level of escilation that a carrier will demand. Your on coms, we have guys 10 jumps out in need of reps, BLOP in...rep them up. This could allow for a slower/lower level of escilation unlike now where it's a 3 stage escilation or you degress/die.

Just more thoughts though.

[Ophichius]

Mixing DPS and logi is indeed normally a bad idea. Spider tanking BLOPS falls into that catagory. If resists and overal buffer values were raised by 75% though to that of the t1 counterpart, your looking at 150-175k EHP ship basis where providing the sustainablity and survivability of a sub optimal logi could be considered.

You seem to be kind of counterdicting yourself with your thoughs on it though. They are fragile, agreed but there purpose is to get in and get out. Not to warp at all or warp while cloaked. The objective is and always has been when flying BLOPS to find people that are inept, incompetent, and underprepaired. Hit, kill, leave. Not for susstained combat but for targets of oportunity. If they had more staying power on the field, that would be a diffrent story but currently, they don't. Sure we can jump all kinds of far now but we still are only looking for targets of oportunity that can die in 5 min or less. Having a sustained fight in a BLOPS is silly, bad...dumb.

If they had a half ass logi ability than they could/would serve a purpose in a lot greater aspect than now. Now...you HAVE to jump in a carrier or two to protect your guys. The tactict still hasn't changed though, get in..blap, get out, not to get in..fight, than warp around cloaked for the next target. Logi (or ANY functionality other than speed and agility...honestly...useless stats for a quick reaction force like BLOPS are) would allow for multi level support. Think of it as a mini Archon, mini Cap Bat, Mini, quick reaction force. It costs around .75 of a carrier hull, it has 100% less of a commitment of dropping a carrier into the battle and wouldn't force the same level of escilation that a carrier will demand. Your on coms, we have guys 10 jumps out in need of reps, BLOP in...rep them up. This could allow for a slower/lower level of escilation unlike now where it's a 3 stage escilation or you degress/die.

Just more thoughts though.

You pretty much outlined the exact reasons why logi bonuses on the hull are terrible though. It costs 75% of what a carrier does, for what, at most a guardian worth of rep? That's not a good trade, as you'd have to drop a minimum of two and more likely 4+ to provide any sort of decent logistics, which leaves you hanging 2-3 billion ISK on the hook.

The idea behind giving them warp-while-cloaked and bonuses to cloaking is not to enhance their role as opportunity hunters. They already do that well enough with portals. It was to give them a place in more traditional fleet warfare. A black ops providing a rapid reaction wing to an otherwise conventional fight would have a great deal of use for things like allowing fleetmembers to see the location of their cloaked ships, or for eliminating friendly decloaking. Covops cyno in off-grid, warp cloaked blops to allied fleetmember at range, bring in allied covert wing to start their bombing run.

There's no real way to enhance the blops' covert hunter/killer aspect without making it atrociously powerful. Similarly, to bring risk/reward anywhere near useful levels and make it a logistics ship you need to give it a hell of a lot of rep power and a tiny sigrad, which naturally makes it overpowered as a combat boat (unless you plan to strip combat bonuses from the hulls entirely).

-O

[OrangeAfroMan]

Btw the Widow has no ECM range bonus so it cannot jump in then MJD away to ECM and support.

Black Ops are indeed about ganking people where they normally feel safe. They should all have local or buffer tanks and do 1k+DPS

[Joshua Foiritain]

I would like to see blops split into two separate ship classes, one combat blops and one logistics blops.

Combat blops
The combat blops would be the current one without the ability to use bridges, its goal is to jump in; apply full on face rape and jump out while the recons prevent your target(s) from ever getting a lock on it. If they get tackled they die like a little bitch.

Changes i would make:
1: Increase their cloak speed bonus to give them mwd like speeds while cloaked, it is primarily designed for those OH SHIT GTFO moments when your drop goes wrong and gives them the much needed mobility to compensate for being weak.
2: Increase in cpu/pg to make dual propping a mjd/mwd/ab easier to improve their mobility in the field while not cloaked.

I wouldn't really beef up any other stats as these ships are designed to murder random solo pilots by coming out of nowhere, not to engage in straight up combat. If people are getting a chance to shoot your blops something went horribly wrong.

Logistics blops
The logistics blops would lack weapons but would have the ability to fit bridges, it has to use a regular cloak as well. It also comes equipped with:
A ship maint. bay capable of storing only covert ops ships. (Carrier sized bay?)
A fleet hangar to store modules to allow ships to refit.
The ability for covert ops ships to refit modules.
A large cargobay allowing it to carry around fuel for itself, its bridge and other blops.

An important change to covert jump portals:
The covert ops portal should be changed to work both ways so that the logistics blops doesnt have to leave its staging system. Basically a combat blops pops a covert cyno in the field, the logi blops opens a bridge to it and the people in the field can then bridge from this combat blops to the logi blops. Once everyone is out, the combat blops jumps back to the logi blops.

The idea is that the logistic blops acts as a mobile field base for the black ops fleet, it holds supplies and spare ships to allow black ops fleets to operate inside hostile space for several days in a row before having to resupply, a small collection of ships allows the fleet to adapt to their target as well as replace losses incurred on the battlefield.

Ship stats and fitting would be similar to that of the combat blops but without turret/missiles/drones. It does need enough high slots to fit the bridge, a covert cyno, hull & armor rep (to rep any damage incurred during fights) and cloak.

[Lallante]

Give blackops a melee weapon tbh

[Tony O]

Give blackops a melee weapon tbh

"Full ahead Mr. Christian, arm the ram and all hands brace for impact!"









New role bonus is Backdoor, er, BlackOps Banditry: +100% penetration depth.

[W0lf Crendraven]

Make them big stealth bombers, i.e let them fit citadel launchers, give them a bonus on missile range and sig radius (i.e so they dont die instantly to blap dreads), let them warped cloaked and lower the price and retain their jumping ability. Voilá, you have a new role for them, anti capital weapons that cant hit subcaps at all (i.e you cant use them as blap dreads), their tank is already lackluster so they cant stay forever on grid and will die farily fast and give subcaps a very viable target in bigger fights.

Would make dreads useless for structure/pos grinding but its imo a worthy tradeoff.

[Sponk]

Would make dreads useless for structure/pos grinding but its imo a worthy tradeoff.

Not so sure I like this.

[W0lf Crendraven]

Well everyone always complain that structure grinding is a bitch and it would make it easier, downside of course would be that forcing fights would be harder since they dont have to commit, maybe making the weapons range under lrage pos shield range would fix it?

[QuackBot]

Bops are already +50% mass or so on a t1 BS, might even be double, cant remember. So even a C6 hole is 9 out and back in (moderately) safely.

And on the 8th day of the wekk september 11th of 3049 will be?