EVE Search - Dev answere wanted; Black Ops

CCP Ytterbium wrote:

Back from vacation and thought this thread could use some dev love.

Yes, Black Ops definitely need some attention; the main problem with them is the lack of role focus. Some (like the Redeemer or Window) are trying to achieve a purpose directly on the battlefield, similar with recons by having an electronic warfare or damage related bonus. On top of that, they also are trying to fulfill a fleet support role with their cyno capability, which is quite in contradiction with the previous one.

And they aren't great at both: their raw HP is quite lower than tech 1 battleships (and tech 2 resistance boosts aren't stellar either), have less turret and missile hardpoints than tech 1 counterparts and remain more expensive to run, which doesn't make them appealing for direct engagement purposes. They also lack autonomy in their support role, as they are quite short ranged, fuel hungry and this issue is amplified by their small fuel bay forcing them to rely on other ships to resupply frequently during an operation.

The current plan is to take one these two listed roles out of the Black Ops ship class and reshape them to do the remaining one well. If they are disruption ships using EW, they should have more presence on the battlefield for their pricetag. If they are support tools for surprise attacks and small gang movement into enemy space, then they should have the proper bay, range and tools to do so accordingly.

The role dropped out of the Black Ops would then be moved to a new class in the tech 2 battleship range to replace for the loss.

We acknowledge some entities out there are using Black Ops with great effect when backed up with the proper organization, structure and out-of-the-box thinking to make use of them in unorthodox situations. While we don't want to take that away, Black Ops should be more effective without such heavy commitment into them (a statistic query we ran at the beginning of this year shown there are more Titan than Block Ops pilot on TQ). They should be great force multiplier tools for small groups to take on larger ones by surprise, and should be able to do so relatively well without relying on a dedicated support structure.

So, when would this be coming out? Unfortunately, not for a while. As explained in the various blogs before, our current priority is to fix tech 1 ships as a whole before moving to more advanced hulls. That is because we need a solid frame of reference to rely on and compare hulls to before we can move to more delicate and complex ships, like Black Ops or tech 3 hulls.

Also don't forget this is just our long term plan for now, and things may change in the future. In all cases they are not forgotten, but will take time to get to.

Hope that helps!