Taisuke Black
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Posted - 2011.01.22 07:26:00 -
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Black Ops Battleships came into existence late in Eve's "expanding roles" stage, and as such never got the ability to do...anything, on a battlefield. Recently CCP has been tentatively poking the Widow, seeing what they can do without committing to anything.
I believe the proper role for Black Ops ships is Area-Of-Effect Ewar. Yes, that sounds awesome. Yes, it also sounds like it would be broken and laggy, but I don't think so.
We have Heavy Interdictors that project moving bubbles around themselves. I propose that Black Ops become a new kind of Ewar Hictor, where the bubble cycles like any other module, and applies its effect to all ships in the area.
To see what this would mean, I'm going to look at the already-existing AOEwar module, the ECM burst. It can be used on any ship, but when used on a Widow its strength gets up to a 150% bonus (as of Incursion 1.1). If two fleets are in close combat, the effect will hit friendlies as well, although the friendly fleet could have been prepared (I have already suggested some means for battleships to defend themselves against Ewar in my previous thread, [Giving Eve a Tune-Up] Episode 4: The Evolving Battlefield (Ewar).
However, in the case of fleets firing at each other from a distance a single Widow decloaking and activating its ECM burst could have a powerful effect on the battle. The widow itself would have a very good chance of dying, however. It could even get DD'd.
Keep in mind that what I just described is not a suggestion. It already works this way, the Widow can use AOEwar already to great effect. I haven't heard of anyone doing it in the last 2 days but I expect it'll happen. If similar modules are to be developed for the other races' Black Ops, there are a couple key rules I believe they should follow. For one thing multiple AOEwar bubbles of the same type would not stack.
Amarr: Tracking Disruption. Probably not Energy Draining, but I'm not saying that's a bad idea. We have energy draining bombs, remember. Gallente: Sensor Dampening. Minmatar: Target Painting. Once again, I don't know about area webs. It makes sense lore-wise and would be cool, but it would stack brutally with warp disruption bubbles. Otherwise you could use it to speed up your own fleet's warping. Caldari: already have ECM bursts. Note that each ship can only burst with 1 module at a time, but multiple ships can "stack" bursts.
Like Hictors, Black Ops should be able to use focusing scripts on their AOEwar modules to allow them to target one enemy ship with deadly effect. This focused Ewar should work on all Capitals and Supercaps, perhaps with a 30% chance to jam a supercarrier each cycle or a 70% tracking speed and range penalty on a dread. One of these could seriously disable a capital ship if used appropriately but keep in mind that after insurance a Black Ops can cost more to lose than a dread or carrier.
I propose that all these weapons should be High-slot modules, and ECM bursts should be made High-slot. In addition, Black Ops be able to fit bomb launchers with range, area, and damage bonuses. I'll release Episode 5 soon with an in-depth explanation of my reasoning why I think Eve needs more AOE weapons.
Now, for the slot configurations. I propose Black Ops should get 5 high slots (4 for Gallente, but has drones), with 3(Gallente 2) turret/missile hard-points and 100% bonus damage to its native guns. So a Black Ops can fit for decent damage with a cloak and AOEwar OR a bomb launcher, or it can increase its options at the cost of 1/3 its damage per highslot module.
To anybody who actually read this entire post, I sincerely thank you.
----- This post is part of my Giving Eve a Tune-Up series. If you are interested in reading more, go here: [Giving Eve a Tune-Up] Introduction and Links
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