1. Please elaborate on why. Specifically what unique role it would fill.

2. This by itself is not a reason for a ship to exist and it would only serve to make the other SoE ships and exploration fitted T3's redundant.

3. Access to Cov Ops cloaks will not fix Black Ops.

4. So a 1000+ DPS ship with a cov ops cloak, great projection, great application, flexible damage types, low ammo needs, partially capless weapons, and a tanking bonus wouldn't be OP at all? Really? Please explain.

You are basically proposing a Navy Dominix with a stronger tank, more fittings, more slots, a scanning bonus, and a covert ops cloak. To suggest that such a ship would not be OP is just silly.

1. So? Risk vs reward.

2. Not really. The Megathron doesn't track small targets as well as a smaller ship does. This is not the case with a drone boat. It also has more range on its weapons than a smaller hull. Also not the case with a drone boat. The Megathron is also slower and more expensive than say, a Vexor.

3. Please elaborate.

4. I guess you forgot about how drones can easily switch damage types, are mostly immune to ewar, use no cap, and how amazing sentry drones are for raw DPS, projection, and application.

Having a weak tank for a BS is still a pretty strong tank for a subcap. And its probably going to get +4% armor resists per level so reps will count for more. And the cov ops cloak is very powerful, it lets you pick your fights and become unprobable on demand with almost no penalty.

1. So I guess we never have issues caused by people running around in blobs of super expensive and powerful ships? Right?

2. Irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind would use heavy drones against a frigate. They would switch to lights.

3. How so? Will it let them tank better or do more DPS? Would it somehow protect them from getting pointed when they try to run from a fight? Would it let them jump out faster after a drop? Would it give them a role in a traditional fleet fight?

4. I guess nobody builds entire fleet doctrines around drones. Oh wait... Its not as if the SoE ships have really large drone bays for their hull size or anything.

Even if this new ship has the same raw buffer as a Black Ops the resist bonus will easily push it to 100k EHP or more when fitted while making logistics even more effective than they already are.

Do you not have all racial BS skills to V? I do. I bet a lot of people do. It not like tons of cap pilots didn't train for either Gallente or Amarr capitals and then cross train to the other one back when you needed BS V for caps... wait....

Dscan really is as good as being there you know. It makes it easy to run around low sec avoiding gate camps without a scout. It lets you see exactly where drag bubbles are in null with total safety so you know which celestial to bounce off to avoid them, how far from the gate the other guy is, ect. Oh wait, that's the cov ops cloak that does that, silly me. And wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way to drop aggression timers and make yourself totally safe at any safe spot with just the logoff button instantly without needing to bother fitting a silly cloak?

Give it a bonus to rhml and probe strength.
Keep it as armour but give it a much larger signature than other bs.
Also give it a bonus to anchoring mobile depots.
Maybe a bonus to armour repper drones.

maybe you would like to take a few moments to consider the attributes of the Gila

If anything, drones are the worst weapon system to combine with a covert cloak.

Every other weapon system is just fine if the pilot needs to warp off grid. Drones need to be recovered first, making the ability to warp while cloaked something meaningless unless you have extra time after a fight.

Add to that, they have about the slowest time between dropping your cloak and first application of DPS, making a surprise attack anti-climactic to behold. Add to that, the weaker tank is exposed longer to the opponent since your DPS needs to take this extra time.

Blasters, on the other hand, or smart bombs, make better use of the qualities a cloak brings to the table.

Source: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/sisters-of-eve-faction-ships/

Thing with covops battleships is they can hit MJD and then activate cloak, pretty much guarantees they wont be scrammed in time. Should make it so cloak interrupts mjd.

Thank you for the support.

Sorry for being so confrontational earlier. I suppose I just looked at the bonuses on the Stratios and then slapped them on a BS hull in my mind without really thinking about how to balance an SoE BS properly.

I'm a little surprised that CCP hasn't made a comment of some type in this thread. I'm not expecting a confirmation of there being or not being an SoE BS in the works or anything but there hasn't even been a "Hm, that's interesting." or a "We want to see how things work out with the Frigate and Cruiser before we make any decisions about a BS." from them about this.