1) Yes.
2) Tank more and dish out more DPS.
3) HELL yes. See our gimped blackops range for more information.
4)No, not really. Not like it can avoid bubbles, for example, so you can just burn at it and bump it to decloak it during its sloooooooow align time - it is a battleship, after all. Furthermore CCP aren't stupid - they know how to balance, and a covops BS is likely to have a godawful tank for anything but resist-focused PVE if it's covops cloaky and can pack 125mbps of bonused drones and lasers.

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. Well, for a start, it would encourage greater travel around lowsec and nullsec for PVE. I've known people to let escalations go just because they're slightly outside blue space.

2. It's plenty reason. You may as well say the existence of the megathron currently obsoletes the brutix, thorax and incursus. Does it?

3. It'll go some way to doing so.

4. Apologies, I forgot the parts where I apparently mentioned projection, application and partially capless lasers that can somehow change damage types. Sorry, my mistake - glad you put the words in my mouth for me.

I am proposing no such thing, my boy. For a start I specifically mentioned the fact that the tank would almost certainly have to be weaker - look at the stratios, for example. It has an inferior tank to most cruisers. I've also stated that balance would be a part of the creation of said ship. And honestly, with local in the current state it is, a cloak isn't much of an empowerment.

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. And, in risking a more expensive faction BS hull, people are given access to greater rewards. It just facilitates things, catalyzes them.

2. However, drone sizes do have tracking differences. If they whip out large drones for a small target, the drones will never hit them. If they whip out small drones, the drones are easier to destroy. A SoE battleship would also be slower and more expensive than the Stratios.

3. Blackops battleships are largely confined to POSes or single-drop attacks with an insta-jump escape. A covops cloak is more likely to encourage blackops pilots to take an active role in covops gangs, rather than being the mule.

4. Can we talk about limited drone bays please? If you're trying to pack a flight of every damage type, you're going to run out of drone bay space reeeeeal fast. If we're going to complain about weapons types that are capless and have great damage projection and dps, let's talk about projectile weapons and missiles, shall we? Immune to ewar - great. Just pop them, no more drone.

Having a weak tank for a BS is having a medium-range tank for a battlecruiser. "Probably" means nothing, and +4% means nowhere near as much for active tanking as +5% did, that's why they removed that extra 5%. How many people are going to have both battleship sets to V, anyway? Plenty of lazy trainers. The Dscan lets you pick your fights and the logoff button makes you unprobable on demand - gonna nerf those? Before you say "that's stupid", they are both actively used in combat, admittedly one more so than the other.

1) Yes.
2) Tank more and dish out more DPS.
3) HELL yes. See our gimped blackops range for more information.
4)No, not really. Not like it can avoid bubbles, for example, so you can just burn at it and bump it to decloak it during its sloooooooow align time - it is a battleship, after all. Furthermore CCP aren't stupid - they know how to balance, and a covops BS is likely to have a godawful tank for anything but resist-focused PVE if it's covops cloaky and can pack 125mbps of bonused drones and lasers.

We hope you guys enjoy the new ships, and make sure to keep your eyes peeled following Rubicon, the Sisters of EVE may not be done giving us new toys quite yetGǪ

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.

The power of the Stratios renders BS sized SoE ship irrelevant. If they wanted to do a BS, they would have limited the Strat to medium drones.

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

why should they be mutually exclusive

drones are a weapon system ... so deploying them whilst cloaked would be the same as shooting lazors/autocannon's whilst cloaked


a non-event.

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.

We hope you guys enjoy the new ships, and make sure to keep your eyes peeled following Rubicon, the Sisters of EVE may not be done giving us new toys quite yetGǪ

- CCP Rise

My feeling is that they will release the Nestor when they rebalanced the Blackops. Likely in the 1.1, 1.2, or the next expansion.

Hm, I suppose you may be right. I guess I am just very iffy about a Covert Ops cloak paired with a full flight of damage bonused sentry drones as it might step on the toes of several other ships. (Dominix, Ishtar, Navy Vexor, Navy Dominix, Rattlesnake) So maybe something like this:

Role Bonus: 50% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range
Role Bonus: 37.5% increase Scan Prob Strength
Role Bonus: +10 Virus strength for Relic and Data Analyzers

Can fit Cover Ops Cloaking devices

Amarr Battleship Bonus:
4% bonus to Armor Resists

Gallente Battleship Bonus:
7.5% bonus to Drone optimal range and Done tracking speed

The Sin is a full-flight-sentry-bonused ship with cloaking ability. The Redeemer is a cloaking laser boat. Both have the ability to use portal generators. If the Sin is balanced to be more like the Dominix (i.e.: drone range/tracking bonus as opposed to the Navy Domi with hybrid bonuses) there's room for another covert/black ops drone boat with combined drone/laser bonuses.

Am I imagining something? I swear there was meant to be one.

Like many others, your imagination is running wild.

the SOE BS rumor spawned from the unmodeled GURISTAS BS found on singularity about a month or 2 ago.

Speaking of which, I need to update my sisi and check if it's still there and if it has a model yet.

I kinda skimmed the thread but just wanted to add this quote from the recent dev blog.

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

The Nestor, the theoretical ship in question had a description up on the test server a few builds back, what happened to it though I do not know if anyone knows. In reality it may have just been too difficult to balance a cloaky battleship, which is likely why the Black Ops have taken so long to come to rebalancing as well, my 2 cents.

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.

Antillie Sa'Kan - Your ideas are good and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

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.

'sfine man, I was hardly nice and sweet about it either

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.