Semkhet
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Posted - 2006.06.29 07:47:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Ginger Magician
Covert ops ships have damaged combat gameplay in EVE imo.I have said this since they were first introduced and I havnt changed my opinion.
Now there is no surprise in fleet combat or small skirmishes.Many people attempt to get my postion when sniping using a cloaker but I always know thye are there and warp off as soon as their mates jump into local.The fact is covert ops are just a minor inconvenience for the expert player and no threat to anyone in a bs.
The trouble is ofc even if CCP accept that they made a mistake with the introduction of covert ops ships ( and especially with the disgraceful price rigging of the covert ops device a mod which costs aroun 20mill to make and now sells for 60mill) there will always be a big problem in attempting to take away something which the players have now gotten used to and there would no doubt be a big outcry if covert ops ships were ever proposed for removal from the game.
Concerning this particular example of catching a sniping BS, I must disagree. There is a case where the sniper has little chance to escape to a cloaker if he stays at his position for more than 15-20 minutes and a Pilgrim wants to catch him.
The Pilgrim can easely fit 3 nos'es, cloack, 3x 2-point scrams and double repper. Almost every sniper BS can only rely on a few drones as defense. The Pilgrim can approach from the front in collision course and automatically uncloak before bumping. The uncloaking locking delay on the Pilgrim is very short, and there's little chance to escape before being warp jammed with 6 points since the bumping interferes with the escaping warp vector. The Pilgrim then just has to nos, tank & pwn the BS drones with his own ones, and quietly wait that the gang's merry mates jump into system and subsequently land at their optimal. The only drawback of this tactic is that the Pilgrim will find a snipper sitting beyond 150 Km from the gate, and flying up to that position may take up to 20 minutes. But even if the BS warps away, it's quite easy to continue on course and ultimately set a BM in the approximate area where the sniper was located to catch him at his next landing.
Concerning local, I'am convinced that it helps more the non-PvP'er to avoid systems filled with hostiles than predators looking for preys. After all, using cloaks, the scanner and probes are more PvP-oriented activities than anything else.
Just take the example of a given system. 4 gates, 4 CovOps, and the hostiles know pretty much everything what's going on, when the wast majority of non-PvP'ers will simply be blind if they can't rely on local. And any decent PvP entity will have non-corporate CovOps alts to gather intel or monitoring without raising suspicion.
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