Came here expecting another "nerf afk cloaking" thread, left gladly dissapointed

PS: Please give the Buzzard enough fitting to use it's midslots, expanded probe launcher + mwd + cloak will leave you with a whole 1.75PG and 1H 4M 2L unfitted

3 cloak posts this week... Too much, but sadly far from record.

INB4L

With the exception of the might big jump drive strapped to their arse?

Black Ops Battleships badly need a role besides bridging bombers and recons. Biggest issues are as follows:

-Bombers due more damage due to faster lock times and are MUCH cheaper.
-compared to a T1 BS, a black ops is harder to fit, and has less EHP
-lack of BLOP logistics are at a significant disadvantage against a comparable conventional T1 fleet, even with more numbers
-you lose 2/3 of your cap just be jumping in, hope your guns don't use cap!

A clear role needs to be developed for this ship that justifies the cost and SP required to fly it. Side by side comparison of Maurauder vs BLOP is clear that these ships need some balance love. Even side by side comparison of T1 to BLOP is underbalanced (typhoon vise panther).

There should be some trade off, strength to weakness. But atm these ships are ALL weaknesses.

What use is a jump drive if upon arrival you can do less that a T1 ship would for 10x the price?

With the exception of the might big jump drive strapped to their arse?

This isn't really an advantage, allow me to illustrate:

Two fleets jump onto a battle in eve, fleet A is 20 BLOP'S (about 1.5-2B apiece fully fit) with 5 recons and some bombers. Fleet B is 25 T1 armor BS (say Dominixs) with 10 guardians. Which fleet wins? At the current level of balance, the T1 conventional fleet wins because they tank more damage and can bring logistics along with them.

Sure the BLOP BS can jump itself there, but once it gets there, it's worse than any T1 BS there. What good is a built in jump drive when everyone in their mother has a Titan to bridge in whole conventional fleets? Even BRAVE, the unofficial newbie alliance of EVE, has access to Titans to bridge their fleets.

Sure the case can be made for Cov ops cynos in jammed systems, but the BLOP fleet without inherent logistics can't tank a POS, much less a defending fleet, long enough to take down a cyno jammer.

The fact remains there isn't any role in game for this ship, besides bridging bombers, that can't be done better and more efficiently by another hull. This is by definition exactly what CCP set out to fix with the tiericide program.

Well the fleet that drops in with them the fact that in a well organised fleet you can blap your target just in time for him to figure out what is going on (even w/o a support fleet)

I don't think the class should be balanced around being gank ships only and having no hope to survive a more conventional fight if it develops. Thats exactly what has made them into mobile jump bridges that rarely see combat unless dropping 20 strong on a mining barge in an empty system. The rest of the time, you're better off bridging bombers through.

Now, this can be approached in several ways: either make blops more capable of holding their own against a conventional fleet so they can be used to support the bombers, or make them fully focused on bridging, with greater bonuses to range/fuel use/logistics/whatever, while dropping their damage capability.

As someone who owns two of the hulls, I very much hope CCP take the former route, so that we no longer get outdps'd by two well fit bombers while costing 30 times more.


PS: it's the same catch as with supers... not enough die, because there are few situations where you'd want to field one outside of ganks and sov warfare. In the first case, you're pretty sure you'll melt the target and moonwalk out, in the second, you count on huge reinforcements if something goes wrong. Blops don't get the luxury of multi-million HP tanks, so there is little hope of the cavalry arriving, hence only the gank scenario remains.

3 cloak posts this week... Too much, but sadly far from record.

INB4L

Instance #10578987.01 of someone posting before reading

Blops are designed for hit and run not sustained fights against an opponent that's what is great about them. having a panther hide in a fleet uncloak and blap a target then re cloak b4 the enemy even knows it was there, or a fight starts going upside down jump a widow or two in to jam the hostile fleet long enough for friendlies to get out. Maybe you want to go the other way with it and bring in a few redeemers at rang to pop a few targets fast and turn the tide in your favor.

if you are only using your BLOP as a brige/gank ship its because you don't know how to use it not because it just needs to be a conventional BB with a jump drive.

Ah, the l2p argument, very nice.

Consider this: if you are using them as support, why not bridge in (or take with you in the first place) a T1 equivalent? A Scorpion will have more tank than a Widow with only slightly worse ECM performance, a Panther has trouble fitting both 1400mm arty and any sort of tank, the Redeemer is sort of ok but has some severe cap issues after jumping because of it's lasers, the Sin... I don't even know what it's supposed to excell at, I've mostly seen it acting as improvised logi or in-your-face dps blasterboat.

And then there's the cost and SP factor. A fitted Scorpion will set you back 200M tops. A fitted Widow will be anywhere from 1B to 1.5B even if you don't bling it too much, since some faction mods are pretty much required on a blops for them to perform (faction cloak bc/ lock speed, usually faction heavy neut for safety and faction cap injector because of fitting issues, and that's before starting with damage mods and tank...)

I'm not saying you can't use them out of a gank/bridge scenario; I'm saying that out of those two situations, you can have 5x T1 battleships for a similar price tag and are more likely to find pilots for them, putting their worth into doubt.

I think we can all agree if CCP slapped a covops cloak on the blops boats as their rebalance we'd all be pretty happy with that. Easy fix.

This isn't really an advantage, allow me to illustrate:

Two fleets jump onto a battle in eve, fleet A is 20 BLOP'S (about 1.5-2B apiece fully fit) with 5 recons and some bombers. Fleet B is 25 T1 armor BS (say Dominixs) with 10 guardians. Which fleet wins? At the current level of balance

this would cause them to become far to powerful and in the case of the widow almost un-catch able

Posting to add my distinct annoyance at Rise and Fozzie developing a severe case of ADD and "forgetting" to finish ship rebalancing before moving on to modules.

Seriously, you two. Take some Ritalin.