Blops - Bigger buffers

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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With bigger buffers, you could conceivably use black ops (the whole wing of it) as a hazing doctrine for fleets that are trying to burn to or from a fight. Kind of like waterboarding, but for everything else (I’d greatly prefer to waterboard battleships instead of kill them, given how soul crushing it is).

Imagine, you use a cloaky scout to anchor a drag bubble on their route, cyno in a cloaky fleet, and wait in ambush. Bombers, recons, battleships, T3C logistics. Number-wise, a 1:1 ratio of pilots between red and purple.

No longer are we limited to only clubbing seals. With the bigger buffers, they can hold on grid long enough to catch reps from T3Cs and thus not get utterly decimated. I’d say give them an ADC, but that’s an assault thing and I’d not want to detract from their uniqueness.

The Redeemer nearly has a reasonable buffer, but all of the other blops battleships have terribly small buffers. One exception would be the Widow, which has a beastly active tank if it’s fit for such.

For reference, I’d say 150-200k EHP is a reasonable buffer. Basically… T1 battleship tank. It is a net buff to them, but honestly, I believe it deserved.

I’d also say they could use a bit more projection (something that CCP has stated in their design goals for battleships). Arty panthers and Rail Sins struggle past 100km, and they’ve lost virtually all of their respective weapon advantages (spike reaches but does fuck all for damage, arty is in falloff and again does fuck all for damage)

The change does little more than make it harder to volley them off… it really wouldn’t change things for seal clubbing. 9 times out of 10 unless the seal was just bait, the seal’s ■■■■■■ anyways.

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Then you just need proper BLOPS logi. Logi drones work but that takes away lots of DPS.

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As I said:

Against a fleet, such as would be the case with hazing a HAC fleet, blops battleships are literally volleyed off the field. All the logistics in the world won’t stop that from happening.

I thought about asking for covert logistics… actual covert logistics. But the problem isn’t that they aren’t getting enough reps, it’s that they aren’t getting reps in time.

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True that. Especially armor.

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Of course… anchoring bubbles takes many minutes. It would be difficult to get far enough ahead of the fleet. Hmm.

I guess you could anchor a bunch at once along the route, and then the scouts could just cyno in the fleet wherever the hostile fleet actually gets caught.

Edit: I guess a small bubble only takes 60 seconds, so that’s not bad at all.

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Ultimately, their way to victory would be to ambush.

In the case of said HAC fleet, imagine you get dragged into a bubble.

Before you’ve even landed, void bombs are launched by the first wave of bombers, timed to detonate when you exit warp… your entire fleet is capped out instantly, meaning you’ve got no prop mods. You’re in the bubbles, and the Arazus are already locking on spreading points, while heavily tanked Pilgrims are closing to spread their neuts on your logistics.

Falcons are spreading jams on dps ships to keep them from fighting back at full effectiveness (likely producing much salt along the way).

All the while, Rapiers are painting and webbing to give their battleships and bombers excellent DPS application (the bombers of course being outside of point range and ready to warp off).

It could be a slaughter with the element of surprise.

But, without the buffer, something like a Cerb or Muninn fleet would decimate the battleships, and then even if you did destroy the entire HAC fleet, they’d go home happy.

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If Blops get said bigger buffer all BS need them.
Otherwise Blops become the tankiest BS as well as the covert BS.
Now I do actually feel that BS base EHP before mods should be about doubled, including BS so this isn’t a disagreement. It wouldn’t massively affect the buffer tanked EHP because a lot of it comes from raw EHP mods in those cases, something like 20-30% more in those cases, but a lot more in cases where you can’t brick tank them.

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I’ve said as much in many threads. I feel battleships in general (though probably the same magnitude for blops) should have 800k ehp. A bit less than a combat carrier basically. I did mean after a “reasonable tank fit”. Imagine for example, the exact deemer fit most people use (dual plate dual nanoplate with trimarks) giving 150-200k EHP.

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The problem with that number? Defining ‘reasonable tank fit’.
Hence why I’m pointing at base EHP as the point to move it, because even brick tanking then doesn’t move fits that much.
It also means you probably can’t get as much EHP increase as you want, because either you start messing with tank mods which then carries on down to BC & Cruisers in some way, or you have to triple or quadruple untanked EHP. Which is possibly a bit excessive on the active tank fits.

Really what needs to be happening is a base mechanical change to both prevent any ship being instantly volleyed which then allows for skill to try and survive the follow up volleys, and logi to be capped, so that you can still kill ships even once they catch reps regardless of number of reps on the grid. Basically DPS caps & logi caps. That solves the entire volleying issue which then makes a lot of the Blops other strong points come into play.

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For all intents and purposes, think of it as “the same kind of tank fit we currently use”. The deemer being the closest to the ehp target makes the most sense as an example.

As for adjusting the base HP, yes that’s what they’d have to do - unless you’re going to open up a whole new can of worms and increase the slots… which… no reason to go nuclear on it just yet. A simple base stat adjustment means that things like plates and hardeners have more amplified effect.

Yup, I’ve asked for something like that too lol. I hate alpha fleets. Boring as ■■■■, no decent counterplay, just generally F1 until you get sent home by a hostile volley or you win. Something to nerf logi and also prevent alpha would work beautifully.

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Because this wouldnt totally kill the purpose of BLOPS which is suprise and outnumbering the poor victim. BLOPS is not for brawling well tought fleet doctrines. You have T1 battleships for that.

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This is not what blops is. But…

Surprise is exactly what blops is.

So, allow me to quote myself as to how this fits that MO.

The use of cloaks makes the ambush more likely than waiting with your average fleet (allowing pre-positioning to really shove the dildo in deep).

Why blops? Because they’ve got lots of range. Because with cloaky scouts, they’re a faster fleet (bridging bombers/cruisers) than literally any other fleet comp.

I do agree they aren’t currently meant for brawling. This is literally tackling them from the alley, and telling them to pucker up.

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I would also like to see them buffed. I think that despite their BLOPS functions and build it hull bonusses they are still at heart Battleships and are wayyyyyyy too expensive to have such low base EHP. Alternatively, give them each 1 extra slot, low for armor ships and mid for shield ships, that might give them enough fitting freedom to increase the tank some.

Also on a side note, I feel that the game balance is completely out of whack, and a solo battleship, especially a BLOPS or Marauder, should be able to take out a solo dred same way a solo cruiser takes out a solo battleship. This would go a long ways towards narrowing the gap between sub-caps and caps.

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You all forgot something here? Or play an other game? While yes they are battleships but why do you think they lack EHP? You got to fit in the actual Jump Drive into them? Hello?

What you seems to want here is T2 resist level Battleships that can jump across a region in no time and hit everything everywhere without any fuss. You got to have a tradeoff for being able to jump. And that tradeoff is the lack of EHP. If you give them that extra and make them as strong as normal battleships. You gonna have the more experienced/rich groups use them to mop up everything in no time.

And while on paper an “Ambush” like you mentioned looks good. Show me any competent FC that takes out a HAC fleet and warps them into a bubble with 30+ unknown local.

Seriously BLOPS are op as they are currently.
And Fluffy Moe i dont know why you want to decrease the gap between subcaps and caps but theres a gap for a reason. Triglavian ships already having carrier level DPS is getting out of hand and you still think theres need for “Balance” there.

Not talking about the Cruiser can take on a Battleship and the Battleship should take on a Cruiser. This ■■■■■■■■ comes up every time. Theres like 2 trillion ways to fit ur ship and while yes there will be Cruiser fits that beat a Battleship but 95% of them time if you take 2 pilots with same set of piloting skills and ie all level5 skills so it doesnt make the difference. The Battleship will win. Same goes for Battleships on Capitals. You can get lucky that doesnt mean its the default procedure.

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All the more reason that such an ambush is deserving of success. “Mistakes were made” is always a fun way to start an ARR. It could well be that they just spent the last hour reinforcing stuff and they’re tired, bored, and ready to go home. People getting lazy is exactly where blops is meant to hit them.

I’ve lost count of the times we’ve gotten into blue space and FC has said “free burn home”, which is another opportunity - half of the scouts flew cepters just so they could get home faster.

Speaking honestly though, how often will this change affect the dynamic in their current (intended) usage for ambush? If you counter-drop or bring a rapid response fleet they’re still equally ■■■■■■. If you don’t, they’re still going to win. Blops pilots have to ■■■■ up insanely bad to lose a battleship to a target they intended to drop on.

Coincidentally I’m not talking about going up against 2 pilots. I’m talking about going up against 50 dps ships with logistics support. Regardless, 1 blops battleship against 2 cruisers will die unless your cruiser pilots are horrible. The only exception would be the Sin, which would stand a decent chance, but even then, he’ll probably be puckered up by the end if he did win.

This ship is designed for asymmetric warfare. Dropping a single blops battleship on 2 cruisers is special snowflake material. Typical usage would be dropping 5-10 of these on a single ship, cruiser or otherwise, so they can melt it fast and get out. Which is why you say they’re OP. They have that option, and of course they’re going to use it.

I’m proposing a different type of asymmetric warfare, to fit within their niche of ambush behind enemy lines. By increasing their buffer you don’t change the average engagement as they’re presently used, but you do open it up to additional engagements such as hazing.

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So lets say the FC warps the HAC fleet into the bubble. You neutbomb them. Deckloack and open fire. You assume the HACs will sit there in panic “Ahhh i dont have capacitor ohhh im in a bubble” and just be afk until you shoot all of them.
What would actually happen is they target the first thing they see and start blapping. After you maybe magically happen to kill 1-2 hac you already lost 10 BLOPS. And this is completely fine. We dont want to see 150man battleship fleets hanging around in cloack jumping on every other fleet just because they have that extra buffer and now compete in the brawling meta. You have to think about how it would affect the whole game and not jsut the ambush a 10 man hac fleet part.

Coming up with surreal scenarios to make a ship that is already strong even stronger sounds really selfish.

Its like “I like armor ships but they are slow and bulky if buffer tanked. Can we just remove the mass penantly for using plates?”

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100% chance it’ll be the blops in this case (why would you not kill the 4 bill battleships?). Hence the ask for a bigger buffer. We’ve brought T3C logistics, we just need a way to not get alpha’d off the field. I fully agree that they wouldn’t do nothing. But consider that although they’ve got guns, they’ve got no props, no invulns, no ADCs. They’re literally sitting ducks. By the time they get their cap back enough to even turn on their ADCs, I’d expect a good quarter of their fleet to be dead. Even then, the recons are keeping key components of their fleet crippled.

100% agree their first reaction would be to kill battleships. Extra buffer makes that tactic not work. In this particular case, we’ve gone through a great deal of prep work to set up the trap and they’ve exercised a great lapse in judgement to fall into the trap. Assuming we pilot our ships properly, we have every reason to expect that victory.

What brawling meta? It died years ago. Regardless, as you said:

Assuming brawling metas weren’t dead (which they’re dead, cold, and buried), they wouldn’t be competing anyways because this is about ambushing people when they aren’t prepared for a fight. Not meeting them at zero and trying to duke it out.

The extra buffer only helps them catch reps. In an actual brawling meta, they’d still die quickly because T3C logistics will NOT keep up with T2 logi cruisers.

ASSUMING it was a 150-man blops battleship fleet jumping in on 10 cruisers, I’d say that your 10 cruisers would be dead even without this buffer buff. That fleet would have enough dps to volley even through an ADC.

Not at all. It’s like “I think that armor plates aren’t giving sufficient bonuses, can we increase them?”. This is a buff, not a rework.

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A Buff that would compeltely rework how BLOPS is used.

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And again, I disagree with that completely. It would increase their engagement profile, something which I feel they deserve.

In a “traditional fight”, a blops fleet will still eat ■■■■ and die.

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BLOPs arent frontline ships. They are ambush ships that drop on an isolated target and dps them down and jump out.

They sacrifice tank for their ability to cloak/jump/bridge.

Theyre also countered by t1/pirate/navy battleships due to the difference in EHP (as theyre more like fat battlecruisers). Ive killed a BLOPs in a brawl torp barghest, they melt against other BS (even when he had 3-4 other BLOPs with him trying RR).

That is their weakness and brings a tactical element. You have to be careful/wary of what you drop.

Otherwise, when capitals get their inevitable nerf, people will just reship into your proposed 800k EHP BLOPs with logi, that will require fleets to kill.