Blops counterplay when?

Communications Center General Discussion
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When are blops getting some counter play?

The only counter at this time is setting a trap. And that’s almost impossible with how EVE’s spy community works. Larger alliances are riddled with the spies and informants for small pvp groups of 4-5 dudes who are using blops nearly totally uncountered.. The result is rampant Blops use in null and lowsec.

This would be fine if there was any form of counter play. As it stands. Blops drop 3-30 redeemers mostly Gank some poor shmo on their own. And then cloak up, wait the 15 and jump out with effectively 0 risk. There is no decloak mechanic that applies to them in this time frame. There is no way to scan them, no way to hunt them. Nothing. While there is some risk on paper from a trap that occasionally gets 1 Reality is they operate risk free to a high degree.

A best solution would be a combination of improving decloaking, scanning cloaked stuff. Maybe with a new decloak smartbomb. Create a sub hunting style mechanic that can be used to hunt them. Make it so they have to be active after a drop. Make them easier to scan if they are all at one location. etc. Im not saying nerf them out of existence. I enjoy a blops drop too.

I am happy to risk my blops for a kill if escaping afterwords is a thrilling mechanic in itself that requires actively piloting your ship to avoid deloacks like they are depth charges or something.

And to all the Blops are fine…..

Zkillstats say otherwise. Suck it up.

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There is your counterplay. Why do you need more? I don’t get it why you don’t have a cyno near one rando Rorqual (who can’t listen to orders from higher ups) or a carrier to spring the trap as soon as the known hunters enter the area.

How about you do just that?

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What? bro, if you cannot see a dogpile coming thats completely on you. sounds to me like your running barges in null/low and dont want to be bothered while sniffing farts or licking rocks. Try fitting a cloak yourself. Trust me, if your getting dogpiled a lot you are playing wrong.

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You first.

JDC 5 finishes tomorrow.

:partying_face:

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So, you are complaining that the only counterplay for setting a trap is setting a trap :rofl:

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Add a spool up time to cyno jumping, and the jump fails if the cyno dies before the spool finishes. Hot dropping is now dead, as it should be, but using cyno for general system access is unaffected.

A MJD has a 9~12 second spool up time. So why is crossing multiple AU of space instantaneous?

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There should be a blops hunting mechanic.

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There already is.

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Probably not for a long time. All Cyno Generators and Jump Drives should have gotten a slight delay/spoolup when CCP changed the system-travel animation and as a result the duration to jump from one system into another shortened from ~30 to ~5seconds. This totally broke the balance of cynos because it removed all on-grid counters like pulling range, deagressing, overheating on the cynoship, undocking own reinforcements etc… It once took around ~45sec from lighting the Cyno until the reinforcements that came through could shoot at something. And that was balanced, because small groups could live in the same space with large groups and both could coexist. Today the only counter is to “have more numbers” (aka escalating) and have them ready and waiting to hotdrop the hotdroppers. And any smaller group who simply cannot do that is screwed.

That is what turned LowSec from a once smallscale PvP paradise for beginners where they could learn to brawl it out in their T1 cruisers and battlecruisers on a gate or a station to a barren wasteland, owned by large blobs that jump their BO squads on any Drake dumb enough to take the bait. Rumors say there are more BlackOps Baits flying around there then normal combat ships.
*FW areas somewhat excluded, as you cannot cyno into the complexes… what a coincidence…

But CCP is too stubborn to realize that, because they still believe “the big groups” are driving the game. Well, they are not. 100 groups of 10 people each are more healthy for the game than one group with 1000 players.

Both, the current total imbalance of cyno warfare against smaller entities and the core Upwell Citadel design have been the coffin nails for this game that cost CCP roughly half their real player base (not talking about accounts, a flood of alts does somewhat compensate the loss).

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10

Cool. How?

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Fit a cyno and have friends ready to counter-drop

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That’s not counterplay. That’s just bringing a bigger rock than their own.

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There are several tactics for countering blops. I’m not going to teach you here on the forums, but what you can do is:

  • Look at zkillboard and analyze fights where blops are lost;
  • Fly a blops. You will inevitably lose one. Then you will know.
  • Join a corp, or if you are in one and they still don’t have an FC that can counter blops, quit the corp and join some that knows what they are doing. Participate in a blops hunting op.
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BlackOps pilot confirmed. Tons of kills with it, never lost one. He must be really good.

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Yes, I fly blops and have a few kills…. wouldn’t call it exactly “tons”. There are no losses for 2 reasons: 1. I’ve only recently started flying blops. There’s time. 2. I was 2 minutes too late for a fight where the drop was effectively countered.

After that fight, we had a discussion about situations where blops can be countered - so I learned… The same way I’m advising you to do. Fleet up with people who know what they are doing and learn.

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The only counter to BlackOps is “having more at your back”. Which means: any small and independent group is simply ■■■■■■. Either you join the blob or you have a huge blue train or you can just accept to die with your small gang after taking any bait in the hope of a good fight.

BLOPs have totally ruined lowsec for beginner corps or independent pirate gangs and they are part of the problem that only large entities can hope to survive in nullsec and hold even a godforsaken remote pocket of space. Because everyone who can’t outescalate potential hotdroppers at will is simply prey and will lose stuff constantly. To the point where it’s unlucrative to do anything else than just “docking up” if anything non-blue comes into local. Which leads back to the “cloaking discussion” and “why are large parts of nullsec completely empty except for a few bots that instantly run when I come into local???”.

BlackOps need to be harshly nerfed, both in jump range and offensive firepower. All that cyno bullcrap has been hurting the gameplay for years now. Anyone who doesn’t believe that BLOPs are completely overpowered:

Black Ops have a Kill to Loss ratio of 96.8%. Which means, for every 100 ships killed, 3.2 BlackOps die.

Marauders (the alternative T2 Battleship) have a Kill to Loss ratio of 90%. For every 100 ships killed, 10 Marauders die.

Battleships (base BlackOps platform) have a Kill to Loss ratio of 81.1%. For every 100 ships killed, 18.1 Battleships die.

Force Recon (next smaller Covert ship class) have a kill to Loss ratio of 89.6%. For every 100 ships killed, 10.4 Recons die.

Dreadnaughts (next bigger hotdropping DPS ship class) have a kill to loss ratio of 90.6%. For every 100 ships killed, 9.4 Dreadnaughts die.

I’ve left out T3 Cruisers since you cannot filter zKill by the fact if they are fitted covert or not and covert Battlecruisers like Cenotaph/Oddy because they are too few.

Now lets look at the numbers:

  • Black Ops have a 294.7% higher survival rate than Dreadnaughts.
  • Black Ops have a 312.5% higher survival rate than Marauders.
  • Black Ops have a 325.0% higher survival rate than Force Recons.
  • Black Ops have a 565.6% higher survival rate than Battleships.

The only ship classes with higher suvival rates are Supercarriers and Titans, which are 100x more costly and usually only used with huge support fleets at their back.

Those ships aren’t used by “good pilots”, they are the lowest-risk form of PvP this game has ever seen. Because their mechancis are the most overpowered the game has ever seen.

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This is an open world MMO. You are complaining that the one of the counters for a fleet is a bigger fleet with more capable ships. Whatever you do, whichever mechanic you implement, it will always be like that. It’s how the math works.

On the other hand, bringing a bigger blob is not always necessary to fight the blops. There are fleet compositions and situations with less ships that can effectively counter them.

Jump range is already pretty small (+ there s jump fatigue). Reducing it would only require two staging systems (and set of clones) instead of one, so the things won’t change. Regarding offensive firepower - what offensive firepower? :smiley: Blops have alpha, not DPS. They are effectively glass cannons when it comes to tank if they face any form of other battleships. If you can bait them, you will lose the bait wave, but if you manage to tackle them while they are dealing with bait, they are as good as dead even against a half-decent fleet of t1 battleships. Which brings us to their indirect advantage - blops are not usually flown by rookies. Fleet coordination and target calling must be on a certain level, otherwise the whole fleet is dead. If you are facing them with an uncoordinated gang of rookies, you will lose regardlles of how much they are nerfed.

Kill to loss ratio is not related to their DPS or tanking capabilities, but to the fact that you can choose your fights more easily. And, please, ditch the strawman argument with 2567 gazillion percent. The difference between 96.8% and 90% is 6.8%.

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I would agree that CCP could and should do more to breakup the large megablocs, in order to promote small group PvP (which most EvE players seem to agree is more fun than blobbing). This would improve the game immensely.

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I agree, but that is not going to happen, because it couldn’t be done. People are social animals that seek safety in groups. Nothing can change that. You and your gankers know that best. :smiley:

However, what CCP can do is define better what they want to do with lowsec. Lowsec could be a perfect ground for small gang PvP easily accessible to everyone. So, the solution for the lack of quality small gang warfare is having game mechanics unique to lowsec, just like bubbles are for null.

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And? That doesn’t mean it needs magic teleporters that can jump whole fleets including EWAR, logi, longrange tackle, neuts and DPS right on top of someone with a bare 5-10 second delay. Shitty design stays shitty design, MMO or not.

No. I state that one change (system jump animation → shortening travel time) has disrupted a balance that was okay when CCP designed and implemented the cyno system. And it was an oversight - a devastating one - that they didn’t adress that in the years to come. The balance existed beause you had almost a minute to respond before cyno reinforcement could attack you. That left room for tactical decisions.

If you cannot understand that you are either too young to have witnessed the absolute great era of small- to medscale lowsec piracy where small gangs fought it out all over the place. When baiting and scouting was an art, hiding your forces, look engagable, estimate warp times, delay reinforcements, just have enough tank to hold until your own reinforcements came in. And all that in the 5-20 people range.
Hotdrops on small gangs weren’t a thing in lowsec and it was an absolute jewel of a space to live in.

No it won’t. History has proven that. We don’t need to “implement” crazy stuff, we simply need to go back to the design values with which the cyno mechanic was once implemented. That means: from cyno-up to forces on grid can shoot ~45seconds. And the problem goes away all by itself.

HA HA HAHahahaH AHAH ahaHAHAH

There are spots where you have 140 (!!!111111111111111111) other systems in JumpRange. ONEHUNdREDFOURTY. Which means some “scout” would need to check a possible 140 systems to look if you have a BO gang cloaked up waiting to jump someone before he can risk an engagement in his little 5 Battlecruiser fleet.
This statement alone shows that you have absolutely no idea how crazy OP this mechanic is.

I tell you what: BOs should be able to jump into the next constellation, and no further. Maybe 20 systems in Range and thats it. So you can move through hostile terretory, but not threaten a 100+ systems from your single jump spot.

Oh now we are bad ad math too… sad. The tank difference between 90 and 95% resists is 5% too, right? :rofl:

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