Broaden The Black Ops Battleships' Potential With A Cyno Inhibition Module

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Unlike Chance, I don’t think BLOPS needs to be tweaked to become a j-space viable ship. J-space just got a set of highly useful cloaky T3Cs anyway. Blops has always been about jumping, hotdropping, and thus nullsec. Regardless, I agree that there is some love we can give to it. Here is a better way to do it while simultaneously introducing something inherently good for the game.

As MER’s show, overfarming is slowly killing the Eve economy. The main factor that causes overfarm in a nullsec area is safety of PvE activities. The main ensurer of this safety is the capital umbrella. Once you have the capitals staged and set, operating a capital umbrella does not take too much effort besides having capital alts logged in and ready to jump. There needs to be more counters to the capital umbrella than a 50+ man hugely coordinated dreadbomb operation, which is also a suicide mission that costs huge sums of money each time. If its easy to upkeep a capital umbrella, it should be at least somewhat easier to counter it.

So why don’t we play for the strengths of the BLOPS to give it some love? Give BLOPS ships a cyno inhibitor module. Like the mobile cyno inhibitor, it blocks any normal cynoes at 100 range. Instantly activated, hence why having a BLOPS would be a better than a mobile inhibitor. It uses blops fuel, works in 1 minute cycles, immobilizes the blops for 1 minute, disables remote assistance (can’t receive reps).

This will buy some time for the attacking party against the capital umbrella. It is not uncounterable by the defender. You can have an organized fleet in the system or nearby. If you can remove the blops, you can get your capitals in. Or you can get them in with another ship farther than 100km away. Fighters are still viable from that range. Or you can get them in 200km away and warp your capitals in. This only delays your capitals for a short warp, and your PvE ship can endure the attacker for that time. In fact, this tactic is only good vs a single farming ship that is so unprepared that it doesn’t even have a second ship to warp in 100km away and light a cyno. Still, could make some difference for the good and against overfarming.

For the solo hotdropper this might make the blops a stronger option vs. baits where people cyno in capitals. Then again, the immobility makes it hugely vulnerable to anything that warps in. A ceptor can single handedly warp in and maintain tackle on a blops until more friends warp in. Thus it puts the solo hotdropper at even more risk. Meanwhile, the immobility might also cost you the target. There is a reason why all hotdroppers fit 500mn MWD’s. The HK often has to warp off after the cyno cycle, and targets slowly drift away from scram range.

This proposal might change a few things in the capital warfare as well. But I think for the better. N+1 has been a problem for Eve as well. Eve always needed non-OP ways for a smaller, more organized, smarter group to beat the group that brought the mindless numbers in. Now if you want your capitals on a 100km grid, you should be ready to remove any BLOPS ships first. Suppose a case where this is abused. If someone comes in a 100 man BLOPS fleet and activates their module, you should be ready to bring in your carriers 200 km away and begin blapping these ships. They cost 1 bil per BLOPS at a minimum, so an entire fleet lighting their cynoes is a huge risk for the BLOPS side.

How about cases where people escalate each other with capitals? Suppose groups A and B are fighting in subcapitals. Group A drops their first set of capitals, alongside a few blops ships. After their drop, they lock the grid with blopses, so group B cannot counter-escalate. There are things group B could have done. They could have had an initial force that can kill a few blops ships. They could have had a cyno a little away from the fight, and warp their capitals. They could have lit their own cyno at the time group A lit theirs, or before. If they did these, then they would have outsmarted the group A. If not, group A has has outsmarted the group B. Definitely more room for people to outsmart each other, and less reliance on N+1. I say a good change overall.

3 Likes
2

Just to clarify: if medium capital group A has a suicide covert cyno lit in its midst, blops can come in, light a regular cyno, and call in large capital group B, and then shut down any further cynos until the fight ends (ie. team A get massacred)?

(I’m tired and skimmed quickly)

3

Nah. I said if that possibility is a worry, there would still be things you could do. E.g. you can primary the blops and take it down. Blopses are already fragile ships. If that’s still too much tank, additional -resist can be implemented for the module duration. Else, you can cyno in 100 away and use your fighters. Or you can cyno in 200 away and warp.

4

Oh man, I would love this as an option for BLOPS. The strategic use of this in a Black Ops BS would certainly be greater. And for those who like disrupting Rorqual mining in Delve this would mean more dead Rorquals… more dead PvE ratting Carriers.

I have personally always found the current Mobile inhibitors lacking exactly because of the long activation timer.

5

Just another proposed nerf to large and organized alliances/coalitions based on the fact that large and organized is successful and nothing more. If you cannot get an attack done YOU lack the skills / manpower to do it and YOU need to fix your end not be given an ‘I win’ button from CCP which allows smaller less organized groups to challenge people they have no business fighting and that is larger more organized groups.

CCP helped small groups gain a defense against large groups already with jump fatigue so that you could grow your numbers and power and if you dont have the skills or desire to become a formidable force at this point that is your problem. Either get big / organized and become a legitimate threat to other large groups or stay small and disorganized and fight other small and disorganized groups, you sucking at EVE isnt a reason to essentially nerf large alliances’ ability to defend what they have built.

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The only way this would be an option is if it had a warmup cycle/beacon much like doomsdays and such get. Basically 30 seconds of “shoot the hell out of me or bad things are happening soon.” That’s also the reason the inhibs have a 60 second anchoring time, to give someone time to react and either kill it, or if they cant do that, light a cyno BEFORE they arent able to.

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This game can be designed so the largest and most organized group can conquer the entire map, can be unbeatable in any way, and so on. Or it can be designed in such a way that the larger you get, the harder to maintain it gets. The question is not what large alliances deserve based on they are large and organized. The question is what kind of Eve is interesting, and fun to play, and a better game, for most people.

For a sandbox game to be interesting, and fun to play, and better, it should reward being organized, being skilled, being dedicated to some degree.

(Sidenote: I’m not even sure being large should even be rewarded. What’s the point of being a large alliance? Is there any creativity or skill behind it? You start the game early, know the mechanics, build your superpower, and people flock to your alliance because they want to rat peacefully. That’s not super interesting. But right now, having numbers is the #1 rewarded thing in this game. That’s a bad side of Eve which other sandbox games, such as Albion online is trying to overcome)

So Eve should reward organization and skill and so on. But also, it shouldn’t reward it so much that such people can entirely break the game. In any multiplayer game, there is a limit to what you can do even when you are the most skilled player.

With new Rorquals and Injectors, CCP gave large alliances tools to break the game. This will be more and more apparent when people only fight in supers and titans, when plex prices has risen even more unbearable, and when such organizations are so strong there is no way to even touch their space anymore. They will make this game stale and boring. This process has already begun. It will get more and more apparent unless CCP does something against it.

The unfortunate detail is all this happens because real money interests of a few people leading the large alliances. They voice the same things over and over and these things become memes and their people believe it. Things such as “we are large and organized and it’s your fault if you can’t attack us and our PvE capitals are virtually risk-free”. CSM is dominated by people voicing these interests. Reddit/forums are dominated as well. And CCP having to listen to the playerbase creates a race to the bottom because most people can’t see what’s wrong with this game, and are just concerned for their own in game interests.

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8

That would be crazily overpowered!

Why not just use a mobile cyno inhibitor? If you answer is that they are too weak, wouldn’t the solution be to buff the mobile cyno inhibitor?

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9

I heard a while ago that one of the problems of the Chinese server is that most people are in the same alliance, so there is no real option to do PVP.
I agree that the larger you become the more difficult it should be to maintain the benefits of your size. Kind of like small independent partisan groups taking down the huge organized army outpost by outpost.

10

I like the idea in principle and I think it would open up some interesting gameplay options, but your suggested implementation falls short.

Mobile Cyno Inhibitors have a spin-up cycle so pilots within range have time to react to its deployment before the effect kicks in. If you were to grant this ability to BlOps, they should also have some sort of clearly visible spin-up cycle. Simply allowing pilots to inhibit cynos on the fly with no warning would be overpowered.

I like your idea of the cyno inhibitor module requiring fuel, and I think this would play a major part in balancing it. (i.e. You can carry enough fuel to bridge a bunch of ships or inhibit cynos, but not both.) I wouldn’t require jump fuel as that’d require 4x different modules, make it LO, Stront, etc. instead.

I’d make the fitting requirements high enough to limit either the tank or combat ability of the BlOps. If it has one of these modules fit, that is its primary mission.

5/10. Has potential, needs work.

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11

Thanks for the constructive reply. I’m open to figuring out the details together really. 5-10 seconds spool-up could be useful. More than that gives tackled PvE capital pilots enough time such that there is no difference between this and the mobile inhib.

12

Goons got there arses handed to them by other groups banding together and smashing them till they had very few ships to even defend themselves and so they ran to Delve. Goons are also mostly confined to Delve and given their success there unless they become radically larger in size i have some doubts about them trying to take over even their weakest neighbors space.

You say that goons or some other large alliance is going to take over EVE but it has never happened and that alone seems to disprove your claim that it would eventually happen, i mean it isnt like EVE started 2 years ago and yet your prediction of global domination of nullsec by one entity has never happened.

You state that there isnt anything of relevance to stop one group from taking over the entirety of nullsec but recent changes to SOV mechanics works directly against that being a good idea and stretching your defenses paper thin in an attempt to hold a lot of nullsec is going to get you wiped out of nullsec pretty quick. Whenever some group gets to be a bit to big for other alliances in the game they smash that alliance down, which has happened to goons more than once.

That you think there isnt a LOT of skill behind being a large alliance it explains why you think as you do because those large alliances are highly skilled, organized, wealthy and possess a lot of ships both to defend their space and to aggressor others of their choosing. This is very interesting play for both the alliance itself as well as others that want to fight. There are of course alliances that immediately dock up and stay that way when any aggressor enters their space but that isnt a game mechanic it is a choice of that alliance to dock up and miss out on combat opportunities.

Albion online isnt EVE. EVE is one of the harshest games you can play and holding the hand of small groups so they can compete with larger groups is what would make EVE bad. Personally if it came to the point that small groups could effectively compete with large alliances i would quit EVE as it wouldnt be EVE anymore but some sissy version of what used to be.

Btw, it isnt CCPs job to make playing EVE exciting for you, it is exciting already if you’re seriously engaged in the opportunities already provided. As they say you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.

As to being small in the first place start grouping up with other alliances and stop being small and then you’ll be able to fairly and justly take on the big alliances since you’ll be in one yourself. If grouping up isnt something small groups want to do there isnt anything CCP can do to make you form up large alliances but all the game mechanics you need to get big are already there and you could be big as early as tomorrow but a lot of alliances will not cooperate with one another or simply choose not to group with other alliances but that choice belongs to the small alliances and isnt a problem CCP needs to solve by nerfing large alliances.

13

Wrong. They didn’t lose anything of significance. They got invaded, they moved regions. This is what you can at best do to thousands of Rorquals risk-free mining in Eve. No destruction. No annihilation. Just chase them pointlessly until you are tired and make them move. Goons are even stronger than ever now.

You obviously had a severe reading comprehension problem here. I didn’t say large alliances do/will take over all Eve. My point was that no matter how large or organized you are, you are not entitled to anything beyond what CCP can do to make this game fun and interesting for everyone. CCP can design this game to cater to large alliances, or to make their lives harder. So what should CCP aim for? It should aim for a game that is fun and interesting for everyone. Capital umbrellas do not make this game fun and interesting for everyone. Thus, there should be better counters.

Take any major null alliance. The main reason why its a major null alliance is not because skill or organization. Its because they have a backbone of people who began playing this game since its launch. Who had time and resources to create an infrastructure (out of game tools, ratting safety, sov safety, JF service and so on). Then you do propaganda. People see the propaganda and that you have the infrastructure and join these alliances, and they become major null alliances. They persist if their leaders aren’t dumb enough to fail to hold it together.

That’s not “skill”. Mittani or Grath Telkin or Gigx are not the most “skilled” players in Eve. Over everything else, they are just dudes who’s been playing since the launch. I’m not sure “being a player who’s been playing since the launch” should be the highest priority for CCP to decide whose life this game will make relatively easier, and whose harder.

Any dumbass with enough time (or RL money) can have these.

[quote=“Cindy_the_Sewer, post:12, topic:12031”]
Albion online isnt EVE. [/quote]

Thanks for pointing this out.

I wish it was a harsh game as everyone promises, but nullseccer life seems far from harsh lol. As I said, you can only make alliances move but you can’t wipe them out. You can, for example, confiscate everything in wormholes.

I defended that small and skilled groups should have more means to overcome larger and dumber groups. Such an Eve seems harsher to me, not less harsh.

It’s not CCP’s job to cater everything for your comfortable nullseccer lifestyle either (although they have been trying hard to do that). As I argued everywhere else, CCP’s job is making a fun and interesting and challenging game to play. Capital umbrellas are killing that purpose. It would have been more fun and interesting FOR EVERYONE, including nullseccers, if there were more ways to sidestep capital umbrellas. But in all your wall of text, you do not even mention capital umbrellas once, which is my main point. Feels like you have nothing to say. If you don’t, then all other things you say are already irrelevant. Nullseccers are not entitled to anything, hotdroppers are not entitled to anything; if CCP is to make the most fun and interesting Eve, then capital umbrellas should have counters for everyone’s sake.

14

I think there could be potential here. The drop / counterdrop mechanics right now are, in a word: Terrible. Either a counterdrop fleet (or collective of other carrier ratters, which is essentially the same thing) is not online, and the BLOPs wins extremely close to 100% of the time, or there is a counterdrop fleet online and the BLOPs lose. How much depends on how quickly they can click the MJD button.

However, with your proposal, the only reasonable way to counter this (other than intel and docking up, which is a lame counter that needs its own work) would to be have a friendly fleet online, in system, and probably close to the anomaly where you’re ratting given the speed at which BLOPS can evacuate if things go bad, or have a covert ops ship sitting next to you with a covert cyno, ready to light and a covert counterdrop fleet ready to go. In my opinion, both of these options cost an unreasonably high amount of time for the defender for routine economic activity, and encourage “gameplay” that involves people sitting around docked up for hours on end.

I think a good way to balance this, and encourage more interesting gameplay would be to give the module the ability to stop ALL cynos, normal or covert, but then give the module a long cycle time (60-120 seconds, or something like that), where the ship can’t move, cloak, jump etc. This gives the defender a bit of time to quickly organize something and warp in to save their friend, or at least kill you, but given the fact that it’s not a lot of time, it will probably be chaotic, which could lead to a lot of decent fights. The time would have to be very carefully balanced, since if it’s too short, people won’t be able to get there fast enough, and the only counter to BLOPS will be to dock up, and if it’s too long, the BLOPS becomes a suicide BLOPS and dies every time.

15

I like the general idea; I would, however, go the other direction and make them ships that can take a straight fight.

The problem with BLOP BBs in my mind is that most people won’t risk them in fights.

They use them as bridges and nothing else. While it is certainly a very useful role, it’s exceedingly boring from a gameplay perspective. Click, click, wait tethered on the citadel. Okay target’s dead, click, click, MJD, cloak, wait for cap. Click, click, everyone’s home again. They don’t even need to fit offensive weapons to fill their current role.

There’s no reason to take a BB when a T3C or bomber gang can do the same for a fraction of the ISK.

Preventing a counter-drop certainly reduces the risk, but all it will let you do is jump the lone ratters and miners you could already jump (sans bait). It does nothing to curtail the PVE impunity. It is also filled with but a single BB, leaving the ships where they are: largely unused.

Consider though, a slight amendment, as well as an addition. The amendment would be to give them a role bonus to the anchor time of a mobile inhib. No new modules needed, no fitting issues (the deemer for example would be hard pressed to fit one of these). The addition would be to give the BBs a T2 resist profile.

Why both? Simple. It fills the niche of “sneaking around messing with your response fleets”, because now you can inhib the counter-drop, forcing them to meet your subcaps with their subcaps, in an actual fight that you won’t immediately melt in.

This allows BLOPs drops to target the larger operations which would either have overwatch or a traditional response fleet in range. It in essence increases the scope of attack for BLOPs in general, while providing BLOPs BBs a more favourable risk matrix.

I’m sure the usuals will come in and say “blops is fine”. I disagree. I think their investment outweighs their fun-value.

16

This comment is so absolutely inane and absurd on its face it doesn’t need a response to make it look bad it looks bad and desperate all on its own.

Apparently it isnt my reading comprehension that is lacking but rather your memory of what you said that is the problem.

  1. about rewarding organization: Large alliances did it and are being rewarded, check this one off.
  2. It takes a lot of skill to keep thousands and thousands of players in a single organization, well organized, so check this one off also.
  3. Finally it takes a tremendous amount of dedication by hundreds if not thousands of people to keep a massive alliance and even large coalition functioning as an cohesive unit, so check this one off as well and…we’re done.

Congrats all your desires have been granted by in-game mechanics no go do it and stop whining.

Another statement that reeks of the absurd and reads so stupid an contrary to even someone with least understanding of organizing large groups to do anything in any environment that again it requires no counterpoint by me to appear just as stupid a comment as it is.

So genus, why have you not done the same since it is so easy and all?

The fact of the matter is that people all throughout EVE have bought part of their success in EVE and have done so since EVE started, it certainly was a strategy i used early on and then added a boat-load of playing hours onto this, ‘kernel of purchased prosperity’, to become more than sufficiently rich. Most of my growth as in individual is mirrored by those large alliances, some of it is bought but most of it is just plain old fashion hard work.

  1. Take a group of people and go into any major alliance space with intent to fight and not run like a coward and tell me your experience wasnt a harsh one.

  2. ‘you can confiscate everything in a wormhole’. You left out one very important qualifier, you should have stated, "You can take everything in a wormhole assuming you have taken sufficient fire power and numbers into that wormhole to crush the inhabitants’. The mechanics are somewhat different but the result is the same, only a larger more organized group is going to dislodge you from your wormhole. This same general concept is mirrored in nullsec and elsewhere.

  3. You stated elsewhere that large groups should not be rewarded simply because they are large, yet you want small groups to be rewarded considerably just because they are small.

  4. You continuously equate larger and dumber, it is a fact that if you polled the IQ of all members of a huge alliance you would with a fairly high degree of certainty find genus from within their numbers. It is also a fact that the smaller a group of people you poll from as in smaller alliances or corps or even a single player the less and less likely that you will find genus in their group. This is idiot-level understanding of mathematical distributions but somehow it eludes your incalculable genus (one wonders, but not for long, why you’re having trouble understanding this).

You are making a gross exaggeration of fact. I have been ganked in nullsec, lowsec and in highsec. In all three environments i have been killed by a single person as well as small groups and a groups with so many people in them i couldnt even count them. As an example in lowsec i went to a market there to buy some items that were very cheap (this turned out to be bait). When i arrived six jumps from the market i was insta-popped by the first of six encampments between me and my intended market purchase, which i would; of course, have to go through again to get out with my purchases. Over the course of approximately three to four hours i worked my way into the market bought what i came for and got out with all the things i bought, SOLO !

I didnt need a capital umbrella (there i mentioned it, happy now?) to protect me and in fact i was fighting against a huge umbrella of lowsec ships trying to prevent me from my goal but they failed to win in the end because through diligence and a strategic change in methodology i got everything i went in for and even counting my ship losses and time spent i came out ISK positive (meaning i would have made less ISK during those hours doing my normal highsec activities than i did getting those purchases and selling them in Rens.

Your problem is YOU and nothing else, YOU lack the diligence and perhaps the intellect to win over larger forces and that is YOUR shortcoming and not something CCP needs or even can fix for you.

And as far as entitlements go, YOU and your small group arent entitled to anything either, so CCP should not intervene on your behalf just because you are small.

17

I mean, the way you won’t even take a second look at your own quotations of me to check whether you really didn’t understand what I wrote, sums up your attitude in this topic (protip: can =/ is). You are here to spread hate, but you don’t even do that properly. You quickly skim/scan what I wrote, make quotations that take my sentences out of their context, and write paragraphs about points I did not even make. And when I want to show you simplest of your fallacies you won’t even accept it. If your best response to my argument about how capital umbrellas need more counters, is that “you didn’t need capital umbrellas to defend yourself”, and if you can’t comprehend how fallacious this response is, there is no point in me telling you in detail. So there is no point arguing with you here.

You have reddit/Eve for this kind of attitude. You will be much welcome there. Your kind of attitude is why I’m here and not there, so don’t bring it here. Bye.

18

The long cycle/immobilization time was part of my proposal. I agree its exact timer is a delicate balance matter that can be revisited after the implementation. I’d be fine if the module shuts down covert cynoes as well. But for this to make a difference, the module should be able to suppress ongoing cynoes. This is because the blops will already need an ongoing covert cyno to land on grid. So the attacker side will already have a covert cyno field on target for at least 1 minute. On the other hand, suppression of the ongoing cynoes might be a bit too OP, and more abusable in capital vs. capital warfare.

19

I agree. There is no reason for a blops to be present in a drop besides solo/micro fleet situations. This is a problem that my proposal tries to tackle. The other one is the capital umbrella, and the drop/counterdrop mechanics, which also is in a bad place.

I’m not sure the T2 resist profile is a good idea. It would have effects on other areas of blops usage (e.g. solo) which are outside the domain of the problems we recognize above. Besides, its not the tank but the cost of the blops which motivates people to not drop with them (when you can do the same damage with a bomber).

I think a bonus to the mobile cyno inhib anchor time is an idea we can work with, if the bonus is worth it (should be about %75 - 15 seconds anchor time). The blops can’t spam them as there are cargo limitations, and they are pretty expensive for each usage. In comparison, in my proposal, the module works instantly (or perhaps some spool time similar to MJD). It causes the blops to be immobilized, so even if the target dies fast, there is chance for an additional fight with the defenders and revenge kill (similar to how immobilized Rorquals create fights). So I feel like my proposal is more of a catalyst for fun and interesting fights.

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20

In their current usage, more tank makes no difference. The lone ratter they drop on won’t have a ship in far less than a minute, it’ll get melted fast because they’ve no choice but to gank.

Give them a T2 resist profile, and now gank is no longer the only way you can use them. You don’t have to blap and run, because if 20 of you are in T2 tanked BBs, that could put up one hell of a fight against a response fleet. THAT will generate content, because you’ll stay and fight if you think you can win.

If you know you’ll melt, you won’t stay under any circumstances. Which is the spirit of your self-tackle idea. However…

By self-tackling your effectively untanked battleship, you’re not going to be creating content because you’re not going to jump them in (or at least, not activate the module). Rorqs are good content generators because they have obscene tanks. And they’re caps so that’s okay. They aren’t going to melt, they have LOTS of time (especially with PANIC) for a response fleet to come and save them. Net result is a nice fight.

In this case, though, you’ve got no response fleet. You’ve tackled yourself with no tank in a very expensive ship, with no help in reach. The other name for that is Sepuku.