Get ready for a new era of clandestine warfare with an update to covert gameplay in the Enter the Portal update. Each of the empires’ Black Ops battleships are receiving new bonuses and a damage buff alongside improvements to their travel capabilities both on-grid and around New Eden. Covert Ops exploration ships are also being rebalanced to help them excel in their scouting role and live to cloak another day.
You can read about the changes in the Enter the Portal news article or log in directly to the Singularity test server and check them out for yourself!
The update is currently planned to go live on Tranquility in the next couple of weeks and further changes might be made based on testing and player feedback!
As Black Ops ships will now be seeing more action on the front lines, they will be receiving significant buffs to their damage and a new racial bonus matching the electronic warfare used by each faction.
Does this mean you’re going to fix ECM, or that Widows will always be primaried by everything because ECM still lets you shoot the jamming ship?
Thanks for looking at Covert Ops, CCP. Can you please also improve the Pacifier, so it doesn’t get left out? It’s considerably more expensive than the other scanning ships and will be flat out worse after this update.
Two things should help it a lot:
Give it the same bonus to Expanded Probe launcher CPU requirement that the other Cov Ops get.
Give it the Scan Deviation bonus the Anathema and Buzzard are going to receive.
All Covert Ops exploration ships will receive a reduction in capacitor need to initiate warp, preventing them from finding themselves out of capacitor while mid-warp. The Helios and Cheetah will then be receiving a cloaked velocity bonus. The Anathema and Buzzard will instead excel at scanning with a reduction in scan deviation.
I realize you’re trying to do the ‘one shield and one armor race have each bonus’, but this means that the Amarr/Caldari have all the advantages in probing down enemy fleets. Hardly seems the way to go during a Quadrant where you’re highlighting the empires (and thus, the Amarr/Caldai v Gallente/Minmatar conflict). In terms of balance-of-power, you just gave all of this update’s CovOps edge to one side.
Might I suggest swapping the bonus to the Anathema and Cheetah, and the ‘faster while cloaked’ to the Helios and Buzzard (which is already 100m/s slower than the Cheetah, as a ‘shield scout’).
i suggest that the blobs need either an increase of fitting space or/and should get an extended stabilized cloak duration.
or just give faction cloaks and officers one an buff to thier stabilize cloak duration, otherwise they are just fancy cloaks they are not really worth using for thier coast
If i remember correctly, let’s say an EDENCOM ship hits for 1000 damage total flat.
For 5 targets, it would deal 1000/5 = 200 damage.
Now, it will hit for 1000/10 = 100 damage.
Nice to see the different options for the T2 explorers, seems I need to revisit their fits and see what I like most. And I’m glad the Helios now also has a 3rd high slot.
I just noticed that the Sin is gaining remote sensor damp bonuses in the patch notes, but on the test server it has logistic drone bonuses. Which one is it?
Personally I much prefer the EWAR option. I love flying logistic ships, but when you’re trying to repair your fellow bombers your slow logistic drones aren’t going to save them. And if your friends are flying anything bigger than bombers, their T3C logistics are going to be far superior to your logi drones.
Give me the EWAR! I love to bring sensor damps on a drop on my bomber and Arazu, and I’d love to have even stronger damps when I drop a Sin.
Has there been any thoughts to adding a small drone bay to the Marshall? Something akin to 75m3 with a bandwidth of 25? This would enable the most expensive BS in Eve to fly a single flight of light drones.
I prefer the T1 ewar bonuses to be honest, as T1 ewar ships aren’t capable of joining a blops fleet. Recons cover both T2 and T1 ewar and T3Cs cover the T2 ewar, so it’s nice to have another option to bring T1 ewar.
The point is, as with all Caldari racial ewar ships, your ewar doesn’t help you. Minmatar TPs help their own missiles. Their webs slow down the guys trying to shoot them. Gallente points and scrams still work even when the enemy’s shooting you. Amarr weapon disruption still works when the weapons are shooting at you.
ECM… doesn’t. Doesn’t matter whether or not you fit a tank, ECM means you’re primary, because you’re the only one your target(s) can shoot. The effect of your module is completely lost just by targeting the ship using it, something that is not true of any other form of EWAR.
