@CCP_Dopamine
Think you could double check the Blops Battleships?
I really wonder why you guys keep putting damage buffs on other ships, but refire rate on Amarr ships.
We shoot capacitor, my dudes and dudettes. And no, the Nos/Neut buff, while nice, doesn’t reduce cap use, cause we’re not Bhaalgorns. Ya know, that thing you did with the Marshall there. Do that to the 'Deemer. Way more useful, without negating the cap-use bonus in the process.
Also, please… no resist buff on Widow. I mean, EHP increase to something that generally stacks Ancillary shield boosters (sigh), and gets instant repair. ASBs stronk, no need.
Give it buffs similar to the others. Maybe something like missile speed bonus – quick strike, that is what the BLOPS are for - nuke it fast and disappear.
Good point. They should remove the low slot and just give them all the extra CPU they need
Alma Venus
It has enough mids to not need the deviation bonus. It’s already stupid strong for scanning and still has utility on top and survivability/gank on the low.
With all of the weird bonuses those ships get, and the low barrier to entry, they’re kinda set to be oddballs anyways.
Yes. Most. It’s funny, isn’t it? Nobody considers something over-powered until they get that last upgrade that makes them just that little bit better.
Because you really don’t want to see what happens when there’s a fleet of 200 carriers that can completely avoid cyno-jammers and each carry a dozen cruisers, so the 10 fleets of stealth bombers that blops in alongside them can immediately reship and lay waste to everything in sight.
But… scissors counters paper…
With EVE’s ECM being based on sensor strength, that kind of doesn’t work. I’d be more inclined to go with something like ‘hey, that ship that’s actively sending out a massive amount of energy to screw with its targets sensors? Congratulations on target-painting yourself, you now have the signature of an MWDing carrier’.
Kind of like how active signal jamming in reality also makes you incredibly obvious to all the targeting systems you aren’t successfully jamming.
No, just a little overconfident. I’ve seen plenty of BlOps get caught because some dumbass wasn’t close enough when the first bridge opened, and they went and risked a second bridge even though the combat probes were closing in.
The only significant changes to combat capability for these ships are that they can fit the interdiction module and they either scan a little better or warp a little faster. The interdiction mod gimps their combat fittings as it takes up a high slot especially since you already use a high a lot for a covert cloak.
In short, allowing these ships to keep their meager combat bonus is not making them op. Rather their removal just needlessly destroys a niche gameplay style.
Yeah, but the Hecate doesn’t do that in fleet combat situations, which is what the empires would be focusing on. Sure, they’d have some forces set up for skirmishing, but the vast majority of their navies would be designed to fight against large groups of enemy ships.
So giving blops some love is really welcome, after the pain of scarcity and the Indy price hikes, any changes which bring fun back to the game are much needed.
That said, I don’t think damage is what is holding these hulls back from being dropped more. With the crazy tight fitting attributes, a fit is northwards of 2b and these ships just don’t have the survivability to justify dropping them on anything other than a dunk.
More generally, I’m really concerned about the balancing of these changes. EWAR aside (really the only useful EWAR bonus is the neuting on the redeemer but you then have to choose between neuts or dps so it’s not really adding anything) the widow gets a straight up damage buff, both the sin and the panther get damage plus application (because who thinks projectile turrets don’t track well enough already) whereas the redeemer gets a damage buff but has to pay for it with cap stability. It’s the only hull in its class that isn’t cap stable with a full rack of weapons and nothing else. All the others can add a prop mod to that and are still stable. If you run an active tank the redeemer caps out 34 seconds faster than anything else.
It’s concerning that with this change and the marauder change the amarr platform has been singled out for having weak capacitor while being the most cap dependent of the empire hulls. It’s not like amarr ships are op and need this nerf for balance yet this seems to be the design philosophy going forward. You can neut out a panther and it will still hit frigates for 1k dps and tank with an xlasb, the redeemer will cap itself out and is then dead in space, how is this balanced?
Sin: nerfing agility AND repair drone bonus on the Sin? Seriously? So maybe I can finally match a vanilla Domi in the DPS department (lol) just kidding I couldn’t fit the same guns, and I am doing it with significantly less tank.
Make it a proper hospital or neut platform or a blaster DPS animal THAT HAS THE TANK OF THE T1 VERSION.
Deemer neuts on your best projecting BLOPS? No one is going to do it, the added cap is nice, but seriously, you are going to pulse/scorch just like always because scorch is OP…and you always have conflag for those inyogrill moments. Still doesn’t have the fittings to match a gheddon, much less a navy geddon and yeah.
Panther, this one I am torn on, its a solid set of AC bonuses…but most of the time you use the panthers for the alpha, 1400s on a “suddenly panther” drop is the way its went most of the time…this is much like our corp’s blap loki’s hit grid kill, moonwalk, we are not trying to stay on grid and DPS something down, if DPS is the issue we already screwed it up.
Widow…welp, thanks for the new 10/10 PvE ship. ECM is still hopelessly borked, 20% resists is not going to make up for being target #1
I will note.
No one is going to be brawling with 3bil isk ships (ignoring the Marshal) that don’t have the tank of their T1 bases, MUCH LESS the faction ships that cost about a 3rd of the price.
Give the BLOPS BSs TRUE T2 resists for a start
Match the base stats to the Navy faction ships
Now we have a hull that actually justifies its purchase price (even before CCP jacked up all of the build costs). As it stands were have a “combat” T2 that can’t do sustained combat…for that reason it will always be a niche ganking platform.
…oh and while we are at it.
FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY GIVE THE NESTOR A JUMP DRIVE not a portal, not the group jump functionality, just the ability to jump to a covert cyno…like the REST of the SOE line follows the COVOPS model.
Grow a pair and let the Nestor be the ship god intended.
Please don’t add a bonus to logistics drone repair amount on a Sin. I mean seriously, when you look at the proposed changes to the other black ops battleships that particular change makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I could see adding armor resists instead, but logistics drone repair amount? The Sin isn’t a logistics battleship, the only ships with bonuses to logistics drones are…logistic ships.
Can we have SoE finally figure out how to give a CovOps Cloak to the Nestor?
No jump drive though, we don’t want to make the ship heavy.
Also, maybe remove the generally useless remote armor rep bonuses and instead upgrade the Gallente skill bonus to “10% bonus to Drone hitpoints, damage and logistic transfer amount.”
I think this would upgrade the Nestor to be a really good Cov-ops support platfrom.
In testing the Redeemer speed increase of 650%, using an Improved Cloaking Device II, my base speed goes from 146.3 m/s base to 237.7 m/s while cloaked (with no other modules/rigs). Why even boost it at all? What can I do at 238 m/s that I couldn’t do at 146 m/s?
I get that it’s nice to get a little movement bonus while cloaked, but what does an extra 92 m/s really get me in a practical sense?
