Improved scan deviation is very powerful, it reduces amount of scans it takes to get a warpable result.
With less scan deviation, the location of the signal is going to be much more accurate allowing to skip scans. With good skills I can skip one scan in the scanning process, but I suspect I can skip two with these bonuses.
Rather than going from 8 AU → 2 AU → 0.5 AU → 0.25 AU you could go from 8 AU → 1 AU → 0.25 for example.
noob Question.
What “5% bonus to ship max velocity when using cloacking devices” do?
Is the warp speed ? Or is the “approach to target” speed while you are cloacked ? You cant use med while you are cloacked, can you ?
It’s your ships velocity when moving around cloaked, so not your warp speed. This is very helpful if you want to move cloaked through bubbles quicker or if you want to get into position quicker to tackle someone.
thx for explaining, rerunning my tests again 
Do blops really need a nerf? Almost everyone agrees that the Blops BS themselves are incredibly rarely the best tool for any job, except bridging. Giving them a little more combat relevance as done here seems sensible.
The changes to bridging fleets doesn’t really make them any more effective. After fuel prices skyrocketed recently it brings the running costs of blops fleets back down to more reasonable levels like they were before, and now gives higher potential rewards for baiting and countering cloaky hotdroppers, as blops battleships are more likely to appear on combat grids.
They are not more likely to appear unless by accident. No one jumps their bridge blops to a battle. Besides, the group jump is apparently limited to 10 people.
I’ll be blunt - making them any more effective is nigh impossible because they are already uncounterable substitute for skill mechanic. Thus anything AIMING to make them more effective is a negative change.
There is no way to bait something that can stay aligned, and cloak on arrival, then jump the f out. That was already OP part of blops gameplay.
Then CCP comes and buffs them. facepalm.jpg
I would have to sub my wife’s acct to test this, can you post your results please? I could do it on sisi with her acct myself, but I might miss something.
If they’re uncounterable and impossible to bait, how come there’s plenty of black ops battleship killmails on zkill of them getting baited?
Here’s the killboards of people who are particularly known for baiting and killing black ops BS, and you could research them to find out how they go about their trade.
There’s also amusing videos of whole black ops fleets getting baited and killed, like the following:
same o same o Dev’s fuking s h i t up since 2003 making changes to stuff there ill fit to use them selves stay in ya basements and spaghetti code. Be nice if you lot fixed the local bugs once and for all.
There are two factors to a caught blops:
Blops killed outside those two factors is practically none. Used properly by someone above tree-dwelling ape, they’re invincible and uncounterable.
I’m glad black ops are getting some much needed attention.
It used to be that you get speed bouns under cloak per BLOPS skill level, so that you can enter warp once you drop cloak, this is something that no other non-covops ships can do without the MWD trick
So am I. These were my dream ships way back when. The question seems to be was it the correct attention?
What’s the source for this? I don’t think it’s mentioned in any official communication.
I’m not suprised if it works this way to prevent bridging 250 plated T3Cs for free though, as well as if they forget to mention this crucial fact until after it gets sent live.
same here, where did it say about this?
Your not used to being a beta tester yet?
Also I just had to mention it, since there are people who specialize in blops baiting, and blops are unbaitable in a hands of anything better than a tree-dwelling ape, this must mean that terminal stupidity of the hunters went above and beyond, as they are not able to watch for TWO names already.
A bait may work once by sheer luck, it should never work twice unless the hunter is terminally stupid. The fact that it worked more than twice for some people gives ground to your argument though, meaning terminal stupidity is spread among hunters much more than I thought.
I only fly Cov Ops, and Black Ops basically and I’m happy, I do however find few of the bonuses mentioned a bit uncalled for or not fitting.
Cov ops: they did their job, could do a better job at making them fit combat probes easier. Concord ship line have always found lacking without drones. Especially the Pacifier that has to sacrifice 33% of its dps when out diving.
Redeemer: Panther is a better neuting ship than the new redeemer, suggestion for the redeemer: decrease turret hard points by 1, and increase the % turret dmg bonus to offset this change of dps, then if the neuting power is too great then decrease the suggested neut bonus the ship gets.
Getting a bonus to 1 Heavy neut seem a bit wierd, maybe cycle time would be more fitting or both. 33% reduction to cycle duration, and 33% to Neut power?
Sin: a big ■■■■ you for the logistic drone bonus. Most times the sin does its only dmg through drones.
The Sin is actually the Neuting power of a blops fleet usually, the sin is the one that needed a neut bonus, giving the hybrids a ludicrous bonus but limited the turret hard points or high slots could make it so ppl would actually use the few turrets it can fit, and the rest neuts?
I find the sin healthy as it was, just majorly lacking in tank/low&mid slots, since most are still using shield tanks, max drone dmg, and neut highs.
The vacant drone logi bonus could be turret optimal or tracking, but i suggest a mid or low slot.
Could be inserting some wrong info above there, but that is my experience how ppl fit it, and the bottom line is that the logi drone bonus is not making much sense, and i hate it.
Takes away dps which is the theme of these ships, strike sudden and true, then go into hiding waiting for next ambush.
Widow: Many still cry about the ecm, Game went on to be a good deal more healthy after that change imo, fitting longrange weapons and jam is something, but the strenght of the widow is the burst jammer, 3 widows can keep the whole blops group safe from scrams while they mjd spool, 30km, 36 jam strenght is (insert strike through)aLmOsT mandatory imo.
It wasnt really lacking tank, but this helps with taking off one tank module and add add utility.
On the DPS side, it was winning previously or not far from it, but now i find it lacking.
Since the theme is to strike fast and hard, the engagement arnt that long. Many fit Rapid heavies, adding RoF bonus to that could actually hurt a small bit, while a alpha dmg boost would be way more beneficial.
maybe keeping the bonus sparated? 7.5 % rof to torp/cruise, and 7.5% dmg to heavy missiles?
Cheers, and keep making this game even better, i hope you CCP keep listening to players and let CSM be a big factor if you deem their suggestions objective and healthy!
Pretty complicated thing to test with predictable outcome. I used a wh on sisi, probed everything and bookmarked. I reset the whole system by logging out and back in (the initial locations remained the same). The initial deviation from the real locations (bm’s made earlier) varied between 1.44 AU and 7.60 AU.
A first pass at 8 AU probe radius on a random signature reduced the deviations for all within range of the probe cluster (5 out of 7 sigs total) to 8.1 million km up to 1 AU. Those that were above 18% result I was able to scan to 100% with a single new pass at 1 AU, those above 25% even with a single scan of 2 AU.
For that particular wh, there was only one signature with scanning difficulty 3 and that one required an extra scan.
Specs: pinpointing and rangefinding at lvl 4, sisters probes, 127 probe strength (covops 5 in an anathema with two t1 gravity capacitor rigs, and a rangefinding array in the mids, sisters expanded launcher), no implants etc.
Overall impression, yep, reduces the number of scans, increases the number of steps one can skip in the probe radius.
Relation between the parameters is complicated, scanning difficulty, deviation, signal strength after a scan. It will require more thorough and standardized testing, but will likely only lead to a few rules of thumb specific for the pilot’s parameters.