Thank you for the info! My wife’s toon could catch a DD in two clicks. I’m going to try her on sisi! bet I can catch a frig in 2 clicks now!
Edit; Just need to test it on sisi, but I don’t doubt it. When this sub runs out, I just may sub her acct again just to screw with ppl and prove them wrong.
Didn’t try combat probes, it was blissfully private in that wormhole 
The obvious flaw in my test was the inability to compare with the current situation on TQ. I’ll try to find a reliable way (similar wh, similar scan difficulty), but I think it will remain an “impression”, as we have no data on deviation listed anywhere in attributes etc.
Means dock up in a wh. Log off the mains, log in the scout alts and find your prey. Acquire the target and log in the appropriate toons to kill the target. More fun if you roll the hole before he knows it.
A few good things, a few bad.
First: Blops. Great changes on group jump for punting everyone, and not paying the cost. Makes bringing plated T3Cs a viable option. Also puts blops BS at risk, which is wonderful when things go oops.
Panther looks really good
Redeemer seems okay
Widow still sucks because ECM lock backs
Sin… wtf, logi drone bonus? No, seriously, that’s counter to Sin gameplay. They’re meant to be a nuke dropped on something. Not to hang around and sacrifice their drone bay for unwanted utility. Turret bonus, or even neut/RR bonus, CCPls.
Covops:
RIP explorer killer. I used an Anathema for that, and it worked for blowing up covops so well. Now the only covert combat hulls are SoE, CONCORD, and T3C. The new bonuses are good, but I will miss my little anathema with teeth. They needed a bit more identity, not a simple “cant fight, remove it.” And power grid.
Also, REVERT THE CHEETAH/PROBE MODEL FFS. The mobile depot/turtle monstrosity is the main reason I hate flying it. No one wanted an update to its looks, especially when the Helios is still fugly, and needs love.
Either way, thanks for paying some attention to stuff, that’s always productive at least.
May I be frank, I am not impressed with the direction on Cov Op Scouts. I have decided to so some research into the combat capacity of these ships on Tranquility, and found myself in an interesting conundrum.
The Cov Op ships should not have their combat bonuses removed. Period, but as many have pointed out these ships have serious flaws and problems. Namely an out of date fitting system, and their capacity to carry weaponry is out of date. The Anathema should be technically on paper the strongest Combative Scout with its 2 Turret/2 Missile capacity but you will not see that. Nor will you see Helios and Buzzards in combative rolls. I have been testing Cheetahs premptively before they are nerfed for good collecting data.
I got my Cheetah to 419 Alpha Strike capacity. Mostly with T2 250mm arty. Rate of fire was about 4.22sec. Most targets were annilated in one salvo. Backup rocket launcher was used for close in capacity if it could be done. However it must be noted that one must fit micro-powerplant on the Cov Op-Recons to at least fit combat boosters ie. Gyrostabilizers.
These test show that the premature attempt to nerf Cov Ops might remove from fleets some unique assets that could be useful in attacking/scouting/ or over all usage.
In Scout/Explore mode: A Cheetah should be Cov Op Cloak + Core Probe + various scanning/relic/data equipment.
Hunter Scout: Cheetah should be able to Cov Op Cloak + Expanded Core Probe. [One of the current problems is Cov Ops do not have bonuses to make use of Expanded Core Probe Launchers.]
Skirmisher: Cheetah should have Cov Op Cloak + Weapons of choice to position around the battlefield and attack enemy players without warning from different angles of attack.
The problem is the current tests on SISI are actually a pretty heavy handed nerf to Cov Op Recons…and severely limit their uses even further than normal. WCS changes and Nullification already have made Cov Op usage rather difficult now with the Observatories in play. Its even more risky than ever.
The speed movement bonuses must be added as a secondary bonus. I think this should be for the Cov Op side of the equation for Skills. The Combat Bonuses must be left intact. [NON-NEGOTIABLE because it overall damages gameplay and shows a lack of creativity in application of Cov Ops out side of being an Alt Piloted Cyno Beacon.]
Also ships like the Pacifier being a Cov Op…need a tweaking to bonuses. 4 Turret/ 4 Launcher balance. Also its supposed to be able to hunt down targets, it needs the relatively unusable survey probe bonus to be removed. And be given a role bonus to lower CPU/Power cost of Expanded Probe Launchers, and a Cov Op bonus to the core/combat probe scan time and repositioning time. Allowing them to more aggressively be used to hunt down targets.
All Cov Ops need at least 4 high slots. To maximize various roles. Current set up is not beneficial to overall gameplay. Power and CPU usage is also problematic. I found that I am forced to use specific modules to get an edge due to the extremely tight fitting constraints with CPU and Powergrid.
Also this should be considered and in review considered with the T1 Exploring ships as well. Also giving them bonuses to the Survey Probe Launcher would be helpful in these ships getting some utilitarian work out of them.
In all the combat bonus reductions, are not beneficial to the game. They remove options not expand them. The speed movement bonuses would be beneficial for everyone, maybe some tweaks to scanning. Because their role kind of can be easily encroached upon by other ships even “weaker” in certain stats but due to fitting any weaknesses are overcome. So the Astero needs to be factored into this equation as well.
And a deep consideration on the overall CPU/Powergrid concerns with Expanded Probe Launchers needs to be considered. Or you may have to fit a specialized combat probe launcher module only soon to make a valid difference of roll for Recon/Scout/Explore ship fits.
I would suggest players begin a Tranquility Test taking out Cov Ops and testing their combat abilities and seeing which ship needs work or which one might be a bit OP. Then compare the SISI CovOps ships versus them. I can promise you a 50% drop off of options is within purview of consideration.
If you happen to have another T2 explorer on the test sever that has the cloaked speed bonus instead of scan deviation bonus, or a T3C with lvl5 scan subsystem, that could be a good comparison for the TQ situation.
Solid update. While you’re touching Black Ops BSes, please fix the fuel bay so that it doesn’t hold a silly amount of fuel.
2250m^3 means 75k topes instead of 71.7k which is a silly number!
Lots of people wanted an update to its looks. The new model is so much better! 
You really believe we will see more blops fleets with this change with the current price blops are now due to Indy update you must be kidding right.
I did something similar, fitted a pacifier to have the exact probe strength of my anathema, but without the scan deviation bonus of the latter (as far as we know 
)
First suprise: the initial locations of the same signatures in the same wh had shifted. Looks like there was a DT at 5:00 UTC according to eve-offline.net and perhaps that explains it.
Because it proves impossible to get anything reliably done without logging out and back in again, to reset the initial positions, and because signatures other than the one you focus on also get affected while scanning I decided to run a modified / simplified test:
a single cosmic signature (my wh point of entry, already bm’d), perfectly 3-D centered (max zoom-in) pinpoint probe cluster on initial signal (which happened to be 1.87 AU away from the real location and had a scan difficulty of I), repeatedly scan at 8 AU without moving the probes and note each new deviation (I stayed at the real location).
25 scans done at 8 AU with both the Anathema and the Pacifier, same probe strength of 127 (same rigs, same rangefinder, launcher, probes)
With the Anathema (new scan deviation bonus applies)
deviations range from 4,562,000 km up to 0.73 AU, all signals stayed at 34.7 %
With the Pacifier (no deviation bonus)
deviations range from 913,457 km up to 0.97 AU, all signals stayed at 34.7 %
Although the sample size is still small (the hole was about to close so needs to be redone for a larger sample size) it appears that the variation (or statistical standard deviation on the sets) is smaller for the Anathema with the new bonus, giving a better chance to hit target for 100% on the second scan with say 2 AU or lower. The effect of the bonus looks small in the case of this particular scanning difficulty rating. Perhaps it will show to be more important on a difficulty III or even a V.
If I do more tests on this I will post in the exploration section.
There is a bit of a problem with the Redeemer that none of the other blops have.
The bonus that was added to the ship basically makes it a lesser bhaalgorn with a jump drive. However unlike the other Black ops ships that can perform their function WITH a jump portal since the other 4 at least have an auxiliary high slot, the Redeemer is forced to leave it behind if it wants to even dedicate 1 slot to a neut… and tbh, I find that fitting constraints, even with a full navy setup, only allows for a medium if anything when using a combat fit.
If you want a second medium you need to remove the cloak AND and jump drive and that put the ship in a bad place compared to the other two.
My suggestion. Add 1 auxiliary highslot and add a “Big” bonus to MEDIUM neutralizers specifically to put them in line with how you want larges to functionallowing it to fit 1 if it’s a bridger but 2 if it’s just combat fitted.
I cannot stress that if you add more powergrid you will make the ship overpowered instantly. This change would give the ship it’s intended unique function while preserving it’s current power level relative to other blops.
You’re a bit behind. It’s been like this for friggin YEARS.
Amarr used to be bit OP in PvP – although with the tradeoff that they were easily tanked against.
They nerfed lasers HARD. There aren’t many ships in the entire Amarr lineup that don’t suffer for it.
The constant crap with bonus to ROF of lasers tells you how out of touch the dev teams are with the actual game. Every other ship in the notes got a straight damage buff, when the Amarr ship gets, again, a damned refire rate bonus, with a negligible cap increase, which appears to be more for the neuts than the lasers.
Agree with everything except the bit about being a bhaalgorn – because the deemer doesn’t get those bonuses.
But yeah, no fitting room, or slots for that matter
The biggest issue isn’t really cost. It has more to do with there not being a defined reason to use a particular ship class. Rorquals and Titans I’m happy to see not be used. They’re supposed to be seen in small numbers supporting large fleets, not large fleets of supers being pretty much homogenous.
But that trickles down as well.
We should be seeing fights with a lot more of the smaller ships.
The issue that causes all of the homogenization of fleets is the skewed balance of the various ‘classes’ of ships. One easy to use metric is DPS. I can currently fit cruisers that can out-DPS battleships. I can fit destroyers that can out-DPS cruisers and battleships. They may not have the HP, but they win out with lower signatures, and much greater dictation of engagement ranges. This is just plain stupid.
Then you have battleships that have hard-counter to frigates. A frigate should not be able to mess with a battleship by itself, but not because the battleship would be able to rock it’s world, but because it would take hours to kill the BS with a frigate. Granted, a ton of frigates should be able to do something, but it doesn’t take a ton. I can do the job with one. Just like a battleship can deal with frigates using grapples. These two ships really have no business being able to play in each others’ worlds at all. Unless there’s a ton of frigates, a battleship shouldn’t care about them at all as they aren’t relevant to each other. Ditto with the frigate – it should look at a battleship and go ‘eh, unless I’ve got a ton of backup, attacking this has to purpose.’
Same thing with the other ship classes.
The other issues are of scale as well. I can solo most C5 sites with just 3 ships, or 1 if using a dread
or marauder. And really once you get 4-5 guys in a C5 site, any more that join reduce the ISK/hr significantly. I’d hate it at first as it would hurt my wallet for a bit, but it really should be a mixed fleet, with the amount of ISK/hr justifying the numbers and various ships one has to bring to complete the site.
They keep teasing us with systems that should be able to do this – the pirate faction citadels with responses that were supposed to be a challenge, but people whined that it was too hard to solo, so now you can solo them. Or you can simply cheese many things.
They had the system with Pochven that could have introduced fun and engaging content, where I’d hoped to see them use it for the other empires as well, and we could have actual ‘faction warfare’ that was meaningful and not some lame crap that can be gamed. They could have made it so that there were plusses and minuses for each empire losing or gaining space that would make it worth fighting for one or the other side. But instead we got another static, boring as hell empire.
No one is going to that. Why would you ever jump in a defenseless, paper-tank ship on a battlefield? That is stupid beyond comparison. CCP stupid.
The underlying issue is that even with combat bonuses, i was able to put together a Probe fit that still cranked more DPS than my Cheetah. Even tested it on SiSi and managed to take down a low sec belt rat BS completely solo.
The CovOps frigates are so ‘intended’ to be stupid-specialized into exploration, that even without being nerfed for combat, they might still struggle to measure up to much cheaper T1 hulls.
And in itself, if they struggled a bit, it would be fine. Combat was not their primary function, nor should it be.
But removing the combat bonuses, putting bonuses that ultimately have a comparatively minor effect if at all on the end user, on top of NOT updating critical design flaws that have been known for years, is wasteful. The official cause for removing combat bonuses is not sufficient, as keeping those bonuses didn’t harm the ship’s role, nor would their removal help improve popularity or effectiveness of these hulls.
I like the direction of these changes but it does not address one serious issue with the Black Ops battleships. If I’m flying a hull that expensive it needs to be more effective for me to throw it into battle. Minor speed and damage increase is not going to cut it. The Black OPs battleship needs to be able to have more survivability.
Agree the Sin bonus for logi drones is pretty stupid, how about something useful?
I see the logi bonus as fluff tbh. The agility bonus was rolled into the base which only 2 of the blops ships had done to them. The main bonus the Sin got was the tracking/range bonus the of the dominix.
This is a unique bonus that makes it the only ship with a full rack of heavy drones for either shield/armor/hull with no exclusivity on repair type like most logi ships. And it can swap those drones in and out at the drop of a hat for Heavys or Sentries, which again it has a bonus for.
Which doesn’t change the fact that logi drones are garbage, bonus or not.