Eh… it’d be hard to make them THAT OP.
Isk isn’t balance, but you can’t spell risk without isk. Trading blackops for HACs, for example… even at 5:1 kill ratio it’s still a horrible trade for the blops.
Same reason why you fly Muninns instead of Lokis in large gangs… that 160k EHP is pretty sexy… but at a cost of almost 3:1, even ignoring SP loss, it’s not worth it ever.
… the jump drive alone makes them pretty easy to make OP just look at the current lokis in blops gangs.
and a 1b ship is not much more risk than a 200m ship when you have tens of billions this is why isk should never be used to justify buffing something or as an argument as to why something isn’t OP
isk only begins to be a prohibitive factor in large fleets but blops are small gang
The exact topic of this particular discussion though is buffing them to the point where they can engage in a straight-up fight. At which point they’re not just small gang anymore.
And like I said… it’s not balance (and by default, relating to balance) but rather about risk.
I don’t know a single group in the game that would happily shell out 100b (25 decently fit blops) in SRP to kill a moderately sized HAC gang (125 somethings). 25 blops losses for 125 hac losses would be clearly OP, so I feel it’s a good example. You’re still so far in the red on isk efficiency that it’s extremely hard to justify ever dropping them. Even if they do have a kill ratio of 5:1.
And even then, 25 ships is small gang stuff. Start dialing it up to 100 blops (400b isk) and you’ll just get counter-dropped. I agree that it gets worse as you get larger; and I’m saying that even if they were quite clearly OP, they’re still not efficient to use.
you want a bigger blops to help out in large fleets get a titan
also you are spending way to much on your blops fits you can get plenty out of 2-2.5b you don’t need to be spending 4b.
there is also no reason blops should ever need to contend in large fleet fights there are plenty of other sips in eve for that
and I stated that there is not much extra risk when you have the average wallet of most players 5+ years old
back to the topic of the thread however blops would be able to take more fights in ls if caps were restricted
There’s a reason my deemer’s name is reblinger 
(edit: that includes the pod, ofc, in null pods always die so I factor those into ship cost)
Hehehe… cross-thread conversation now. Emergent gameplay! If you can drop caps, why can’t you drop blops?
I do agree that there are plenty of other ships, and “regular fights” is easily the most crowded meta… but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a niche in those large fights.
Best example I can think of, hammer and anvil style tactics. Exactly what you and I were discussing earlier. Bait a gang into a fight, hard tackle a bunch of them, and then cyno in battleships (better range, better evac, ability to bridge covert) to smash them.
From our previous discussion on your doing exactly that, it sounds like an exceptionally fun tactic. No reason I can’t want it in my neck of the woods! (balance pending, of course).
Very true. Caps will generally murder any subcap response fleet, unless the caps are being flown by mouthbreathers. Curtailing capitals would create room for blops to shine a lot more than they do now, by reducing their risk.
you can drop blops… most of them outperform standard battleships and come with huge maneuverability and evasion. I’m sure they would be far more common if DPS T3s were not a thing. Blops survability used to be an issue but now with T3s that rep on par with 2 T2 logi cruisers that’s not so much the case anymore. a cheep fit can do this and is generally only a little more than 2x the cost of a dps T3 with similar tank and ~1.7x the dps. however they take more skill so there are fewer pilots and moving them about after a drop along with the rest of the fleet is more tedious. However there overall combat balance is fine
for example
something they can already do. particularly the redeemer and arty panther. deemers can soak up a crap load of damage under reps and panthers can make enemy ships turn to dust within 6 seconds of appearing. They are very rewarding but you need players that know what they are doing at all levels of the fleet and the SP to achieve it. for instance if your initial fleet removes all DD and frigs from the grid your panthers will be nearly unkillable unless their pilots make a mistake
Hehe. All I can really say is I wish I could try this. I know the group I fly with would never even consider it. Risk being what it is, the loss simply isn’t worth it to them.
Plus, spies are everywhere. I’d give it a week TOPS before we got baited and counter-dropped by all the caps. Mistakes or not, supers mop up blops real fast.
I do wish that people wouldn’t spy… It’s not cheating… but it feels like cheating. And nobody likes losing to cheaters.
you just need to know the groups you are targeting. and the risk of being bated is far lower.
just spy on the people spying on you and you can counter drop their counter drops.
simply don’t fly with groups that care about their kill board. I haven’t been in one of those sine 2010 and eve is much better without it. you have a lot more fun when you take fights you don’t know you will win and you can have a lot more fun running theme comps, joke coms, and experimental comps.
That’s absolutely an option. I have been with these dudes for… god a long time now. Many many years. They’re a big reason I log on, solid dudes that I do actually trust. Which is saying a lot, coming from an experienced Eve player.
Not saying I trust the entire alliance… but the dudes I run with specifically, definitely. THey aren’t even really the ones that are risk averse… obviously like anyone else they don’t approve of throwing away isk, but they’ll do a lot of ill advised spending when it’s called for (april fools was a really fun night one year, I was flying a 10 bil battleship around low with them).
Never the less, it’s a legitimate option, even if it’s one I’d never really consider.
… just make an alt and join another group then. that’s what most null line members do
Yup that’d be an option too.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.