As ideas and discussion has been made that was not thought of previously. I have come with agreement that this was one of those bad ideas. I appreciate your time and discussion.
I would like to suggest a new ship class idea: Ambush Battlecruisers
What they are: Light Covert Ops Attack Vessels (T2 Attack BC’s)
As T2 is supposed to specialized, there isn’t a T2 Covert Ops Ship designed for strict combat between frigs (Stealth Bombers) and battleships (BLOPS, which aren’t really covert ops, but still)
Role Bonus:
Can Fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device and Covert Cynosural Field Generator
Cloak Reactivation Delay Reduced to 5 Seconds
No Targeting Delay After Cloaking Device Deactivation (Note, as bc’s the targeting speed isn’t going to be that high, so balance can be made by adjusting this)
95% Reduction in Large [Weapon] PG Requirement
50% Reduction in Large [Weapon] CPU Requirement
50% Reduction in Large [Weapon] Activation Cost (As Needed By Platform)
50% Effective Mass When Bridged (Not Too Sure on Wording Here)
Thoughts? Would this be too much? Is this one of those crazy ideas that should never see the light idea?
There are T2 ships specialized for Covert Ops. There are T2 ships specialized for combat. Don’t you think a T2 ship that combines the two is taking a step back in terms of specialization?
@quelza said it right. You’re combining the best of two completely separate lines of ships into one that would completely invalidate the ABC.
There’d be zero reason at all to fly the ABC as they’re never all that tanked to begin with, and a covops cloak would offer tremendous increases in survivability.
Not true at all, and you identified the reason why: no tank. ABCs are, even more than most PvP ships, expendable. You take them because you want a cost-effective dps platform and don’t care if your only survival option is “bring enough of a fleet to alpha the target before I can take any damage”. A covert ops version of the ship would have a massively increased price tag but offer little advantage over an ABC once the shooting starts. Taking them in fleet vs. fleet battles would be pointless, their only niche role would be covert ganking but then you have to ask why you don’t just take a black ops fleet instead.
If you want ccp to nerf cloaks, this is how you get ccp to nerf cloaks. Release this and watch the forums…
There are recon ships between covert ops and Black ops.
The trade-off for limited invisibility (local is a thing) is a more fragile, lower dps frame. As cov-ops cloaked ships are usually incredibly frail. Looks like your trying to make an afk-able solo gank mobile. Get a cov-ops ship in the system, jump in this monster with a black ops then alt tab for fun!..
Here’s the thing… a nano oracle with scorch has ~700 DPS. A nano oracle with conflag has ~1000 dps. A redeemer with scorch has 600 dps, and 800 dps with conflag.
Literally the only reason you actually bring a 'deemer into a fight is for the pew. It hits harder than a bomber. At the cost of 3 billion isk.
So this covert ABC would need to have approximately 30% less damage than the actual ABC (lets not even get started on the concept of the complete lack of trade-off for having a covops cloak) to avoid providing the very last nail in the coffin to EVER seeing a blops BB fight something. In short, about 500-600 DPS.
Yet… bombers do more damage than that. For far less cost, with far better sig tanks (which if these covert ABCs lack tank, you’ll really want).
So you’re left with a ship that renders either bombers or battleships completely irrelevant. Take your pick.
that is why I suggest in my post that T2 ABC use Blop bonus rather than the Covert bonus.
Basically, ABC that have the bonus to Cloak velocity, and can jump through Black op Portal while having no jump drive.
Idea is that you can bring ABC for more dps than Bomber (maybe same as Blop or slightly better), but they have worst mobility than Blop/Bomber.
The MJD is a module of last resort on blops. If you’re saying “oh ■■■■ everyone run” you should be expecting to die.
More DPS than a bomber puts it firmly in the only niche that the blackops battleship has (for combat at least).
Now if you were to argue for different roles for the battleship (and I’m not saying I support all of these) such as giving them bomb launchers, remote rep bonuses, command bursts, etc, taking them away from being a “spank the ■■■■ out of the little ■■■■■■ before his friends arrive” role, maybe a covert ABC has a purpose.
But as it stands, giving them enough DPS to warrant taking them over bombers would undoubtedly invalidate battleships. The lack of mobility is moot because ideally, you don’t need mobility. The whole point behind blops in their current meta is gank.
Jump drive, not MJD. Black ops can jump directly to a cyno, the proposed covert BC requires a black ops to create bridge (just like recons and bombers).
I think the point is, in BLOPS fleets, you usually have one BLOPS and a bunch of bombers, or, if you are lacking numbers and want more DPS, you bring more BLOPS and fewer bombers, but only if your numbers are low because BLOPS are really expensive.
Now an “ambush BC” with BLOPS level of DPS (or above) would mean every BLOPS fleet would only ever have one BLOPS in it, since if you want extra DPS per pilot, you bring extra ABCs instead of extra BLOPS and if you have numbers, you would still just bring bombers since they are cheap.
And an ABC with less than BLOPS level of DPS is useless as it would bring nothing better than a bomber.
So there is essentially no use case for an ABC, unless it takes over the combat role of BLOPS and relegates them to covert bridge makers only. And that’s no good.
And just because they don’t have a jump drive doesn’t mean they need one… that’s literally the only reason people fly the blops bb… not because they have a jump drive, because they bridge things. Their DPS is moot anywhere but micro-gang.
The concept of an “ambush battlecruiser” runs into a plethora of balance issues.
It has to be somewhere between bomber and battleship damage to be valid, yet I can 100% promise that if it does more than bombers there’s now only one reason to bring bombers (bombing runs). If it does even remotely as much damage as a battleship, you’ll see them being used in place of bombers and battleships.
Or the cost will be so excessively high that nobody will bring them because not only do they lack tank, but they lack the jump drive as well.
Battleships will retain their current usage as jump bridges, with either blops or bombers being all but useless.
