Ok I still don’t understand how the mechanics change. I get what you want, but how is it achieved, how do you make a cyno work but not let people jump into fights?
Is it just a targetting delay?
I was being a bit facetious with the letting the crab escape, but sometimes by the time you’ve got the fleet assembled the 10s delay might be too much.
I already explained that. By adding
The overall goal is to go back to a balance we once had. So it is explicitly not a nerf. We just need to go back to the balanced status of Hotdropping we had pre 2010. Which was that the system jump from System A to System B took roughly 30-45 seconds depending on connection and hardware and on top came the locking time, so anyone getting hotdropped had somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds to react to the new situation.
This will of course mean, that Hotdropping goes back to a strategical tool of larger group warfare and is not a convenient curbstomp mechanic any more. That doesn’t mean you can’t use capitals any more in other fights. They are used - in small numbers - in JSpace every day. But they have to come into the fight the normal way. Warping, jumping a hole/gate, warping again. And all the time they can be bubbled, ambushed by a third party, delayed, dragged etc.. which all is fine, thats skillful warfare.
Sounds pretty sane to me.
I assume the cyno ship needs to be stationary for the cyno spool up period.
I’m in favour of delays on cynos and jumps, but find the timeframe of 30-60s you mention huge.
It only takes a couple of seconds for a non-tackled ship to warp away, and while I think adding reaction time to hotdrops is good I think hotdropping shouldn’t be so severely neutered that by the time the ships arrive the targets have already had the time to both warp and dock up.
A 5-10 second delay is more reasonable to me and still adds time to react and prepare a disengage from covert drops, with possibly a larger delay of up to 20 for capital jump drives.
It’s the timeframe we had and it worked. I mean, I am not gonna argue against feelings… 
Yeah thats the entire point. I don’t know how you can miss it if you have followed the conversation.
Hotdropping that allows a single “Hunter” ship to move around the map and then decloak next to other gangs, calling in a usually by far superior force to just tackle half the grid and kill it is fundamentally flawed. It ruins gameplay.
The core of the original cyno idea was that you can strategically reinforce an area to secure an objective. Like a structure timer, re-open a camped gate or prevent the busting of an own camp or siege or whatever. But not moving around throwing stuff on smaller gangs simply obliterating them on the click of a button.
If you don’t understand that core idea because you “feel” hotdrops should be used to just “cyno up, spread tackle!!!, kill kill kill before they can warp out!!!”, there simply isn’t that much to dicuss, as we will never agree on that. If you want kills, send more than a cyno ship, send a gang that looks engagable, make sure it can survive the other gang for at least a minute and hold important tackle on their own while the cyno reinforcements come in. Just sending a single Arazu/Proteus/Loki should never be enough to bust other gangs via a remote curbstomp teleporter.
I get it, you wish to remove the gameplay of dropping a fleet with a single hunter and go back to a time fleet fights meant both fleets had to fly to a location.
I on the other hand like the existence of hunting gameplay and blops cynos, so while I’m willing to listen to suggestions that can make such gameplay more balanced, I’d never support changes that just completely remove it.
But I guess we disagree on that point.
I agree a short delay on cynos is a good idea, I just disagree with the total removal of blops hotdropping gameplay.
It does not completely remove it. You can still hunt for
You also miss a huge point, but I don’t hold that against you. Livin in Null for years you probably just never learned or experienced classic strategic thinking because the solution of “cyno up, jump jump” exists for more than a decade and is used for 99% of all “problems”. It is very simple to go “hunting” completely without jumping directly on top of a target.
You can just bypass scouts or blocking camps with the BlackOps gang. If you spot a hostile gang, cyno your Fleet into a system nearby and then bait them with just half of your fleet, having the other half on backup. Yeah that requires some skill. You have to evaluate their dps vs your tank, time needed to warp, distance nessessary to stay out of their scouts attention. Thats SKILL.
Tbh, it is really sad to see that people these days don’t even considering classic skillfull gang warfare as an option because it is too inconvenient. Just cyno up, blobloblob is just so much easier… and then called “content”. Sad.
Why do you think a bomber fleet wants to brawl?
Do you have any idea of the tank of a bomber?
The purpose of such fleets is to not brawl at all, because the bombers would die.
It’s usually ambush or nothing.
And if it’s up to you: nothing, because ambushes are deleted.
I’m not against skillfull brawls and agree with you it’s a good idea to slow down blops engagements to allow brawling to be a more viable option.
I just don’t think blops gameplay should be practically removed to do so as you seem to suggest. Like brawls, blops gameplay too has a place in this game.
I don’t think that.
I absolutely have. Probably to the last digit without looking into PyFa.
They are not, you just have to select your targets (and fits) carefully. Even a Bomber Gang would have absolutely no problem to “ambush” a Marauder (bring SensorDamps, bring Tracking Disruptors), an Orca, a tackled Freighter or even a Capital if you have enough firepower. And if you would have listen carefully, you’d realize that Bombers would even have a much shorter delay than other ships, because they have ZERO sensor recalibration time and the shortest spoolup. So exactly for your example basically nothing would change at all.
And to be honest, a normal Smallgang of “normal combat ships” you can’t drop right now with just bombers, delay or not. They would just get shredded in seconds. The point isn’t to remove Bomber Blackops Drops. The point is to remove T3C/Cenotaph/BO drops on combat gangs to easily stomp them without risk.
So because of T3Cs and Cenotaphs do you wish to remove bomber blackops drops as collateral damage?
I don’t. Please read again what I wrote. If it isn’t clear: Keep reading again. For Bomber Drops there won’t be any significant change. Covert Cynos can still work without significant activation delay, Frig Jump Spoolup is a measly 5 seconds which wouldn’t “remove your gameplay” and the sensor calibration delay for a Bomber is exactly ZERO seconds. So you are currently claiming that adding a 5 second delay to Bombers (which btw. also was 30-60 seconds in the first 15 years of EVE), would “completely remove their gameplay”. Get serious please.
I guess I missed the part where you suggested frigate jump spoolup is different than a battleship jump spoolup.
How do you explain that when frigates don’t have a jump drive of their own but can only jump when they get pulled along with a blops battleship in a conduit jump when the battleship uses it’s battleship jump drive, which you say is much slower?
(Also sensor calibration delay doesn’t matter here since none of the ships will be cloaked while jumping.)
Try 2 decades. 
Methinks this horse has bolted.
Yeah but it only got problematic after the system change optimization somewhere around 2010 or 2012, when travel times between systems shortened from 30-40sec to 5-10sec.
Cynos itself are okayish as a ‘military logistic’ mechanic, they are just too fast and too effective today, tilting the whole system out of balance. Screw them back to their ‘original’ performance and it solves a lot of problems with area denial capabilities / power projection.
So I was thinking about this more earlier today as we dropped a small gang into a pile of hulks.
We caught 1 Falcon and 1 Porpoise out of about 40 ships on grid when we jumped in.
Now maybe we’re just bad, but given this is the kind of thing we do regularly, I don’t think we’re that bad.
So maybe cynos and blops are in a good place right now, experienced pilots can still mostly miss most of a fleet who gets dropped if the fleet being dropped is awake and on the ball.
So if you want to nerf bridges, then we need an equivalent nerf on ship agility or something to balance things back up.
No you don’t thats just false equivalence, Far more fair to say the game needs another blackout to see who is actually at their keyboard
I fail to see how a blackout would have altered anything that I described.
None of the participants were AFK.
So let me get this straight:
You jumped a specialized PvP gang via a magic teleporter on some Industrial ships that could not possibly defeat you ever, risked basically nothing, had no skill involved in somehow trying to lure them into a trap, baiting them, tricking them but instead just warped a single cynoship onto them, opened the magic portal and teleported your gang right on top of them.
And you really believe that kind of gameplay should somehow be rewarded?
Sorry to say it and no offense, but BlackOps Hotdropping is one of the most risk-averse PvP interaction the whole game has to offer. And you still got 2 kills with that, both of them somewhat deserved because the pilots probably messed up and didn’t leave the grid right when your cynochar entered the local.
And please don’t even try to convince anyone otherwise. BlackOps have the by far highest success rate (aka kill-to-loss-ratio) of any ship type in the whole game. Their use isn’t risky at all, it doesn’t require any skill compared to somewhat normal combat operations because it’s a 30 second gank in almost any case. And if any considerable resistance is showing up, all those glorious hero droppers cloak up, warp and jump out.
Man, your example is a perfect description of the problem.
Please try to view it unbiased from the perspective of an outsider: Do you know WHY large parts of space are basically empty and why almost everyone in null goes docking the moment some unknown char enters local? Because of exactly what you did there. Nobody has any interest to deal with those stupid hotdroppers. And any 3day old Prospect could be an injected Cynochar. There could be just 10 Bombers behind, but also 50 Redeemers. And behind those even a Capital Escalation Crew. Besides some rare andocdotal evidence there simply is no reasonable defense against that except just having your own Cyno ready next to you with even more stuff behind. And thats insanely stupid gameplay that most small groups simply don’t want to play.
So, you see, no BlackOps are NOT at a good spot. They are actively making everyone play the most risk-averse game they could. And in the end you get this boring gameplay in which you waste hours over hours to catch the 1-2 dudes that simply messed up to run quickly enough. Imagine what great fights you could had if you had just roamed around with all those people and hotdrops wouldn’t exist so any simliary sized gang would actually engage you, because they didn’t had to fear that a cyno opens and they just get blapped away.
Instacynos ruin gameplay. Even for yourself. You just can’t see it because you cannot see all the fights that never happen because of the omniperesent cyno threat and it’s effect on players behavior. Once you have enjoyed some real fights with somewhat balanced sides and no way to magically escalate so you have to stay and fight for half an hour or more until one side has won - you will never look back and not remotely believe that BlackOps hotdropping is in any way a good game mechanic.
Did I touch a nerve?
Sorry to trigger you.
How would you catch a fleet of 40 hulks?
They had a Sleipnir with them too, so not entirely defenseless, and a falcon, which could’ve cynoed in some opposition.
No, I honestly try to explain you why your example is not a sign that everything seems to be okay, but that your example is a perfect description of the problem.
I wouldn’t, unless they were stupid enough to stay despite my gang jumping into local and they not having scouts in the systems nerby. So, at best I would snack away what I could, but else not care much for them. And why should I? They are industrials. They are doing me a service by mining ore, which means they help keeping the mineral prices down. If it was up to me, they could mine 24/7 and make money that then fills their groups wallet so they can afford more ships for PewPew.
I don’t get this obsession with “oh there are 40 Hulks WE MUST KILL THEM!!!”. No you don’t. You can try sure, but you shouldn’t have magic teleporter attacks to do that nor do you deserve to catch more than 1 or 2 messy dudes if you do. If you want to prevent them from mining, form a proper fleet, attack their stations in the system and drive them out. Oh wait, there would probably be a defense for that timer that can seriously shoot back and I somehow guess that is not really what you would like to fight? How come? I thought you like danger? -_-
could, would, should. You and I we both know that in 99% of all cases no serious resistance happens, because else you wouldn’t have jumped in the first place. And if, you’d had extracted pretty quickly. -_-
Edit: lol mate I just looked it up…, you dropped
1 Widow
5 Redeemers
2 Panthers
and
2 Marshals
but they “had a Sleipnir so not exactly defenseless”…
My dude… seriously.