The Rookie's Guide to Black Ops

PvP Gameplay Center PvP Ships & Modules
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  1. What are Black Ops?
    Simply put, Black Ops Battleships are Tech II versions of the Tech I (or standard) battleships. Compared to their counterparts, Black Ops battleships have less actual hitpoints but they gain the ability to jump to all cynosural fields and/or bring along a fleet of allies to the battlefield; they also have significant bonuses to cloaking, allowing them to move around more stealthily compared with ships of the same class. In other words, Black Ops are battleships that sacrifice tank for versatility and mobility.
  2. Why would we use Black Ops?
    Due to their ability to jump to cynos (as mentioned above), Black Ops can be thought of as rapid response ships, capable of conducting a lightning-fast raid on targets and extracting just as quickly. They are also a valuable defensive asset, their jump drives allowing them to leap to the aid of allies under attack.
  3. How are Black Ops used?
    The usual method of Blops-dropping is to have a hunter light a cyno, jump in a few Black Ops and bombers and destroy one (or a few) high-value targets like Krabbing Dreadnoughts or Supercarriers. These fleets usually scatter after the target is destroyed and do not stay on-grid for very long.
    Defensively speaking, Black Ops are usually deployed along with FAXes and other capitals to try and save an ally under attack. In these situations BLOPs are fit slightly differently as part of the “ratting umbrella” favored by larger alliances.
    Another niche use for BLOPs is as a solo hunter with a multiboxed cyno/tackle ship, or more mundanely as a simple bridging ship for logistics.
  4. What are some of the characteristics of Black Ops?
    While the 5 Black Ops each have their own unique quirks and weaknesses, they still share a few major similarities:
    (1) Reduced tank: All of the BLOPs have significantly less hitpoints than T1 Battleships, though their corresponding T2 resist profiles help rectify this somewhat.
    (2) Increased damage: The BLOPs all have increased damage output thanks to their bonuses, which corresponds to their main role as rapid damage dealer.
    (3) Bonused cloaks: Black Ops have no targeting delay after cloaking, their cloak reactivation delay is reduced to 5 seconds, and they have a 650% bonus to ship max velocity when using cloaking devices. This gives them a better chance of infiltrating enemy lines and extracting after the finish.

There are currently 5 Black Ops hulls (not including the Python, an AT ship): One for each of the empires and the Marshal, CONCORD’s Black Ops. The four Empire Black Ops have a total of 19 slots, while the Marshal possesses 22.

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Let’s be real if you’re a rookie you should be tagging along on with a fleet in a bomber to start learning how to assess what targets are viable, how to position yourself on spicy grids, when to warp out of a worsening situation, how to use the jump drive and cloak to move a fleet around and drop safely without getting counter-dropped. Getting some experience in T1 battleships in PVP is probably a good idea before dropping a couple of bil on a Black Ops hull too.

Also being aware that nullsec defense fleets that just require you to jump and F1 on command with cap superiority back-up aren’t going to teach you the skills required to use the ships offensively.

Since they’re so SP intensive, it’s important to understand which hulls are used for what.

Redeemers are the most common, and the primary ship of large-scale black-ops fleets. Great damage output and projection with a thick armor tank. Also great platform for smartbombs or bonused energy neutralisers.

Widows have selective damage output with missiles, but are torn between low-range Torpedos, long reload Rapid Heavies and low DPS Cruise missiles. They tend to have fantastic damage output with a large shield tank, or huge utility with ECM and burst jammers and modest armor tank.

Panthers are better suited to solo work, due to speed and a more flexible slot layout than the Redeemer being it’s upsides, but for being a simple armor tank and DPS brick the slot layout and projectile turrets make it inferior to the Redeemer.

Sins are mostly for solo dropping, as the combination of being able to drain cap with neuts while also dealing damage with drones becomes less and less relevant when you have friends on grid also dealing DPS. The buffs to marauder DPS made it prohibitively expensive to make a fit that reliably threatens battleship ratters, so they’re a bit left out.