Yeah most lol. Asar Kardde knows what he’s talking about and gave good advice. Anyone can see I’ve had my fair share of drops flying them (with no capital safety blanket to bail me out), so I’ll share my 2 cents.
Let’s clear up a few of wacky misconceptions and ideas presented.
@Praetor_Jin_Gitaxias’s scorpion idea is legit and reasonably practical, just leave it cloaked first. I’ve survived a few silly situations in my own widow doing a similar thing. The boosh tactic is also solid but more risky if they bring an arazu and you’re not quick on the draw. Lockbreaker bombs have very weak ECM sadly so I wouldn’t recommend.
The whole catch-them-on-the-gates thing - As @Syzygium says they will usually just stay cloaked and jump back. However with their cloaks and ability to jump to exit cynos, black ops are very nimble and very difficult to catch on gates. I’ve gated my blops through gate camps with proper fastlock ships and skynet fighters and the only times I got caught were deliberate baits to set up hot-drops.
My experience of messy engagements across gates in black ops gangs has been that they’re quite favourable since the safety net of jumping gate is so much more powerful when you have a covert ops cloak. If you pursue targets across gates you can light cynos on both sides for unique pincer opportunities. The options go on.
“Why don’t they just drop caps anyway?”: @TiberianSun371AlexW - Commit too much and you get escalated by hostile groups. Captials are far less agile and evasive than Black ops so the risks are massively higher, and Black Ops are plenty sufficient to kill most targets anyway.
You can be incredibly aggressive with a good covert ops gang with a core of Black Ops battleships, because they have such an incredibly ability to strike only at targets of their choice, then bail or bait and switch at signs of danger for ships of their size and power.