"Do Black Ops Battleships Need a Covert Ops Cloak?" - My View

Kirith Kodachi, the writer for Ninveah.com wrote an article listing pros and cons on whether or not the ability to fit a covert-ops cloak would be necessary to make the Black Ops battleships more viable on the battlefields of New Eden - click to read it. I initially wanted to post my thoughts on the matter as a comment, but it soon appeared it would make for a rather lengthy one, so instead I turned it into a post.

Before I start - I am not a black ops pilot, so my point of view might not be considered very accurate. However I do know several black ops pilots, and have heard plenty about how they operate their ships at the moment.

The ships and their bonuses

Amarr - Redeemer

Battleship skills bonuses: 10% reduction in gun cap usage; 5% bonus to ROF
Marauder skill bonuses: 7.5% bonus to tracking

Minmatar - Panther

Battleship skills bonuses: 10% bonus to gun damage; 5% bonus to ROF
Marauder skill bonuses: 5% bonus to ship speed

Gallente - Sin

Battleship skills bonuses: 5% bonus to gun damage; 10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints
Marauder skill bonuses: 5% bonus to ship agility

Caldari - Widow
Battleship skills bonuses: 10% bonus to CM/Torpedo speed; 5% bonus to ROF
Marauder skill bonuses: 30% ecm strength

Also, all ships have a 125% multiplier per black ops level to cloaked velocity. All ships except the Widow can field 5 heavy or sentry drones, with the Panther and Sin having sufficient carrying capacity to bring other types as well.

The Panther and Redeemer stand out as the heavy hitters among the lot, being able to put out around (or over) 600 dps at ranges of up to 40km. This with reasonable armor buffer and serious (2x reppers can be fitted on each) remote repair capabilities. The Panther is faster, while the Redeemer is better tanked and does better in close quarters with that tracking bonus. It does however somewhat suffer from CPU starvation.

Recent changes to Black Ops Battleships

In the latest patch, all black ops received a 1km3 fuel bay, so they might cope better in their assigned role of bridging other ships (bombers, covops, force recons, blockade runners) on short range jumps. In my opinion, this was a necessary fix (this feature was released pre-nerfed, as far as I know) and it does in no way represent a "boost" towards the combat capabilities of the ship itself.

The general view on the subject is pretty much the one illustrated in the caption below:

"Hello, I am the Panther; I'll be your Rapist tonight...Sorry, fresh out of lube.
By the way, when we're done, do you mind signing this petition to give me and my friends better tools to rape and pillage?"

This is mainly because few people have troubled themselves to train for this ship class and for many they represent fear-inspiring mythical creatures. So, is that the case or not? Well, let's see...

Arguments For the Covert ops Cloak

First off, it would be SERIOUSLY cool. But that's not an argument. just the inner child wanting it all.

Kirith does a good writeup on this; but in addition to what he said, I have more arguments.
First off, starting at the price tag: For nearly 800 Million, this ship can bridge some ship categories, jump itself and perform, in most if not in all aspects, worse than its T1 counterparts (which cost less than 1/10th of the price) in a combat situation.

Given the price, we won't see them using sniper fits with cardboard plating to tear down any type of orbital installation or capital ship as a comment in Kirith's post suggests - dreadnaughts can do the same job for far less cash output. And they are insurable.

Giving Black Ops covert cloaking capabilities is also an anti-blob measure. They should be able to follow blobs around and pick off stragglers on the way, while they themselves have a chance of surviving when they meet face to face with the blob fleet.

Arguments Against the Covert Ops Cloak

This is a classic case of CCP offering a finger and the players grabbing the whole hand. At first, Covert Ops Cloaks were reserved for Covert Ops Frigates and Force Recons; not long ago Stealth Bombers and Blockade runners joined the club. And now Black Ops Battleships? How about HAC's with the ability to warp cloaked? or Interceptors?

While it is true that Black Ops don't have quite the same potential for destruction as their T1 counterparts, they can very well pick their engagements and get out extremely fast if things look bad. Short-range hotdrops will be the order of the day, with Black Ops being able to go wherever they damn well please, since now covert cyno fields can be lit in cyno-jammed systems too. They can also send an avant-garde of bombers and heavy tacklers/ewar platforms (force recons) to soften up targets.

Granted, they won't be useful for influencing sovereignty, but they will be too efficient a weapon of terror used for interdiction tactics, logistics disruption and enemy demoralization. A relatively small group can fully cripple an entire alliance this way.

As to the fact that it will be a blob deterrent - quite the contrary. We'll simply see different blobs - blobs that can warp cloaked and go wherever they please, as long as fuel is on hand.

Rebuttal

Although these ships can now go almost everywhere via jump drives, the logistics are not that easy when pondering long-range incursions into enemy space. Fuel resupply can be done via blockade runner, but it's tedious and requires one if not several pilots who would otherwise fly a combat vessel to fly a fuel tank.

And you won't see large blobs of this type of ship - as already mentioned, they are quite expensive to lose to accidental decloaking caused by a gangmember. Marauders are also just a bit more expensive, and in spite of their drawbacks they make formidable war machines. Do you see blobs of them roaming around?

As for the claim that they will be used as a "third man in" (from Kirith's blog post) - this can already be done, for instance by gate campers. Take an average lowsec system with a gatecamp. A camp-busting force of similar size warps in and engages. Suddenly a few black ops aligned with the campers decloak and unleash their guns, ewar and tackle upon the camp busters without any delay, since they have no recalibration period. Having covert ops cloaks on black ops battleships would allow the camp busters to theoretically bring their own surprise to the battlefield, thus balancing it out.

Counter Rebuttal

Adding a covert ops cloak would allow Black Ops to function in full safety in roles it was not meant to in the first place - like NPC ratting and mission running in unsecured space. Although less efficient than a marauder, the increase in safety would make them worth using in such roles.

Also, adding the covert-ops cloak together with a de-cloak targeting delay wouldn't be any better - actually it would be quite useless. The pilot would still be able to use the cloak to warp away safely from a hairy situation, and when entering the battlefield, they would simply decloak mid-warp and be ready to fire when they arrive.

To sum it up...

There are many justified concerns that the Black Ops would be overpowered if given Covert Ops cloak capabilities, but at the same time there are also quite a few justified arguments in favor of this move.

All in all, I think putting this on the test server and getting players involved in testing different scenarios would clarify this issue once and for all, determining possible adjustments to compensate so that the added capabilities don't turn this ship class into a do-all monster.

Macro Banning now Serious Business

Graph by CCP

In the new devblog, CCP Grimmi presents the strategy used to rid the New Eden cluster of its most annoying problem - macros and characters responsible for RMT (real money trades).

Codenamed "Unholy Rage", the offensive against macro runners started on June 22nd. Prior to this, in March 2009 around 3000 RMT-related accounts were banned, and during the downtime on June 22nd roughly 6200 more accounts were tempbanned, and then perma-banned when the temp ban expired and they seemed to return to their old ways as if nothing had happened.

I've written about the effects of this mass banning on the market as they unfolded here and here.

Other changes were a clear reduction of the server load on certain nodes corresponding to the systems frequented by isk-generating characters and, of special interest to miners, an asteroid abundance in empire belts the likes of which haven't been seen in years.

The market seems to be relatively stable; the number of transactions dropped a little (10%) post-ban, but soon recovered. Prices did rise on key products macros used to generate, such as implants and ice products. Also, with no more macro accounts, PLEX prices should continue on a descending trend.

RMT won't go away, but at least with many of the macros gone playing conditions will be improved for many real subscribers (while RMT customers will be forced to become functional members of the New Eden economy)

Wormhole Adventures of the Bloody Red Phobos

So, finally something interesting happened today, but before telling you about it I'll have to give mad props to fellow pod pilot and corpmate "Andreiv", gifted Buzzard pilot who provided warp-ins on all occasions mentioned below, thus missing out on getting on the actual killmails. Thanks, Andrei.

After downtime today I was chilling in drydock, spinning my camera drone around my Helios, pondering whether to go scanning or not (Andrei being a lucky bastard netted 2 medium c-type boosters in as many days)... while I was spinning and spinning and spinning, corp chat blinks. It's Andrei, and he has news. Turns out he's in a class 2 wormhole, and there's 3 ships with him: a Hurricane, a Thrasher and a Probe.

"What are the pilots' names, can you tell?" ask I, to which he replies "Oh, there are no pilots... can you fly those things?". Imagine my disappointment, I can't fly the 'Cane, being gallente/amarr specialised and neither can my colleague... tsk tsk... we'll have to blow it up and see what falls out... "Hold your ground at the wormhole entrance in K-space," I say while jumping into a Deimos, "I'm coming over".


Some gate jumps later I find myself at the wormhole entrance in Otitoh, The Forge region. We both jump through and gang warp to the ships. I start shooting up the Hurricane, which goes down like a bag of rocks, then turn to the Thrasher, which by the name seemed salvage fitted. Then it dawns on me I did have Minmatar Frigate trained, which meant I could fly the thrasher and the Probe frigate next to it. I climb into the Thrasher to jetisson any sleeper loot, but I'm disappointed to only find some Reinforced Metal Scraps. So I climb back into the Deimos and shoot the damn thing to pieces. This of course meant that I didn't get a killmail for it, since it became my ship when I climbed aboard, but hilariously I got an insurance payout:

Your friendly insurance company has transferred 300,000.00 ISK into your account for the recent loss of your ship. This payout is the default payout for an uninsured ship. If you are interested in better insurance then please visit a station with an Insurance Service for further details.

I blew the Probe out of the water just as the owner, Jopie Adam, was appearing on directional scan in his Capsule. What a time to appear... :P

We thought that was the end of that, went home, put the loot away and so forth. Andrei had to take his son to the park, so he logged, and so did I after a bit.

As I came back on tonight Andrei greeted me with more news - in the meantime the corporation Jopie Adam belonged to, one "Nuclear Fabritronics" had anchored a medium Caldari POS in the wormhole, together with some assorted hangars, making it look like they were moving in. "Great", I say, "... not much we can do about it by ourselves".

Then something interesting happened: while decloaked to launch some probes, Andrei's buzzard appeared on their directional scan. Promptly, a message appeared in local:

[18:55:10] andreiv > Dreakco Marilius > Buzzard Pilot- Suggest you leave or you will be scanned down and destroyed

"This is rude", I say. "Yeah, especially since the three of them are huddled up at POS in an Iteron, a Hulk and... a simple Capsule. Hey, maybe they'll start mining, there's a gravimetric sig I scanned down here" said Andrei. "Yup, the Hulk just warped into the gravi site".


"Hang on, I'll get a surprise lined up for them." I said and went to get the brand new Phobos I had gotten some time ago but which I hadn't had time to use yet.
"... if they're so pissy about people coming and going through the system, we'll see if we can't ransom them". I hoped by the time I got there all three would be hugging a can in the belt, sitting ducks just waiting to be bubbled and shot down.

While I was on the way a Heron pilot stumbled into the system. Promptly he was hailed in local the same way as Andrei was:

[19:23:55] andreiv > Dreakco Marilius > Heron Pilot- Suggest you leave before you get shot Down and Destroyed

OK... those guys seriously needed to be taken down a peg or two.

"Hang on, Hulk is warping to POS. He's coming back, and there's a Retriever with him. It's Jopie Adam, the guy whose ships we blew up... but the two are 60km apart". Judging by the time it took the hulk to fill up and warp to POS I figured it was probably cargo rigged. "Okay, we'll go for the Hulk. I'm almost there. Get to about 5km of the hulk and I'll warp to you. As soon as I say GO, you jump out to avoid getting caught uncloaked by my bubble. Ready.... GO". I yelled GO as I was in warp towards Andrei. The nimble Buzzard aligned and warped before I arrived.

I came out of warp 8km away from the hulk. Bubble up - he's not going anywhere. I locked him and started pounding with my Heavy Ion II's. The Retriever got out. Sensor Booster was on, expecting his drones... but there were none. And his shield went down extremely fast because it turned out he hadn't fitted a shield booster. A couple salvos more for his armor and hull and he's history. His pod was caught in the HIC bubble and web and I was going to offer a ransom... 30mil should be OK, considering the price hike of implants... but before I could finish typing my business proposal in local, I was made a counter-offer in a language I didn't understand, but which didn't sound too friendly:

[19:49:41] Dreakco Marilius > Ja jy dink jy is slim, POES

So without any more haggling, Dreakula, the Hulk pilot won a free trip to the cloning vats, all expenses paid. I also blew up the hulk wreck since my cargo was still full with cap charges and ammo, neither of which I wanted to jetisson to make room for a couple of strip miners and assorted junk.

[19:50:05] Brutus Septimius > that's for being rude to passers-by
[19:50:15] Dreakco Marilius > Bite me :P
[19:50:35] Dreakco Marilius > Being rude to passers by that come in here and lock me will get shot at
[19:50:42] EVE System > Channel changed to Otitoh Local Channel

I have no idea what Dreakco's last line meants exactly, but given the fact he spent all the time in an Iteron inside the POS shields doesn't make me take his threats too seriously...

After we were back in K-space, I ran that first line through Google translator with "detect language" as a "from" selection. It came out: "Yes JY JY Dink is smart, Cat", which I interpreted as "yeah you think you're smart, pussy?"... is that Dutch, or am I mistaken?

Tsk tsk... W-space takes its toll on people, makes them irrascible and not quite rational. Mining Plagioclase in unsecured space while yelling at passers-by to leave or be destroyed by a Hulk, Iteron and Retriever doesn't shed too good a light on you.

Again, thank you, Nuclear Fabritronics for chasing our boredom away :)
Killing a few pilotless ships and a Hulk isn't something to brag about, but given the circumstances it needed to be done. I'm sure any other pilots would have done the same.

Fly safe.

Sniper HAC's - the Ishtar

So when Manasi was wondering about sniper HAC's today, the ships he mentioned were the Zealot, Muninn and Eagle. All capable ships for their respective races (some more than others *cough*Eagle*cough*); but that doesn't matter for Gallente people wanting to tag along on sniper HAC roams.

The two options available to Gallente pilots - the Ishtar and the Deimos have their strengths, but also drawbacks. I'm still trying to figure out how to make good use of the Deimos' rig slots, but I fear that'll take some reworking of the whole concept I've come up with so far. So, without further ado, this is what I've come up with for the Ishtar:

[Ishtar, sentry sniper]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II, offline
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range
Passive Targeter II or a second Sensor Booster II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I

Drone Link Augmentor I
Drone Link Augmentor I
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Sentry Damage Augmentor I
Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Warden II x5
Bouncer II x5

First off, let's see the numbers - with reasonable skills (which for the serious Ishtar pilot means Drone Interfacing V):

> DPS: with Wardens 400; with Bouncers 450+ => V. Good
> Alpha: with Wardens 1600-ish; with bouncers 1800/1900-ish (4 second duration * calculated DPS)
> Range: with Wardens 105km [30 falloff]; with Bouncers 84km [42 falloff] => Good
> Speed: 1300-1350(ish) => OK (considering we bring a 1600 plate)
> Tank: 37K ehp buffer; small repper to fix yourself up if you've managed to escape in less than great condition => V. Good (considering the average Zealot falls to shreds after taking around 20K damage)
> Tracking: 0.016 rad/s, which is better than what the Zealot using Aurora ammo can hope for

The numbers look good on paper, but in the field it's different. When the FC starts calling primaries, you launch drones, lock and start shooting - which is all dandy if you've set up hotkeys for drone actions such as attack and scoop to cargo. The funny part comes when this isn't from a stationary position. Sentry drones are dead in the water, so if the FC tells you to align to someplace and maintain speed while shooting, you've next to no way of getting those expensive T2 sentries back (except warping back alone, which isn't something you'll want to do, as it usually means you getting one-volleyed, doomsdayed or killed in some other hilarious way by the enemy fleet).

So for all it's worth, here's the pros and cons of the sentry sniper:

+ Great DPS, insane Alpha strike - no other sniper setup can go over 400dps, and it gives the Muninn a run for its money in the Alpha strike department. Actually, if the figures are correct, it's Alpha is better than Manasi's Muninn's.
+ Damage type can be changed to suit needs
+ Great EHP buffer compared to competitors
+ Drones keep firing when you're jammed... they have funny ways of selecting the next target after the current SOB under fire snuffs it, and I can 100% guarantee they won't pick the same as your FC (and almost 100% sure they'll split fire on 2 or 3 targets)
+ Your speed doesn't count diddly for tracking. Sitting duck or pedal to the metal - it's all the same.
+ Due to the space left in the drone bay (75m3 with Heavy Assault Ships IV, 125m3 with Heavy Assault Ships IV), you have room for several more flights of smaller drones. 1/2 flights of meds and 1 flight of lights, or 1 flight of meds and 3/5 flights of lights... you can pretty much bring whatever you damn well please. Warriors to fend off ceptors, repair drones to help your gang between fights... the list can go on. Or you can simply bring more sentries...
+ Look Ma, no ammo... free cargo room FTW

- You can easily "misplace" drones if you're not careful
- Your source of DPS can be destroyed, aside from being prone to misplacement
- No gun overloading for you; actually aside from the obvious (MWD), overloading is pretty useless on this ship (although with that damage output... who the fuck needs to?)
- Have I mentioned the fact that you will lose your drones? (hint: Gallente custom is to name each one... you'll stop doing that after about 2 sorties)

So in conclusion, while it is true that without being used to flying it you will most likely die, the Ishtar, with it's minuses compensated by its very attractive pluses is a very powerful tool in the right hands (and with a bit of luck you might not have to buy new drones). It certainly requires finesse, a steady hand and if at all possible a lag-free environment. If you prefer the "I roll my face on the keyboard and stuff dies" approach, FOTM Zealot is your ship.

Stay tuned for a post about the Deimos, although I fear it might be beyond help as a sniper.