Bronson Hughes
ADVANCED Combat and Engineering
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Posted - 2008.12.04 20:09:00 -
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Edited by: Bronson Hughes on 04/12/2008 20:10:11 Judging from CCP's sense of 'balance', I seriously doubt that the Black Ops BS will become CovOps Cloak capable unless the Stealth Bomber line does as well. And we all know how likely that is to happen....
Right now, they're very handy niche ships. Hot-dropping Recons and Stealth Bombers on nearby fights or unsuspecting 0.0 carebears, bypassing gatecamps (to a degree, you still have ot get one ship through), and putting on funky light shows. They're somewhat useful in direct combat, but not nearly as useful as a ship that expensive and hard to train for should be.
The big problem with Black Ops from my experience (not flying, but operating with) is that they're somewhat of a hodge-podge of ships in terms of bonuses; there's little consistency between the 4 ships and even the bonuses on some of the single ships don't make much sense when combined with the others. The Widow is like the bastard child of a Rook and a Manticore on steriods. The Sin and the Panther both have seemingly useless movement bonuses in addition to the cloak-related one. The Sin only has 4 turret hardpoints. Only the Redeemer seems to have self-consistent bonuses that are all oriented towards the same purpose (i.e. heavy laser fire) and the hardpoints/slot layout to use them well.
What I think is necessary to really fix the Black Ops line is simply the following: give them a distinct purpose and the bonuses/slots/harpoints to accomodate that purpose. Are they supposed to be more like big recon ships or big stealth bombers? I'm leaning more towards the latter which means using the Redeemer as a model for the other three: 6 weapon hardpoints (5 for the Sin due to drone capability), and three bonuses focused on the primary weapon system of the ship.
The other things that people ask for; a fuel bay, longer jump range, reduced jump cost, etc., would be nice but before anything else I think that the combat role of the Black Ops needs to be sorted out first.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I also think you should be able to put up Covert Cynos in Cynojammed systems, but that's a technically Covert Cyno topic, not a Black Ops topic. -------------------- "I am hard pressed on my right; my centre is giving way; situation excellent; I am attacking." - Ferdinand Foch at the Battle of the Marne |