Category: EVE Online

EVE Online, a spaceship based MMO game by CCP Games

New Corp – Changes!

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

So I’ve been running this one-man corp of mine for about a year and it was… going nowhere. I did have enough time to log on briefly and do the PI. I could build some stuff (I have been inventing and manufacturing 425mm Railgun II‘s for some time), but most of the time I did not feel like flying to hubs for materials. Any kind of low or null sec ventures would require me to team up with others (and either wait for them, or make them wait for me). Of course I did earn some occasional kills when someone more or less explicitly crossed my path and did something stupid.

But it’s all history now, because after this tweet:

I have applied, been screened, and in the end allowed to join Aideron Robotics, the corp which brings you Aura, an excellent EVE API client for Android. I will be joining an army of industrialists, who fuel the war machine and build ships for those who make things boom. The more ships you guys destroy, the more ISK I make, so keep ’em coming! My inner businessman is looking forward to Hulkageddon V and changes introduced in Escalation to Inferno: both will drive mineral prices crazy (they have become quite high already – market warriors already make profit from the coming changes).

EVE Online meets LEGO

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

You probably wonder what EVE Online has to do with LEGO. An individual under the nickname “czar” has created a very “lifelike” Rifter model out of LEGO bricks. Model is sized at about 20 inches and looks cool enough, even for grown ups (are EVE players really grown up?).

Czar has received a lot of attention with his model: from Hilmar Veigar, the CEO of CCP, from the LEGO CUUSOO team, Massively, Kotaku and from a variety of players, including CSM representative, Seleene.

If you like the idea, please go support it. Once you did that, spread the word!

PS. I used to be a large LEGO Technic fan when I was a kid, and if this set makes into shops, I’ll just go and buy it.

UPDATE: Not long after Rifter model broke 4k supporters, an individual called Guindel replied with a LEGO model of his own – an Einherji fighter. It seems that Minmatar ships and LEGO bricks go together quite well 😉 It is also one more proof, that EVE Online is one of the most emergent MMO games, letting people with creative talents contribute to the game and its community.


More details about Inferno and The Future of EVE

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , ,

This is the Inferno “Current status” post.

For Inferno 1.2 information please go to this post: Inferno keeps on burning: Inferno 1.2 (updated)

It will be updated every time new information becomes available.

Feel free to check other posts about EVE Online: Inferno

This post is quite long, so here’s a short summary of what’s ahead:

  • Escalation to Inferno
  • Ship balancing – frigates
  • War mechanic changes
  • New modules
  • New Inventory UI
  • Graphical changes: new models for bombers and V3 skins for Amarr ships
  • EVE – Dust link
  • The future of EVE

The summer expansion will be rolled out in two steps. First step is dubbed ‘Escalation’ and it has already been deployed on 24th of April.

Escalation to Inferno

Escalation is going to be a precursor patch for Inferno, and it will only contain a handful of new features:

The devs did not reveal any specific details about what will be changed in the forementioned areas, but knowing CCP we will have an opportunity to learn more from dev-blogs, which are sure to come soon.

Ship balancing

CCP Ytterbium has been working hard on ship rebalancing and more details about the changes to Frigates, that will hit in Inferno are available in this forum post: Combat frigate changes for Inferno.

  • Tech I frigates will now be split into four roles: Combat, Attack, Bombardment and Support
  • This means mining frigates will have to go (Industry tutorial missions will need to be modified, too)
  • Rookie frigates will be made better and more flexible, but less powerful than other Tech I frigates.
  • As for effectiveness, tech 1 frigates should be worse than faction and Tech 2, but more flexible and easier to fit

TORMENTOR:

  • New bonuses: 10% to small energy turret range and 10% bonus to small energy capacitor use per level
  • Slot layout: 3 H, 3 M, 4 L, 3 turrets, no launchers
  • Fittings: 60 PWG, 140 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 350 / 450 / 400
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 280 / 180 s / 1.55
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 320 / 3.05 / 1180000 / 3.37 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 40km / 620 / 4
  • Sensor strength: 9 Radar
  • Signature radius: 35

PUNISHER:

  • New bonuses: 5% bonus to Small Energy Turret damage and 5% bonus to armor resistances per skill level
  • Slot layout: 4 H, 2 M, 4 L, 3 turrets, no launchers
  • Fittings: 55 PWG, 124 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 350 / 500 / 450
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 300 / 180 s / 1.66
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 330 / 3.35 / 1047000 / 3.28 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 25km / 640 / 4
  • Sensor strength: 9 Radar
  • Signature radius: 37

MERLIN:

  • New bonuses: 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage and 10% to small hybrid turret range per level
  • Slot layout: 3 H, 4 M, 3 L, 3 turrets, no launchers
  • Fittings: 40 PWG, 180 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 500 / 350 / 350
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 260 / 180 s / 1.44
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 310 / 3.7 / 997000 / 3.45 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 50km / 580 / 5
  • Sensor strength: 11 Gravimetric
  • Signature radius: 39

INCURSUS:

  • New bonuses: 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage and 10% bonus to armor repairer effectiveness per level
  • Slot layout: 3 H, 3 M, 4 L, 3 turrets, no launchers
  • Fittings: 45 PWG, 135 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 400 / 450 / 500
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 280 / 180 s / 1.55
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 340 / 3.15 / 1028000 / 3.0 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 5 / 5
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 30km / 600 / 4
  • Sensor strength: 9 Magnetometric
  • Signature radius: 42

RIFTER:

  • Unchanged bonuses
  • Unchanged Slot layout: 4 H, 3 M, 3 L, 3 turrets, 2 launchers
  • Unchanged fittings: 37 PWG, 125 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 450 / 400 / 400
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 240 / 180 s / 1.33
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 355 / 3.19 / 1067000 / 3.19 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 22.5km / 660 / 4
  • Sensor strength: 8 Ladar
  • Signature radius: 35

As for the already famous Battlecruiser and Destroyers rebalancing mentioned in this dev-blog: “Rebalancing eve, one ship at a time“. The plan for new skill trees including racial Destroyers and Battlecruisers has been postponed.

Sources: CCP has postponed the skill tree changes plan, at least temporarily.

Q&A regarding ship balancing and skill tree are available in this post by CCP Ytterbium:

EVE Online: Inferno

The Inferno itself will ignite a month later, on 22nd of May, just a week after Diablo III release. Coincidence? 😉

We already know what to expect, as most of the features have been discussed in detail on Fanfest:

War mechanic changes

War mechanic changes will surely bring a lot more conflict to high sec and include the following:

  • War dec cost formula changed: the cost is modified by amount of people in target corp
  • Corp cannot join an alliance until war is finished – no more alliance hopping
  • CEO/Director can war dec without voting.
  • Wars will no longer be automatically retracted. A surrender option has been improved and can now involve a transfer of ISK. It is also a kind of peace treaty, because it will not be possible to war dec again for a specific period of time.
  • Wars have a weekly cycle, at which time the aggressor can choose to prolong (at ISK cost) for another week or end the war. As long as there is ISK in agressor’s coffer, the war can last forever.
  • Killmails received love – they look more like killboards now. Wars also received a War Report window which tracks kills and statistics (ships lost by type, ISK lost, etc.)
  • If you leave your corporation while it is engaged in a non-mutual war, then you will not be able to rejoin the corporation until that war ends, or until 7 days pass, whichever comes first.
  • Neutral RR will now give a suspect flag – check this blog post for details on how new PVP flags work.

More details about war mechanic have already been provided in a recent dev-blog.

Revamped Faction Warfare:

  • LP for kills
  • Bunkers are now infrastructure hubs
  • LP for all FW actions (capturing complexes, capturing infrastructures hubs, etc)
  • New FW front page
  • Consequences for capturing systems/regions (benefits for you, grief for your enemy)
  • Capturing FW system affect SOV ownership
  • FW LP stores will now sell Datacores
  • Datacores from R&D agents will have a new flat price of 100 RP plus 10k ISK
    more info is available here: http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28659

New Modules

  • Drone Damage module (Extrinsic Damage Amplifier): +9% (t1) or +12% (t2) to your drone friends dmg output
  • CPU Rigs (Small/Medium/Large Processor Overclocking Unit)
  • Fueled Shield booster (Small/Medium/Large Ancillary Shield Booster), using Cap Boosters as charges, and when the charges run out, the new booster switches to draining the capacitor instead.
  • Light and Medium Web drones – small, fast, but with huge sig radius and very low HP.
  • Adaptive Armor Hardener – it shifts its resistance according to incoming damage. You can only fit 1 such mod. Overheating will reduce the adaptation cycle.
  • MagSheath Target Breaker – it has a chance to break all target locks on your ship based on how many other ships are targeting it. The more incoming locks, the better the chance of activation.

CCP has explained what they intended the modules to be: like cards in Magic The Gathering – changing every expansion. For many reasons this was not the best approach and CCP gave up on the idea. Our devs want to freshen our experience, so they will be bringing some new modules that allow new tactics in combat. One of the ideas is Tactical Warp Drive also known as Micro Jump Drive – a module that instantly catapults your ship 110 km forward. Normal warp jammers and bubbles will stop it, of course. In addition to that, a new warp bubble would be introduced, 48km in diameter, which would only disrupt the Tactical Warp. Unfortunately this mod will not make it to the initial version of Inferno, so we will probably see it in a subsequent release.

By the way, I have the “Salvage Drones” skill trained on Tranquility for some time now (see screenie below). CCP has seeded it by mistake at some point in the past, but it was a rather useless skill. CCP is going to fix that by introducing the Salvage Drones to the game:

 

Unfortunately, they do not work automatically as you might have thought: you need to manually send each drone after a specific wreck. It is still a way to free high slots on dedicated drone boats. Dear CCP, will Noctis get a drone bay now?  Salvage drones will not make it to the intitial Inferno release as well. We can expect Salvage Drones in a subsequent release.

New features don’t end on the first slide though.

I have covered the list of features in my first post about Inferno here. Also, some more details about Crime and Punishment system (which is missing on the slide above) have been covered here. I have also written about the information about missile launchers in this post.

New Inventory UI

  • Managing corporation items in a station
  • All item management from POS structures done in space on grid
  • All Inventory management in space (wrecks, opening other ship locations, etc)
  • All Inventory management in stations (items, ships)
  • This change does NOT affect the ASSETS window itself

Inventory is loading... Ships tree in new Inventory Items tree in new Inventory

Graphical changes: V3 and ship re-modeling

CCP did not disappoint my predictions about V3 skins for sub-capital Ammar hulls, so EVE ships are becoming even more pretty! Unfortunately devs did not say much about V3 skins for Minmatar ships. I hope that we are still going to see them in Inferno, but it remains unconfirmed so far. In the official patch notes for Inferno devs have confirmed that Minmatar V3 process is near its end, and we will see new skins in the near future, but not in the initial release of Inferno.

v3 skin for Abaddon   v3 skin for Damnation v3 skin for Navy Slicer v3 skin for Navy Slicer - 2 v3 skin for Cruor

Graphic changes won’t end here, because many ships will receive re-designs similar to that of the Maller and rookie ships.

Stealth bombers will receive a facelift to accomodate oversized Torpedo Launchers and one Bomb Launcher hardpoint (compare the new Tristan and Nemesis models below)

New Tristan Model New Nemesis Model

Another V3-ed ship mentioned in the official patch notes for Inferno was the Echelon, which in its current state has some broken decals on its hull.

EDIT: More details is now available in this post about ships makeover in Inferno.

As for the improved effects, CCP has also mentioned visible shield hits and visible hull damage, not to mention revamped multi-stage explosions.

EVE – DUST link

BASED ON THE DEV-BLOGS AND OFFICIAL SOURCES, EVE-DUST LINK REMAINS UNCONFIRMED.

One of the most important features is the EVE – DUST 514 link, which has been unveiled at the Fanfest. Of course planetary bombardment is not the only place where these two games will overlap:

Devs have mentioned a shared chat and eve-mail system and also hinted a possibility that EVE and DUST players will be able to craft items for each other.

A DUST 514 companion app called the ‘DUST 514: Neocom’ was also mentioned in the keynote, initally for the PS Vita (limited gameplay included):

As for the beta of DUST 514 we have been shown the following schedule:

Now for the future of EVE

Crucible and Inferno concentrate on one of the three pillars of a persistant game world: Destruction. That’s the favourite one for the most of EVE Online players. But for a game to be successfull, it has to include two more foundations: Harvesting and Crafting.

The future of EVE will concentrate on these two parts of the game. Concepts include:

  • Ring mining: possible moon minerals mineable from planetary rings, CCP mentioned task for a group of people, most likely profitable but also dangerous.
  • Implant Manufacturing and Derelict Stations Exploration: a Star Trek like avatar gameplay, will be a source of materials for advanced implants and might include PVP features.
  • More POS structures, meaningful upgrades etc. Possibility to create own research an manufacturing station for solo players and small groups of players.
  • CCP will be giving more control to players – possibly station ownership in high and low sec. This trend could be seen for a while, as New Eden population have been growing steadily over the years: less and less materials are being sold by NPCs, shuttles are not seeded by the NPCs anymore, most of the trade goods are now part of Planetary Interaction and are no longer sold by the NPCs, and players can now own Customs offices above planets.

Pics or it didn’t happen? Sure, why not:

The original keynote

The original keynote is over two hours long and is available on YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Ozvef7CvQ]

All the keynotes from Fanfest 2012 have been already uploaded by the CCP, so even more details about Inferno will be coming soon!

 

Webbing ships to deny docking is now bannable

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , ,

GM Grimmi has recently published an announcement about webifying Jump Freighters to prevent them from cancelling warp and docking. Broken code in the game disallows cancelling warp when webified, and players used it to some extent in low sec to catch and kill Jump Freighters at stations, effectively denying them ability to dock back to safety. This is now considered an exploit and perma-bannable offense.

Webifying freighters to make them warp faster is not an exploit though! Many players voiced their concerns that using an alt to web a Freighter is bannable too, but this is fortunately not true.

It is also worth mentioning, that pilots who lost their Jump Freighters in this manner are likely eligible for a reimbursement.

PVP flag changes in EVE Inferno unveiled at Fanfest

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,

As usual, CCP releases a lot of information regarding the next expansion for EVE Online at Fanfest: the big annual event in Iceland, where players can meet devs in person.

Those of you who actually managed to go to the Fanfest, know the information below already. Those who are not so lucky (including myself) might want to read this post about changes to criminal mechanics. Bear in mind that nothing is “set in stone” and is subject to change. To sum up the proposed flag changes:

  • Players will see all aggro timers and will know when it’s safe to log off
  • Remote assisting will now give 60 second no jump/no dock timer. It will keep resetting until assist is stopped.
  • Reduce performance issues

New “suspect” flag

  • Minor crimes. Anyone can shoot you without penalty.
  • Flipping a can for example
  • Anyone assisting a suspect becomes a suspect

Criminal Flag

  •  Just like current GCC
  • Killing someone makes you a criminal
  • Concord will now instantly destroy your ship instead of spawning multiple CONCORD vessels
  • CCP has not yet considered delays of CONCORD response in high sec related to security status
  • CCP is considering warp scrambling the offender first, then instant destruction of the ship after X seconds

Sec Status

  • Security status for ship killing will only bring character to -5
  • Pod killing will bring ss further down to -10
  • Killing someone with positive ss will decrease your ss
  • Killing someone with a negative ss will give bonus to your ss
  • Possible to trade in criminal tags to CONCORD for ss increase.
  • It will be possible to kill a -5 character without penalty in low sec

Killmails

  • Adding more information to battle reports including remote assistance
  • More data in the EVE API
  • Killmails for self destructing
  • Killmails for reinforcing structures

DUST – EVE link

Yesterday CCP has also presented a keynote about DUST 514. One of the important things is the ability to make orbital strikes by EVE Online players, which will affect DUST players. DUST bunnies are not defenseless though, there will be surface batteries capable of blowing up ships in orbit as well.

Feel free to visit the forum thread about DUST 514 keynote, which has been started by CCP Navigator. Before you do, however, I really recommend you these two videos:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF4diq-KlXI]

and here you can watch the keynote itself:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDW-HrzBo7s]

PS. Real time SD stream from Fanfest is available here: http://fanfest.eveonline.com/en/stream/free. You can also buy a HD stream access for as much as 1 PLEX. This will grant you two Quafe 2012 t-shirts for your avatars and a limited edition ship: Iteron Mark IV Quafe Edition.

Back to the roots: a tale of Planetary Interaction.

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

Back in Tyrannis I have started my adventure with Planetary Interaction the moment it was introduced on the test server, way before it was released to Tranquility. Even though PI in its initial version was a clickfest (one had to manually set each extractor on each planet), I have started off with a Tier 4 product: the Wetware Mainframe.

Some time has passed and I have switched from actively playing EVE to my current semi-AFK mode. I have decided that moving stuff between colonies takes too much time, and scrapped everything on my planets. I have started making the POS fuel products instead, namely Coolant, Mechanical Parts and Robotics. The income wasn’t bad, so I’ve sticked with that for a while.

Wetware Mainframe however sells for more than it used to when I was making it. Gratned, the costs of PI have increased (unless you have the ability to put your own Customs Office up – and defend it), but the profit margin still looks healthy.

Say hello to my new setup:

The drawing is not the most beautiful piece of art on the internet, but it clearly explains all the connections between each planet. This is still far from optimized though; extraction of multiple materials from the same planet and processing them on site results in a reduced output, but it’s the drawback of having an end-to-end product line. With maxed skills player can only have up to six colonies, which forces either an end-to-end approach, or optimized one-stage process, that requires a lot of maintenance, produces more goods in the same timeframe, but relies on market supply. It is also possible for several people to team up and make one type of t1/t2 products which another player/character converts into t3 and t4 products.

Optimization of end-to-end approach

When you look at the diagram above, you will notice 7 arrows. Each of them represents a type of material that needs to be moved from one planet to the next. Each export and each import of materials also means that taxes need to be paid. Crucible brought the player-owned Customs Offices and dramatically increased taxes on NPC CO. To minimize the amount of ISK venting through this sink, we need to optimize the process.

The simplest possible optimization is to divide colonies to extractors and processor: 5 colonies extract materials and make tier 1 products, which are then exported and moved to the sixth colony with processors, that makes all intermediate t2 and t3 products required by the t4 process. This reduces the diagram to 5 “arrows”:

 This approach reduces the amount of trips made between planets. I am not entirely convinced, that this is the best approach, because t2 and t3 materials “compress” their ingredients. Less m3 of course means less taxes as well.

Of course it is possible to set up all six planets like the last one, but as I have written above – this causes dependency on market supplies.

The results are in!

Three days of production yield the following amount of ISK:

13 Wetware Mainframes, selling for 1 400 000 ISK each make a total of 18 200 000 ISK

We have to subtract 6 647 850 ISK in PI taxes (hi-sec), which gives a net profit of 11 552 150 ISK. This translates to about 115M ISK monthly. This amount increaes greatly (at least to 180M ISK a month) when using own Customs Offices in low sec or nullsec (and WH space), not to mention greater abundance of resources in the latter. Right now Wormhole Space looks most promising for players interested in Planetary Interaction.

Crucible 1.5 on its way – to be deployed on March 13th

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,
  • Rookie Ships remodeled – new models along with V3 shaders to give the new players even more carrot eyecandy.
       
  • 50 new Blood Raider, Sansha and Serpentis DED exploration complexes with an array of new high end deadspace modules.
  • Hovering mouse over enemy Shield, Armor and Hull bars now displays remaining percentage tooltip.
  • A search filter has been added to the Science and Industry Panel.
  • Watchlist updates:
    • Clear Watch List Button
    • Watch List Drag and Drop
    • Appearance changes provide better visibility and usability
  • Character Creator
    • Portrait snapshots now retain background, pose, and lighting settings
    • You can use F1-F4 to switch between them
    • UI for tucking shirts, pants and shoes has been made more visible
  • EVE Market
    • Color coding of market orders allows you to see if the item is located along your current route
    • Modify order window now has a button to show market details
    • You can now drag-and-drop modules from your inventory to Market Quickbar
    • You can now Shift drag-and-drop blueprints to Market Quickbar to create shopping lists for industry jobs

It seems that at least a few features I have noticed on SiSi will be coming even before Inferno – especially the rookie ships. Crucible brought lots of UI improvements already, and these few added to the list in Crucible 1.5 are not the last we’ve seen from CCP.

The EVE Launcher is almost ready

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,

Remember when CCP mentioned the new EVE Launcher before releasing Crucible? So here they mentioned it again. It seems that the Launcher is almost ready – it is now part of the Singularity client, so it is possible to give it a go.

What does it do?

  • It shows a handy collection of EVE related links: Account Management, PLEX services and Buddy Program.
  • It shows the current news from the game
  • It checks that EVE Online client is up to date and patches it automatically if it isn’t
  • It can repair the client in case it’s broken
  • No need to restart the client when there is new patch to download
  • Works on Windows and Mac OS X

To the contrary of what CCP is saying, the EVE Launcher is not something new. The original EVE Second Genesis client also featured a launcher, although it was not this powerful. The original Launcher did not feature anything useful, so it has been removed at some point.

If you do not have/do not want to install the Singularity client, here is a screenshot from the most current version:

And here is the forementioned original launcher dating back to 2003:

 What happens next?

CCP Topknot has mentioned three things

  • peer-to-peer technology for downloads instead of current CCP content delivery network
  • limited gameplay (corporate forum access, chat channel interfaces, etc.) while patching
  • more smaller patches instead of big staged releases

One impression I can’t get out of my mind is that some other colourful, fluffy singleplayer MMO have such p2p-based autopatching launcher already implemented for a while… Is CCP learning from Blizzard?

Do Black Ops really need a fix? (edited)

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , , , , ,

Players have been voicing their concerns about Black Ops ships being underpowered for quite a while (almost for as long as Black Ops are in game). People complain, that BO are weaker than their Tech I counterparts, have limited jump range and so on. When CCP run the crowdsourcing poll to see what areas of the game need improvement, Black Ops were quite high on the list.

One might wonder, did CCP really just overlook this group in Crucible, or was this intentional? Are Black Ops ships really this ineffective?

The answer is: Not really.

Black Ops are Tech II battleships, which cost as much as a carrier, have on-board jump drive, no targeting delay after decloaking and can bridge other ships into the fray. They are already quite powerful, and the reason why they are not so commonly used is only their price rather than their capabilities. A skilled team of pilots can destroy almost any target by dropping a gang of BO, recons and T3s.

The voice of concerns claim that Black Ops jump range is too short. I say it’s ok. Give them more range, and people begin hot dropping to anywhere in New Eden straight from Jita. Do we really need an unstoppable gang of battleships that are able to deploy instantly almost anywhere in the game?

Others ask for T2 resists, because the ship is too expensive to be paper thin. Au contraire, mes amis: repelling a BO hot drop is already quite hard as it is, and when done properly, no Black Ops losses should happen at all in a fight. In my opinion, the EHP and resists are just fine.

Some players claim, that the DPS is not high enough. Then I ask you this: since when 700 DPS is low for a Battleship? Mind that a covert hot drop might also have some tiny, cloaky, ultra-mobile DPS called Stealth Bombers. Having the element of surprise on your side, you don’t really need a lot of DPS.

The list of complaints contains one more issue: fuel bay capacity. As it is right now, fuel bay capacity is sufficient for ship’s own jump drives, but when it comes to bridging other ships, fuel runs out pretty quickly. IMHO this is the only valid concern and should be looked into. With the current fuel constraints, bridging one recon to the furthest reach of the Black Ops range (4.5 ly) takes as much as a third of the total fuel. Players of EVE are a resourceful bunch, when it comes to adapting, so they just take a Blockade Runner full of isotopes with them just to remedy this issue. In my eyes this should not however be necessary. Either the fuel bay should be increased in capacity, or the amount of fuel required for bridging should be reduced.

And one more thing: if you think the points above are not valid, please see Burn Eden’s killboard. This group has mastered the art of using Black Ops (and other jump capable ships) to perfection.

Edit 1

I will be answering here to let others see my replies as well:

@RockCalledSteve: 700 /is/ low for a battleship. It is, however, perfect for a stealth ship. Also, we don’t want massive range, just 2 extra AU.

Well, 700 dps indeed is not a lot, my Talos can fling about 700 dps over 40km while travelling at 700 m/s. But 700 dps with the element of surprise is… Well, a very nasty surprise.

2 extra lightyears after the Jump Drive Calibration skill is applied, or before? I would vote after the skill, because 6.5 ly gives BO almost regional range. Please mind that Black Ops can be safely deployed from high sec, and capital ships cannot. Increasing jump range makes them even safer to deploy, but yes, this would also allow more tactics.

I know that Sin is the weakest BO, but it was the first one I had the skills for when they were introduced (this is why there is Sin on the screenshots). Nowadays I’m flying a Panther instead.

Edit 2

The reason I have picked up this topic is because I am concerned. This is similar to what happened to Motherships (which are now known as Supercarriers). Players were not using them, because of their pricetag and only slightly better stats than normal Carriers. Community was complaining and CCP listened to these complaints. Result of the buff made Supercarriers the biggest solo pwnmobiles in EVE to the date. Of course, other part of the EVE Community began complaining about SCs being overpowered. Black Ops are very specific flavour of ships and it is very easy to make them too powerful. This in turn will result in nerfbat hitting them sooner or later…

What do You think? Should CCP buff the BO or leave them be? Comments are welcome.