If You Like Your Ratting Stealth Bomber...

...you can keep it.  At least that's the message I got out of CCP Fozzie's latest post in the stealth bomber revamp thread.  Of course, I play in low sec and others may have a different take on the latest news, so I'll post it here in its entirety.

"Hey everyone. Here are our latest updates to the plan.

"Firstly and most significantly, the change to decloaking mechanics has been put on hold indefinitely. We are going to take some more time to work on the best way to have ships interact with cloakies and it's very possible that our eventual changes will be significantly different than what we talked about earlier. For now, cloaked ships will not decloak each other.

"We're also going to be removing some of the earlier increase in signature radius and shifting it to a penalty on the bomb launcher itself. The T1 bomb launcher will add +10m signature radius and the T2 will add 12m.

"We're increasing the capacity of the T2 bomb launcher to 300m3.

"The Focused Void Bomb will have an explosion radius of 5000m, 1000m more than originally proposed.

"Both the new bomb and new interdiction probe will be made available exclusively in the Syndicate LP store.

"The new interdiction probe will be delayed slightly as we've run into some graphical issues with it that we'll need more time to properly fix.

"We've sourced a lot of these changes from this thread, thanks to everyone who has been providing feedback."

So what does this mean?  First, rolling back the change to cloaking mechanics will probably make players in wormholes happy.  Also, keeping the mechanics as is on Tranquility will make some people who were looking forward to not having to sig tank their ships in null sec sad.

@CCP_Fozzie I am still a fan and still pledge my love. However you broke my heart today with reverting cloak changes. Im going to bed sad
— Manfred Sideous (@EveManny) October 28, 2014

The shift in signature radius from the ship's hull to the bomb launchers is what inspired the title for this post.  Basically, the signature change is now directed specifically at stealth bombers who want to bomb.  Those who just want to use the ships to rat with (or PvP in using torpedoes) will not get hit with the change.  However, I don't see a reduction in the proposed hit points.  So my Hound may wind up with a buff after all is said and done.

The next two changes, in capacity for the Tech 2 bomb launcher and increase in Focused Void Bomb explosion radius, are designed to make the bomber's lives easier.  I'm assuming that when CCP takes something away, they also try to give something back, even if the two are not equivalent in impact.  Don't take the last sentence as a judgment on the changes, however.  I don't really know enough to tell.

Making the new bomb and new interdiction probe available only from the Syndicate LP store is a move to bolster another loyalty point store.  From taking a quick scan through the products, placing the items here probably was the logical decision.

One thing that wasn't mentioned was the elephant in the thread, ISBoxer.  From reading the thread, apparently the changes would hit regular player groups more than users of the Lavish Software product.  According to the stealth bomber pilots in the thread, the changes would give ISBoxer users an even greater advantage over players who don't use the software.  If so, then give credit to CCP for reverting the decloaking change and trying to balance the game around the software.  Because as long as CCP allows players to use ISBoxer, the company has a responsibility to not make players feel they need to pay money to another company in order to play its game.