Enter The Portal: An Update To Black Ops

CCP continues to work on gameplay involving cloaky ships in EVE Online. Following last week's introduction of Mobile Observatories, the developers announced changes coming to Black Ops battleships and Covert Ops frigates. Oh, and Votron Projectors are seeing the number of targets they can hit increase from 5 to 10. But who really cares about EDENCOM ships that can't cloak?

I'm not sure how much the changes will alter how Black Ops battleships are used. The big change is a group jump mechanic, where if the battleship jumps with the group of ships instead of bridging them to a remote location, the battleship uses less fuel. To entice players into jumping the battleship along with the rest of the ships, Black Ops ships will receive some mostly offensive buffs. I found the descriptions of the buffs a little confusing, so I'll list them below with a little modification.

Black Ops Battleships

• New Group Jump available for all Black Ops battleships
• 650% bonus to ship max velocity when using Cloaking Devices moved to a Role Bonus.

Redeemer:

• Large Energy Turret rate of fire bonus increased from 5% to 10% per Amarr battlship skill level
• Added 10% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer drain amount per Black Ops skill level
• Capacitor Capacity increased from 5312 to 5912

Sin:

• Large Hybrid Turret damage bonus increased from 5% to 10% per Gallente battleship skill level
• Removed 5% ship inertia bonus and increased base Ship Inertia Modifier by 25%
• Added 10% bonus to logistics drone transfer amount per Black Ops skill level
• Added 7.5% bonus to drone tracking and optimal range per Black Ops skill level

Panther:

• Large Projectile Turret damage bonus increased from 5% to 10% per Minmatar battleship skill level
• Removed 5% ship velocity bonus and increased base Ship Max Velocity by 25%
• Added 7.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret tracking speed per Black Ops skill level
• Added 7.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret falloff range per Black Ops skill level

Widow:

• Rapid Heavy, Cruise, and Torpedo rate of fire bonus increased from 5% to 7.5% per Caldari battleship skill level
• ECM Target Jammer strength increased from 30% to 40% per Black Ops skill level
• Added 4% bonus to shield resistances per Black Ops skill level

Marshal:

• Large Hybrid Turret damage bonus increased from 5% to 10%
• Large Projectile Turret damage bonus increased from 5% to 10%
• Large Energy Turret damage bonus increased from 5% to 10%
• Rapid Heavy, Cruise, and Torpedo rate of fire bonus increased from 5% to 10%

In The Great Escape update, Covert Ops frigates received the ability to fit the Warp Nullification Module, which gave the class the ability to ignore bubbles (aka Warp Disruption Fields) for a limited time. But not all the Covert Ops frigates have three high slots in order to take advantage of the change. The Helios, with 5 mid-slots, only had two high slots. With the change, Covert Ops frigates need 3 high slots to fit a probe launcher, Covert Ops Cloak, and the new module. The obvious answer was to add a slot to all the Covert Ops frigates, which is what CCP did.

The developers also made a couple of other changes, which are listed below.

Covert Ops Frigates

• All Covert Ops exploration frigate combat bonuses have been removed
• Added -15% capacitor need to initiate warp per racial frigate skill level

Helios:

• Added 5% bonus to cloaked velocity per Caldari Frigate skill level
• High slots increased by 1

Anathema:

• Added 5% bonus to scan deviation per Amarr Frigate skill level
• Low slots increased by 1

Buzzard:

• Added 5% bonus to scan deviation per Gallente Frigate skill level
• Low slots increased by 1

Cheetah:

• Added 5% bonus to cloaked velocity per Minmatar Frigate skill level
• Low slots increased by 1

I personally fly a Cheetah. The additional cloaked speed combined with an extra low slot will help me scoot around making bookmarks with neutrals in system. With the scan deviation buff, the Anathema and Buzzard may see additional duty trying to probe down AFK cloakers after the ships are decloaked by the mobile observatories. The Helios may have lost some utility as a surprise combat ship when it lost its weapon bonus.

I waited to write this post until after the weekend. Apparently the initial update to Singularity had some things a little different than what was in the dev blog. But I went on the test server and now the text matches the server. I don't have much experience with Black Ops apart from building a Marshal. But I don't think the changes will hurt my sneaking around low sec in my Cheetah.