I’d like to see the 4 exploration frigates and their T2 cousins be able to go along on the field trip as well, but that may be dreaming. Also the Noctis is a “mining” ship, albeit it mines ship wrecks.
add the act of mining to give a yellow timer (non-capsuler log off timer) and add the conduit restriction to not allow to bridge/conduit pilots with a red or yellow timer.
This is a good idea. Mining is slow paced enough so that a little wait is a fair trade-off to ward off instantly disappearing mining fleets.
People for which it never is safe enough in space? That you did not get a tool to fight all cloaky ships?
The mobile observatory is a fantastic tool at doing exactly what it was designed for - which is to give players a tool to deal with AFK cloaky campers.
Again it seems you were looking for ‘safe PvE’ rather than healthy gameplay dynamics.
I’m looking forward to doing a ‘PI run’ flying my Epithal around my home. Once one of the regular solo PvP pilots that swarm around our home pounces on it (they regularly do), turn on the tackle and industrial cyno, light the industrial jump bridge on the Rorqual and send through a bunch of battle Ventures and Endurances to kill them.
It’s like home defence Blopsing, except with the cloaks and with very budget T1 ships.
It would be pretty fun, but I wonder: is this intended gameplay, where the industrial jump bridge offers new combat strategies as budget ‘blops’ gameplay?
If it isn’t, maybe implement some limits to the industrial cyno that make it less useful in defensive combat situations? Offensively in enemy space it already has the downside of being visible in the entire system, but if the only hostile in system is already tackled next to the cyno that doesn’t really matter.
Possible changes to industrial cynos that could make combat use of the industrial jump bridge less effective:
spool up timer (would hurt current jump freighter mechanics though)
deactivate all warp disrupt and scram modules upon cyno activation
disallow warp disrupt and scram modules when an industrial cyno is fitted
… more?
Or let it be. It will be fun trying out home defence Venture fleets to defend industrials.
Black Ops battleships can already bridge to industrial cynos, so this already happens granted not with battle ventures but potentially T3Cs. So I’m not really seeing this as a concern myself.
You’re right, which is why I’m not convinced it is a big problem, just that it can potentially be a problem. You could of course always send T3Cs and other CovOps ships through industrial cynos before.
The main differences after introduction of the industrial jump bridge are that the ships you can send through the industrial cyno can be much more disposable, and a little longer range as it can reach 10 LY rather than the covert 8 LY range.
Considering how much less flexible the industrial bridge already is than the Black Ops, or regular bridges, I don’t see why industrial cyno needs particular tweaking to be even less effective. Especially considering the general combat viability of battleventures and battle expedition frigs as it were, being incredibly flimsy even when compared to bombers, with a narrower engagement profile even enmass
And I do get that, overall, you’re trying to get CCP to think things through, but it seems… almost overzealous at times.
As I said, the main downsides of the industrial cyno (visible system-wide, warpable, locked in place far longer) are much less of a downside for a defensive cyno with friends around than it would be in hostile space. As a defensive cyno the industrial cyno isn’t all that bad and can fit on much cheaper sturdier ships than the CovOps ships which are either made of paper or are T2 cruiser+ expensive.
As industrial cynos aren’t intended for combat, it wouldn’t be all that bad to give them some drawback that only affects combat-capabilities, such as disabling scram/point on the same ship, if that stops such unintended gameplay.
Or CCP could consider that type of gameplay and say it is something they don’t mind seeing, in which case they at least considered the possibilities instead of potentially missing it until players figured it out.
Fair enough!
I do sometimes get carried away a little when thinking of ways to abuse new game mechanics in unintended ways. But on the other hand, I’m more than willing to listen to good arguments about how these unintended consequences may not be that problematic, as I have shown earlier in this thread.
I just like a good discussion and a fresh look on things.
I assume the Rorqual will be able to use the current Industrial cyno mechanics of the Jump Freighter and as such be able to jump to both normal and industrial cynos.
Industrials carry such little cargo compared to a freighter or jump freighter that it’s ridiculous to exclude them from being bridged by a Rorqual. They are a fundamental component to indy and they can be carried in the SMB to overcome this limitation. You are just introducing more pointless tedium without preventing any sort of “power creep” by excluding them from the bridge. Blockade runners can be bridged by Blops. Has that created an unbalanced situation? No. Why is it that every new feature has to come with such pointless, ridiculous caveats?
Shouldn’t the Industrial Jump Portal Generator use Strontium for activation, just like the regular (Titan) Jump Portal Generator?
The industrial jump bridge will have a role much more similar to the role of a titan (big capital ship bridging small subcaps), rather than that of the special covops gameplay that a black ops battleship provides.
As such, I would think that the industrial jump bridge would be much more like the titan jump bridge, rather than the covops jump bridge in terms of stats and limitations.
The Covert Jump Portal Generator is a special case for which it is logical that it doesn’t use the rather large Stront every activation. This portal generator is meant for Black Ops battleships, which are:
subcapital ships
with limited cargo capacities, mostly filled with fuel
often not capable of docking at friendly stations for many bridges + jumps in a row
The Industrial Jump Portal Generator has none of those limitations. The Rorqual, like Titans, is massive and has plenty of room for Strontium.
Also, the skill required to train for Jump Portal Generators has just one benefit: to reduce the amount of Strontium it takes to activate a bridge. The levels in this skill beyond 1 are pointless if Strontium isn’t needed for jump bridges.
CCP, if there is any reason for Titan Jump Bridges to have a Strontium cost, I don’t see why this should not be the case for Rorqual Jump Bridges.
The consistent thing to do is to either:
add a strontium cost to industrial jump bridges, or
to remove strontium cost from titan bridges (and rework the jump portal generation skill to offer something meaningful beyond level 1 in that case)
I don’t mind if you pick either 1 or 2, but the current situation where industrial jump bridges do not use strontium is inconsistent.
I’d say no, because Titans don’t care about the mass of the ship bring bridged. If the Rorqual were using Stront, that would indicate that things like Freighters should be able to take the bridge. This way, the Industrial bridge uses fuel based on mass transported, just like a BlOps.
Titans bridge Freighters. 1 Titan bridge can move 250,000,000+ m3 of material.
I think you may be wrong there - I thought all bridges care about the mass of the ship being bridged?
Anyway, Stront is a flat cost for opening a bridge. This means Stront as a baseline cost is mainly relevant for opening a bridge for a small amount of low-mass ships, not for the high-mass ships, as the stront cost for bridging high mass ships will be relatively less compared to the fuel it takes to bridge heavier ships like freighters.
Cost to bridge = Stront cost + (Fuel cost * mass of all ships combined * distance * some constant)
Without Stront it would be essentially free to bridge a single frigate as Titan, or bridging a single Venture as Rorqual.
I would think this is why Stront as a requirement to open Titan bridges exist: to give briding a baseline cost even if the mass of the ships bridged is negligible.
The same would be true for Rorqual bridges (when not conduit jumping), so I don’t see why these should not have a similar Stront requirement to open a bridge.
No. Titans don’t use non-stront fuel when bridging. There is no ‘fuel cost based on mass’.
This is a fundamental difference between Generic Jump Portal Generators, and Special-Purpose Jump Portal Generators. Titan bridges use stront, not fuel. Because they use stront, not fuel, they have no fuel cost based on mass, and can move anything without a jump drive. Both special-purpose jump portal generators can only move specific classes of ship, and nothing larger than a Large-class hull.
And before you talk about the Rorq conduit jumping something XL (the Rorqual), no. The Rorqual’s jump drive does that, and the Jump Portal Generator simply creates the conduit for the subcapitals, just like a BlOps.
