The orca is very slow and big and expensive. The porpoise is very small and very fast. There is no middle ground. Most command ships are Battlecruiser sized.
Can there be a battlecruiser sized industrial command ship, like every other command ship, somewhere between the orca and the porpoise?
This would facilitate mining operations in wormholes more reasonably. Orca too big to go into C1/2, and porpoise ore hold is too small. There should be an in-between for the ore anomalies.
The Porpoise is quite a bit larger than a battlecruiser. With a mass of 4.5 million kg and a volume of 400,000 m3 (50,000 m3 packaged). Volume is actually comparable to a battleship but mass is significantly lower since most of that volume is cargo space - not military hardware.
Orca fits midway between a battleship and a capital. It’s built using capital components. Mass is comparable to a battleship at 150 million kg. Volume is considerable larger at 10,250,000 m3 (500,000 m3 packaged) - mostly cargo space.
These ships along with their big brother Rorqual are incredibly effective. They created the mineral glut that prompted the current re-balance and, 6 months into the “scarcity” phase, the market remains well supplied with minerals!
so 50,000 m3 of ore capacity is too small?? Thats more than my Tayra can hold for regular cargo. How far out are you from your destination that your other ships can’t be mining, while you are moving ore back to where it is intended to go??
really i think industrial command wise we are in a good spot. That’s ship size, not function wise. I do not think that an industrial command should be the solo mining platform they are now. They should be similar to the monitor as a mining FC type ship. Yes they should have command bursts, and a major size hull, but i don’t think you should ever warp into a belt or anom and see one out there munching rocks by themselves.
A few years ago, if you saw an Orca in space, it was probably the anchor for a highsec multibox fleet. Mostly they lived behind a POS forcefield and boosted the entire system. Now we have multibox fleets of Orcas (and Rorquals) because CCP wanted to give the boosting pilot something to do when command bursts forced them on grid!
If we removed the Orca’s ability to use mining drones, we’d be back to multibox fleets of exhumers anchored on the Orca - the ship would still get plenty of use, and it has roles other than mining.
I’d let the Porpoise keep mining - it’s only advantage over a barge is cargo capacity and the price differential makes that a reasonable cost/benefit ratio.
A lot of people thought no one would undock a Rorqual after Ascension but the safety of supercap umbrellas, infinite respawning anomalies and excavator drones that let each ship mine as much as a fleet of exhumers changed that! Not sure how CCP is going to fix the Rorqual - once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put it back!
@Do_Little The market is supplied well with minerals not due to the orca and rorqual, but rather due to the citadel update. There’s a lot of material being supplied through abandoned structures. The porpoise is a cruiser. It’s not larger than a battlecruiser.
@Taurine_Kado 50,000 m^3 is tiny. The intention is to be able to move ore without adding unnecessary mass to a wormhole. Not that far out from the destination - just through a wormhole where mass can be a problem (rorqual, orca, many passes with mid-sized haulers).
@Manweru_Cemenotar You’re right - it is, but only by a factor of 1 when it comes to ore hold. There should be something more reasonable in the midway between the porpoise and the orca when it comes to an industrial command ship. Jumping from a 72mil ship to a 1bil ship is a bit of a leap.
@Big_Country_Boy Function-wise we are not in a good spot. Solo mining command ships should not be a thing.
@Do_Little Let’s not derail the point of the post too much - I’m not talking about the orca or the porpoise specifically, but asking for an intermediate between the two. Not asking for a solo mining command ship, but a ship that can act as an actual command ship that is between the orca and the porpoise in ore hold size, cost, and capability.
@DragoFire Exactly - there should be a ship that is larger than the porpoise (maybe medium size mass? 2-3x the orehold?) but not as large as the orca, so that you can haul some ores in medium wormholes without having to result to an armada of porpoises, which doesn’t make sense. There should be a ship between the porpoise and the orca that can act as a command ship for medium sized wormholes, not just the small (porpoise) and very large (orca)
