Bowhead's, Freighter's, and Jump Freighter's

So I know Eve is always trying to incorporate Real Life and what we would actually do in RLF, I have to Say this, If we ever Built a Ship Like these Cap ships for transportation, Does CCP and the Dev’s Actually think we would make a ship that can’t defend it’s self in any way shape or form? I mean for the size of them, we don’t even have some drones or a drone bay… I really think we should look into this, These Ships should have a fairly large drone bay with max bandwidth for the size and some bonuses to the drones, what does the Eve Community think?

1 Like

Real life?

How many of these do you think are capable of defending themselves against specialised combat ships? Against an aircraft carrier that sends out planes to attack the container ship?

That’s the equivalent of a Jump Freighter being attacked and blown up by a Supercarrier when it aligns to a high sec station gate.

And no, I don’t think that in real life the container ship stands any chance if it has no allied ships to defend itself.

1 Like

It is absolutely amazing how the people who want to make Eve more like real life:

  • Don’t understand that games (including Eve) are not designed and balanced for verisimilitude
  • Don’t care about things like submarine physics or violations of the law of the conservation of energy, and only seem concerned with the things that would give them more safety
  • Don’t understand how real life works
3 Likes

listen I’m not talking, about defending off a whole fleet, or defending against a super lol, I’m talking about a ship that is the size of five football fields, having the capability to fend off one or two smaller ships, the size of Volkswagon or city bus…

not having one frigate show up and wreck your day…

Yet they somehow sent fighters to intercept passenger planes (any planes really) instead of… idk. c-130.

Put more effort into your “Grr ganking”. Next time since you tripped on your own and only argument. Real life comparisons.

1 Like

Oh, so attacks by big combat ships are realistic, but according to you it’s unrealistic when container ships are attacked by small pirate ships?

1 Like

IRL? I served in the US Navy, and in my time spent at sea, I saw a myriad of container, cargo, and oil tankers. Not once, did I ever see one with guns, missiles, fighters, or combat helicopters. Some ships do have small arms to fend off pirates, usually the best defense many have to defend from being boarded is nothing more than fire hoses, but that is it. If piracy is a problem in a body of water, it is usually tasked to the local navy to provide escort or defensive duties. To arm a freighter can also be seen to turn a civilian ship into a man-o-war. In many ports, they would be denied passage or port.
Then there is the argument already offered by others that … this is a game, not RL. In my mind, keeping the haulers, freighters and jump freighters ( I fly all) un-armed is already a true reflection of RL.
What I do see in the game on many occasion is haulers and freighters being escorted by combat ships. Maybe with alts, maybe other corp members. On many occasion I have used my alts, and even corp members as scouts to scout ahead. Would you light a cyno with a bunch of hostiles in a system and jump anyway? Just sayin’…
Fly Safe
o7

3 Likes

say what?..

You all are who referred it to planes and boats, I’m taking when we actually build a space ship that big and start flying around in space daily, there is no way ever, in the next thousand years will us humans build a space ship that big with zero ability of defend it’s self, and more on that subject we will never build a space ship that large with zero defensive capabilities unless we knew it was safe, and I doubt that will ever happen… I was taking common sense here but, that’s all but gone now days… Can’t get that anywhere… So yea nice comparing a plane and a boat to a giant space craft the size of ten real life barges that size or 50 C-130s…

Yep, you are right. We can’t bend laws of physics just as easily as some random gaming company somewhere in Iceland.

You started whole “let’s compare it to RL”.

Why not?

Even today nothing is completely safe, but most ships face no pirate threats so big container ships are usually without any ability to defend itself.

Anyway, if you want a hauling ship in EVE that does have defences: try the DSTs.

It’s true. In the smaller industrial line, CCP has the Nereus; very easy to make a cloak-warp-able boat with it that has tank in the mid-20s, passive-reps well over 100, dps with several drone damage mods in the mid-80s, probe support to take advantage of those not-too-rare wh shortcuts, and still haul nearly 4k.

But they drop the concept, and never follow-thru into the larger line of haulers. Now that I am typing this, am suddenly wondering if they won’t nerf the Nereus… If you figure out what/why their bias is, let me know.

They won’t nerf the Nereus because it’s fine as it is.

Compared to the paper-thin hauling alternatives with larger cargohold like the Iteron Mark V or Tayra, the Nereus can choose to haul a little less for more survivability with either MWD cloak trick, enough EHP to survive a tornado shot or a whole lot of passive shield regeneration in the right fit.

It’s a fun hauler, but any time I would be hauling something of value I’d prefer the T2 haulers instead for their much higher survivability.

20k EHP, three light drones and 4k m3 hauling capacity is nothing compared the Blockade Runners and Deep Space Transports, which respectively can have over 12k m3 cargo capacity with a CovOps cloak at 7.5 AU/s and are pretty much uncatchable in any part of space, or can have close to 200k EHP with over 60k m3 cargo capacity which is really nice for high sec hauling where you only need to survive until CONCORD arrives.

Compared to that, the Nereus is a fun little bait ship that can be used for tricking people into taking fights they cannot finish, but is not at all an ‘overpowered hauler’.

The more advanced haulers are simply miles better.

1 Like

Sure. Hauled nearly a billion in goods from Jita 4-4 last night, 19 jumps, and I used a Bustard, the Nereus was not my preferred for such a trip.

I was referring as you are aware, to the fact that CCP already had one model of an indy which in some small capacity supported what the OP was speaking for, which they never carried forward into the next higher tiers.

OP you seemed to have made the rookie mistake of conflating “size” and “power” in your science fiction spaceships. Bigger is not always better, which a lot of newbies wind up believing in Eve. I am sorry blowing up of the Death Star by Luke’s X-Wing was totally unrealistic for you.

While the Nereus does indeed have a drone bay, three light drones are not going to save you if you’re on your own.

After all, mining barges and exhumers have even more drones and some even have bonused drones, but does that make them safe?

If we had a third type of T2 hauler, one that specialized in drone defence with all the bonuses of an Ishtar (which is pretty much the best subcapital drone bonuses you could have for 5 heavy drones) then it still wouldn’t matter if people want you dead. They’ll simply kill you anyway and your drones won’t stop them.

A much better way to survive getting into a fight as hauler is to have friends in combat ships protecting you, or even better yet, to (Blockade runner) not get into combat at all by using your CovOps cloak to slip past them, or to (Deep Space Transport) use your high amount of hitpoints to make it through the gate while the aggressors are left behind.

Or just jump past any obstacles in your jump freighter, if you want peak hauler survivability.

1 Like

Good morning; (and good grief). You are on a tangent counter-arguing with the Eve version of mixed metaphors to a song that was never sung (I thought I’d try using metaphors also to get into the spirit of things).

Recap.

  1. The OP said he does not want to be just a target, but would like to have an active role in even a forgone engagement.

  2. I said it was interesting that the Nereus archetype had what he was looking for but was never continued into larger ships and tiers, so is pretty much a unique class all to itself in the game.

  3. You said that drones don’t make a boat safe so don’t bother, but to instead move to an existing class of hauler with bonuses supporting an honest chance of survivability and/or to bring friends.

Now my thought when I first read the OP’s words were if that was what he wanted, then he could try hauling in an Orca – It has tank, drones, hauls a nice stack of goods, and will align nicely with a 500mwd. But the thought was not voiced because I assumed he had either already rejected the idea or was alpha and would like to see all T1 haulers support at least a flight of light drones; so instead mentioned the existing Nereus on the off-chance he’d like to approach CCP with that precedent.

This was because the OP was not asking for risk-free security, he just wanted a boat which fit his needs and was more than just a target. Nobody wants to be just a target, and it is rarely all about security. Usually it is about game-play in a game. That is the reason we are here, and not off playing No Man’s Sky in creative-mode (now NMS’s survivor-mode, that’s a real ■■■■■).

We all have roles in this game. I mostly shoot NPCs and Mine, and am happy with my role and frankly too old to chase a busier one. PvP is broken up into two main areas, one aspect shoots targets that have guns, and the other specializes in targets without. Some of the Industrial guys seem very happy with their roles, and we all dabble in P.I. even in HS it’s free ISK.

But this thread was begun by a solo hauler who feels his role as target is a bit limited, and broached the idea to expand it. It’s not about security, it’s about involvement. And it’s true that haulers are prime targets in this game and yet currently their best dodge is to avoid the game, generally with the aid of a cloak. That actually sucks just a bit, and even if you don’t admit it, I bet you agree.

And no, drones don’t make us safe, and we’ve all lost at least one Ishtar, generally in one of those unfortunate webbing experiences where one is suddenly is reminded just how thin-skinned a cruiser can feel on the wrong playing field.

But we do it anyway.

1 Like

But this turned into a typical forum in eve where most miss the point/idea and just attack another players ideas, instead of working together to make A better game for all, the division in eve is worse then the world… makes me not want to play, null sec seems to be able to(specific large corps i dont need to name, as we all know who they are) threaten, or coerce CCP into what they want or dont want, im sick of playing a Supposedly Sandbox MMO, that has communities in one area of the game deciding the fate of anothers that they never visit or have nothing to do with, wonder how null sec would like it or goons, if a tiny high sec corp, started making game changing decisions for null sec? They would protest and threaten to leave and unsub unless CCP does what they say… As a high sec player and more into indy and pve, im sick of null sec corp and players deciding my fate and state of gameplay, walking in stations is an example of this, high sec players and many like myself loved that and wish it was here today and was built on, not scrubbed from the game because pvpers didnt like it and thought they should spend their time elsewhere, well what about guys like me, i wish ccp spent more time on walking in stations, industry, pve, stations, and way less on pvp and null sec… this would be the typical response from a guy like myself, and i speak for many player’s just like me… but this needs to stop, we need to work together and support one another, stop attacking a player because your use to a game style that eve provides you in your area, in Order for eve to truly thrive, we need to work on all aspects of the game, and we need to not let players from one area/way of eve life, dictate/determine anothers and we need to learn to think outside the box so many of you are stuck in…

you’re flying submarines in space… what part of this seems like it’s trying to be real to you?

1 Like