Could you make an improved mining ship for non multibox players?

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
81

You already have a ship exactly what you’re looking for based on the criteria you’ve shared, and it’s called a Rorqual.

That suggestion is technically the truth, but we both know that’s not applicable.

Too expensive, too slow, too risky. It was designed as a support platform for corps and alliances with a price tag to match that. Your defense is becoming a brick wall and relying on a corp and alliance to come save you if you get caught. And you can’t exactly use it to deep dive into dangerous space either, unless of course you want to gift some group a very nice killmail.

82

Having just parked my 8 miner/ratter null fleet for the foreseeable future, I’ll ignore the uninformed babble at the beginning. :roll_eyes:

We can all see through your word games and we know “players who” always means you, so be honest. You claim to be in Coalition null yet can’t get someone in a Coalition to give you boosts? That’s a you problem, dude, not a game problem. How can you not find boosts in a coalition? As for “players who,” they just need to find friends. There’s only about 200 highsec mining corps posting on the in game recruitment channel every hour, all happy to provide boosts.

boost to solo play styles. There I fixed that sentence for you.

So screw the second solo miner who warps onto grid with you and wants to use the same ship and module? Doesn’t seem very polite to me locking him out of the same bonuses to solo play as you’re getting, just because you were there first.

83

Having just parked my 8 miner/ratter null fleet for the foreseeable future, I’ll ignore the uninformed babble at the beginning.

I’ll restate this: A Hulk does not compete with a Gila running Abyssals, much less unboosted. The only way it will is if you’re running Rorq boosts and have access to as much of the good ore as you can mine.

You claim to be in Coalition null yet can’t get someone in a Coalition to give you boosts?

Admittedly it ain’t a good coalition. Seems to be poorly run.

200 highsec mining corps posting on the in game recruitment channel every hour, all happy to provide boosts.

So now I’m highsec mining. Went from not competing with a Gila to competing with a Rifter running T1’s.

boost to solo play styles. There I fixed that sentence for you.

Weird reply, but yes. A boost to solo players and people who only want to run a single account. I feel like you think you caught me in some way but I’m not really understanding what your aim was there.

So screw the second solo miner who warps onto grid with you and wants to use the same ship and module? Doesn’t seem very polite to me locking him out of the same bonuses to solo play as you’re getting, just because you were there first.

Not every Anom is going to be occupied. Established miners would continue using their multibox fleets like yourself, and singular account players using this ship would not be able to occupy every single anom. And if you’re in high activity space with lots of miners then you’d likely find a fleet anyways which would negate the need to even use this ship over a hulk.

84

I never said it was as good as a Gila running Abyssals. I said it was as good as a similar ship doing content that doesn’t frequently end in random destruction of your ship and pod. Reread my comment.

Sounds like you know what the answer to your issue is.

That’s to cut off the inevitable “think of the newbies” logical fallacy, not referring to you specifically. Again, read the comment in full context.

Isn’t weird when you read my full post, and see the comment towards the beginning that I wasn’t participating in word games. There’s no real problem here that cannot be remedied by an erg of effort on your part, so nothing to call a “fix.”

I’m not going to debate mechanics anymore, because that’s irrelevant. An unnecessary boost is an unnecessary boost, regardless of specific mechanic.

I’ve still never gotten an answer to the question of why you feel you deserve greater reward for solo play than someone who puts in the effort to seek out people to play with. Please explain that for us.

85

I never said it was as good as a Gila running Abyssals. I said it was as good as a similar ship doing content that doesn’t frequently end in random destruction of your ship and pod. Reread my comment.

Then you missed the conversation. I’m comparing the Hulk to the Gila running Abyssals as ships of a similar class running solo content.

Sounds like you know what the answer to your issue is.

The answer is that when I include my prior experiences, which I talked about in this thread, It becomes clear that you don’t always get a happy umbrella with access to fleets, boosts, protection, and juicy ore whenever you want. And if I can run into these problems then it’s perfectly reasonable to assume others can and will as well. Which means there’s a niche for a ship that’s not being fulfilled.

A work around to a problem is not a solution, that’s a bandaid.

Isn’t weird when you read my full post, and see the comment towards the beginning that I wasn’t participating in word games. There’s no real problem here that cannot be remedied by an erg of effort on your part, so nothing to call a “fix.”
I’m not going to debate mechanics anymore, because that’s irrelevant. An unnecessary boost is an unnecessary boost, regardless of specific mechanic.
I’ve still never gotten an answer to the question of why you feel you deserve greater reward for solo play than someone who puts in the effort to seek out people to play with. Please explain that for us.

It is weird when there was never any word games. You’re late coming into an old thread and ignoring what’s already been stated. At no point have I used “word games”. From the get go it has been clearly stated that I’m trying to offer a buff to solo players or players who only want to play with singular accounts. So yes, I’m very confused by what you’re pulling here.

And I do have to tell you that closing your eyes, covering your ears, and yelling “LA LA LA” does not constitute an argument. This system is not a boost to multiboxers and I have explained why it is not. Just because you refuse to read and acknowledge that because you “don’t want to argue mechanics” does not mean that the rebuttal ceases to exist.

I’ve still never gotten an answer to the question of why you feel you deserve greater reward for solo play than someone who puts in the effort to seek out people to play with. Please explain that for us.

Because the system is flawed. Lets stop pretending here that mining is built around “people to play with”. It’s not. It’s balanced around multibox fleets like yourself who run 8 mining accounts, because that has always been the meta, and the game has to bend around you unless it wants to break. Which you should remember would be considered absolutely ridiculous in any other gaming space.

Any player who tries to truly play as a simple single account miner will go no where. That is fact. Their entire play schedule revolves around others, and even in ideal situations their income is still not great. Because mining has not been balanced with them in mind.

Which is why I’m trying to suggest an alternative. A ship for a truly singular player that is not stronger than multiboxing, and so not disruptive, but still offers them the tools that they need to be self sufficient.

86

I am constantly amazed by the sheer numbers of players who install an MMO in order to play by themselves…

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87

I’m going to guess that most mmo games have some elements of material gathering which can be the major attraction.

PvP comes second in an MMO

88

We already had this. The way to overcome the limitation of mining ships is “cooperation”. But you refuse to do that.

Maybe you simply haven’t understood the “Industrial” Career in EVE? Players can evolve after skilling a Hulk, and most do:

  • After getting good mining skills, they add good refining skills to further increase the profits from their mined ores
  • After getting good refining skills, they get some manufacturing/reaction skills and use blueprints to make advanced materials out of their refined minerals and further increase their profits
  • After using their mined ores → minerals → materials for themselves, they skill Industrial Command Ships to offer Command Boost and Compression to others to help their corp/alliance
  • After being good at mining, refining, manufacturing they might skill into Advanced Production and a JumpFreighter to import/export more materials to even create highly advanced technology (T2, T3, Capitals).

It is just you who insist that you have to have options to “just mine even more!”. With Exhumer V you are just on Step-1 of an industrial career, Nobody at CCP ever had the plan to offer ever more solo-mining-supermobiles that are a jack-of-all-trades for the 1-account-player that refuses to cooperate with others. If you want to play true-solo, go look at the X-Series, you can build a whole solo-empire there. EVE might simply be the wrong game for you, because it’s a massive online multiplayer game not designed for solo play. And to be honest, the overwhelming majority don’t want changes that make it more true-solo-friendly.

Someone else already pointed that out:

Understand that. Please. EVE isn’t for solo play. And it shouldn’t be. Being able to make much more ISK in a solo Abyssal Ship is bad enough, we don’t need and don’t want to get solo-mining onto the same level. Many people think a) the Gila and b) Abyssals are already too strong as solo-grinders and both should be nerfed. Any suggestions trying to make other activities comparably solo-lucrative hopefully won’t be considered. Sorry for you.

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89

It is applicable though. What you’re asking for is a better Rorqual. A Rorqual but cheaper (yet still more expensive than an Orca?), faster, and less risky.

You know you’re asking for a better Rorqual, so you’re having to invent a whole new belt-exclusion-Module mechanic to „balance“ it out. Which has not been very convincing from the get-go, because the way you have handled any critiques of it is to dismiss criticisms as unrealistic. Instead of addressing them. CCP is extremely unlikely to make a module like this so it is unrealistic to balance the Rorqual+ around this „drawback“.

Consider: the Rorquals drawbacks to cost, speed, and risk are by design of any ship CCP has created that gives boosts and compression. The whole class of Command Industrial ships are exactly this tradeoff: bastion yourself with an industrial core to get ship compression and boosts. Now you’re wanting it for free, and want to break this design paradigm, but without a solid justification.

So: If you want a Rorqual+ but the Rorqual is to slow, expensive, and risky, try a Porpoise. When properly fit you can even solo yourself through frigate sized wormholes. It is faster, cheaper, and less risky than a Rorqual. But not as OP as your Rorqual+ idea.

90

I don’t play by myself. Like I explained to Syzygium, it’s that other people can’t be relied upon to keep up consistency. If people in my alliance might spend like an hour a day on average mining, and I wanna spend 3 or more, then what happens? Other things like ratting aren’t restricted in the same ways.

After joining my coalition I was actually very active in trying to get people to come out with me. Constantly reminding people in alliance chat that I’m working round the clock and they were more than welcome to come join me. Nothing. And the coalition as a whole seemed very lacking in cooperation and communication. Yeah, probably just poor luck on my part. But the point is that it’s clearly not impossible for people to run into this issue. So there’s a niche that can be filled, it’s just a question of how to do it in a none problematic way.

91

A Rorqual but cheaper (yet still more expensive than an Orca?), faster, and less risky.

Different roles. The Rorqual isn’t even intended to be a solo ship, it’s a support platform. It mega boosts as many ships as you can field, has insane defensive capabilities, and enough damage to threaten most ships in the game. This is not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a mobile barge with compression and enough damage to just fend off rats.

The rorquals boosting capabilities alone already put it on a different level than my proposed ship as that can then be scaled with multiboxing. This is a solo ship that can not be multiboxed and scaled, and is not numerically stronger than an individual barge anyways.

because the way you have handled any critiques of it is to dismiss criticisms as unrealistic

Example? I’ve acknowledged 2 problems brought forth about the idea of the module, and then I gave my own counter arguments. High griefing isn’t a major issue since the ship isn’t made to be used in highsec, and with the investment theoretically needed for it you’d be better off just ganking people that’re highsec mining with it. Clogging up allies in blue space could definitely be an issue. However from what I know I think it’d still be fine as established miners would have no reason to switch to this ship, multiboxing would be inefficient since it’s not as strong as an actual multibox fleet and it’d require a lot of space, and the players who’d truly utilize this niche would not be so numerous as to crowd out the game.

The only time that I can remember denouncing anything as “unrealistic” are these idealistic fantasy numbers thrown out about how much a hulk can pull in.

92

We already had this. The way to overcome the limitation of mining ships is “cooperation”. But you refuse to do that.

This is neither a solution or overcoming limitations, this is a workaround and an excuse to the problem. If we start thinking of work arounds as solutions then very little, if anything at all, can be justifiably complained about. Even any negatives or downsides attached to abyssal running can be attributed to “you didn’t do enough” if we start with that flawed way of thinking.

Maybe you simply haven’t understood the “Industrial” Career in EVE? Players can evolve after skilling a Hulk, and most do:* After getting good mining skills, they add good refining skills to further increase the profits from their mined ores

  • After getting good refining skills, they get some manufacturing/reaction skills and use blueprints to make advanced materials out of their refined minerals and further increase their profits
  • After using their mined ores → minerals → materials for themselves, they skill Industrial Command Ships to offer Command Boost and Compression to others to help their corp/alliance
  • After being good at mining, refining, manufacturing they might skill into Advanced Production and a JumpFreighter to import/export more materials to even create highly advanced technology (T2, T3, Capitals).

I’m well aware of this and actively doing my best with it. However the original topic is all about what you can do with a single character and how mining is incredibly limited without multiboxing. Industry is much, much worse. Sure, the entry levels are “doable”. Can you go far with it? Hell no.

Someone else already pointed that out:

I would like to simply point out the hypocrisy of an individual who touts the viability of solo play with comrades, only to then admit in the same thread that they’re running 8 different accounts for multiboxing mining and PvE. It’s easy to say “find friends” when you’re not particularly reliant on them yourself.

93

And it’s been demonstrable that CCP by design intends this solely to be within the realm of Industrial Command ships. Same with your desire for boosts. This point I previously mentioned and you did not address. The alternative is to dock your barge and repeatedly undock your Porpoise to compress your haulings for the day.

There’s plenty of ways to solo mine without compression. I’ve done it. In low sec, null sec, J space. With and without a second account.

94

CCP by design

We have no clue what they intend for the game by design. The only thing we can look at is that the meta has forced them to do things in specific ways because they lack the tools to combat certain problems. They tested their waters with the Industrial command ship reworks by giving them drone boosts and the excavators to Rorquals. They wanted to see if they could do it. The players though proceeded to then break the game with it, because they have no solutions to creating a singular ship that can’t be abused by multiple accounts, or creating a version of the Orca that doesn’t just get abused as a High Sec mining bot.

The alternative is to dock your barge and repeatedly undock your Porpoise to compress your haulings for the day.
There’s plenty of ways to solo mine without compression. I’ve done it. In low sec, null sec, J space. With and without a second account.

I’m well aware of this. However it’s not a matter of it’s feasible, it’s a matter of if it’s good. And it’s really, REALLY, not good.

95

Yes, we do. They have written about it in their blogs. This was a multi year saga involving tons of player feedback and aggressive collaboration with the CSM. Happy to enlighten, this section is specifically about industrial cores and compression (bold emphasis mine):

As can be seen, and has been discussed before, the role of the Rorqual and Orca will be changing in New Eden. It is becoming less feasible to solo mine in them since the drone mining yield for both the Orca and Rorqual is being reduced. It will nonetheless play a vital role in space as mentioned before - in being a support mining ship – both for boosting fleets and compressing. This will mean that Rorqual proliferation in New Eden will be impacted, which will mean more from everyone that is not in a Rorqual – unless in the scenarios where mining groups optimize together with a balance between good mining ships and good mining support ships.

So yes, by design compression and command boosts are not intended for solo use. Your proposal goes directly against their balancing and design.

Feel free to dig more into the 2021 and 2022 blogs.

That’s the whole point of this game: making tradeoffs. Sometimes you have to make tough choices and do „not good“ things instead of being greedy and wanting the whole enchilada. Spending 5 minutes on 5 compression cycles to compress 300k m3 in a Porpoise repeatedly undocking is not really that bad. Finding a friend to play with is also not bad. You just want an easy button, that’s fine to want it, but you aren’t going to get it with the way devs currently think about their game. I have been trying to provide alternative solutions I have personally done and know work when I was a solo account guy coming back to the game with no connections. And yes, it works, and is work.

It isn’t optimal, but that’s exactly the point: the game is about tradeoffs. Playing solo is a choice with tradeoffs. Mining only in a barge is a choice with tradeoffs. Refusing to fly a Rorqual or Porpoise is a choice with tradeoffs. Demanding the ship you believe should exist rather than trying non-meta playstyles is also a choice with tradeoffs.

96

Cooperation is the path CCP has given miners to advance. And it’s a good path, it works very very well.

  • All of the things I have told you can be done with a single character.
  • You don’t have to multibox when refining your ores, using the minerals for production (you can have 10 parallel production lines running per char)
  • You don’t need to multibox for reactions (you can have 10 parallel reaction lines running per char), You don’t need to multibox for inventing T2 or reverse-engineering T3 blueprints to further increase your profits (you can have 10 parallel science jobs running per char).
  • You can gather PI-Materials for your production without multiboxing.
  • You can do most Hauling yourself if you need to import/export stuff.

I fail to see why you cannot increase your profits further with a single char.

Not even counted that you can have 3 Chars doing Industry on a single account, so for the same payment you can run 30 Production Jobs, 30 Reactions, 30 Science Jobs and managing 18 Planets.

You can even more than easily plex your one account when using all that. EASY.

Then either join a more active mining group. Or offer benefits for other pilots to join the fleets you host yourself (bringing an Orca or Rorqual will surely help). See, thats exactly why a Miner’s Path doesn’t end at Exhumer Level.
Or, crazy idea, when your comrades stop mining they will surely do something else. Because that would be the first alliance/corp I have ever heard of where the bulk of the players only play the game for 1 hour per day. So maybe just join them in whatever they are doing? Thats the reason to be in a corp, right? To play together?

Seriously, if you regulary offer boosted mining fleets and from your alliance/corp no one takes that offer, then you are simply in a non-active industrial corp and should just look for another, more active one. Or spend your time increasing your industrial empire. I am sure you can fill more hours per day with checking the market for good margins, managing 18 planets with short extractor cycles, managing 90 industrial lanes and hauling the stuff between planets and factories you would need. I don’t believe for a second you simply can’t fill your spare time. And even if, just go explore, learn to hack, dive into some WHs and sneak out C540/C320 in a Prospect. There are so many ways, nobody is going to believe you that there is a problem that can be fixed by adding a more potent solo-mining ship.

1 Like
97

Wow, someone’s jealous I can afford 8 accounts. So much salt that you’re completely blind to the truth. Sorry to burst your little bubble, but the game isn’t designed for multiboxers. Multiboxers like me only take advantage of the fact that some content in the game is so effing simple that it can be done en masse. Few things in EvE are multiboxed, and it’s all stuff you could get a trained monkey to do. I’d be embarrassed to be so bad at the easiest newbie career this game has to offer that I’d need to ask for a module to simply make me better at it.

Also, this is EvE, not any other gaming space. You know exactly where you can stuff the “but in any other game” BS argument. Go play there then, EvE is better without toxic garbage like that.

BTW, affording 8 accounts is easy. Just live in a camper parked in an urban industrial area. One day of day labor flagging pays for all my accounts, since I don’t have rent or many utilities.

Wow, imagine scheduling play time around the schedules of others in a multiplayer game!!! :scream: Who could have ever conceived of such a notion? Again, your complain can be resolved by you, quite easily.

Which you’ve repeatedly said, and have been repeatedly told is a bad idea. Also, the only reasoning you’ve offered to date for why this is needed is because you’re bad at choosing corps, can’t get anyone in your timezone to give you boosts, and are too scared to look at any mining methods more advanced than “lock - F1 F2 - alt-tab to Netflix”

98

in being a support mining ship – both for boosting fleets and compressing.

Blog: https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/mining-foreman-revolution#RORQ

Contribute with powerful mining drones:

  • The new Excavator drones give the Rorqual its own tiny mining fleet at its fingertips. Even without the Industrial Core running the Rorqual is the strongest solo mining ship in the history of New Eden. With the Core running this massive yield is multiplied 6x, making the Rorqual the ultimate belt destroyer. When the Industrial Core is running, each of the Rorqual’s 5 Excavator drones will individually pull in the ore yield of an Exhumer

The Rorqual isn’t a small investment and the risk of using the Industrial Core in dangerous space can be significant, but in the hands of a wise pilot supported by friends and allies the Rorqual will be one of the most effective ships in the game. We’re very interested in hearing your feedback on these changes, and we’ve opened up a specific feedback thread here for discussion of the Rorqual and its modes.

They were 100% aiming to give us bigger and better solo capable ships, and the wording is full of that intent. But thanks to the skill injectors allowing people to mass produce rorqual pilots the community turned a potentially fantastic means of progression into an ISK printing nightmare that still affects balancing choices to this day.

That’s the whole point of this game: making tradeoffs.

The problem is that there’s a clear level of inequality that’s favored against mining. Other gameplay paths offer far more progression and choices that just aren’t afforded to mining. They also offer significantly better incomes to suite all stages of gameplay despite not being as restricted.

Try to tell me that a single account miner running fleet operations and horribly inefficient solo mining can keep up with a single account PvE pilot progressing from missions, to abyssals, anoms, and eventually dread ratting. The second player isn’t trading off anything, yet we both know how much further he’ll go.

And Syzygium will most likely once again say “Well it’s not the same level of investment.”, yet no one likes the idea of adding more mining content and ships to increase investment and progression.

And I get it. This gameplay is fundamentally flawed because the game was designed to encourage multiboxing. Which is exactly why I’m here trying to think up a solution, as imperfect as it might be.

99

Cooperation is the path CCP has given miners to advance. And it’s a good path, it works very very well.

That’s not advancement. That’s not at all how that works.

  • All of the things I have told you can be done with a single character.
  • You don’t have to multibox when refining your ores, using the minerals for production (you can have 10 parallel production lines running per char)
  • You don’t need to multibox for reactions (you can have 10 parallel reaction lines running per char), You don’t need to multibox for inventing T2 or reverse-engineering T3 blueprints to further increase your profits (you can have 10 parallel science jobs running per char).
  • You can gather PI-Materials for your production without multiboxing.
  • You can do most Hauling yourself if you need to import/export stuff.

I fail to see why you cannot increase your profits further with a single char.

Not even counted that you can have 3 Chars doing Industry on a single account, so for the same payment you can run 30 Production Jobs, 30 Reactions, 30 Science Jobs and managing 18 Planets.

You can even more than easily plex your one account when using all that. EASY.

I could already plex my accounts if I put in the work. The point isn’t about what’s feasible, it’s about how annoying the system is.

I’ll give you the same response I just gave to Io Koval: Put a single account miner running fleets, doing solo mining, even doing industry, and then put him up against a single account PvE pilot. That’s not even going to be a competition with the massive amount of progression paths and scaling content available to the PvE pilot. And I’m sure you’ll once again reply saying that the miner isn’t investing as much as the PvE pilot, yet you’re also refusing the idea of adding any further progression or content that they can invest in.

So maybe just join them in whatever they are doing? Thats the reason to be in a corp, right? To play together?

The point that I’ve repeatedly made is that both sides are not held to the same standard. The miner in your scenario must adhere to the group and play by their schedules or suffer for it. The PvE is not bound in any way by the group, unless there’re rules/regulation on mandatory participation in group activities. And despite the lack of restrictions and need for group support the PvE player will still proper and thrive considerably more than the miner.

But next time it’s time for corp/alliance hunting I’m definitely finding a more indy focused corp or alliance. Might even just go rejoin goons. As much as I hate how some bloc cultures can be I do miss how well organized and focused they were, and I might even still have some old friends left in there.

100

Wow, someone’s jealous I can afford 8 accounts. So much salt that you’re completely blind to the truth

Now you’re just putting words into my mouth. I’m aggressive cause your words and your actions are clearly 2 different things.

but the game isn’t designed for multiboxers

Few things in EvE are multiboxed, and it’s all stuff you could get a trained monkey to do.

Strange. Could’ve fooled me. Like, what gets multiboxed? Lets see here… Mining, Small Gang PvP, Solo PvP, Blob PvP, Hauling, Abyssal PvE, Mission PvE, Anom PvE, Industry, Trading, and, uh… That’s like the entire game. The only thing that I can think off that people don’t multibox is probably exploration.

I’d be embarrassed to be so bad at the easiest newbie career this game has to offer that I’d need to ask for a module to simply make me better at it.

All I did was point out some hypocrisy in your statements and you completely lost the plot here. I’m gonna end the conversation with you at that, cause that’s all I need to know about your mindset.

I respect the other guys, even if I don’t agree with them on most of what’s been said. I can’t say the same for you after that one.