As a miner and a big enjoyer of drone mining specifically, why it should not get some love?
I had the idea of making a ship just for that, basically a dumbed down porp with like half the tank, smaller ore hold (something like 35-45k with max skills), no fleet hangar, a small generic cargo hold, a small, 2.5-3k m3 fuel bay, and no boosting ability. 2 high, 3 low/mid, 3 rigs. same warp speed, a faster base max velocity, but overall les agile in aligning etc. With 5 augments it should mine about 1500-1600 m3 per minute with t2 mining drone rigs (a porp can do about 1250 with max skills), but has to be sieged to reach that with a t2 indy core, also can use the same compressor as a porp can.
Its very skill intensive to drone mine, and to not spit in the face of barge pilots, ORE Hauler 5 and Mining Barge 4 should be the requirement, on top of other skills for indy core/compression. Price wise can be the same as porp, or somewhere close.
I think a lot of drone mining enjoyers would like a ship like this, just not many of us have left.
So basically worse than a barge, but better than a porp, just for mining with on-site compression. Also obviously cannot be boosted, and you have to deal with the drawbacks of drone mining, like travel time, being sieged, and using expensive drones.
What are your thoughts?
EvE has enough niche ships, it doesn’t need another Porpoise.