Greetings everyone. I spent like 2 yrs enjoying the game til the mining patch came out where Orcas and Porpoise got their “mining drone bonus” removed . . . . and no other ship got a mining drone boost. So the only ships that have a drone mining bonus (through increasing industrial skill) are still the orca/porpoise/rorqual and that bonus is ATTROCIOUS, insulting, one might even say.
So I personally spent time, isk, plex and real money to register monthly for 2 yrs to maximize -mining drone- output, which meant I had to spend it on alot of Industrial skill upgrades/Orca requirements etc, now I 100% have 0 need for an orca or porpoise due to them not giving worthwile bonuses to drone mining . . . like a dumbass I even spent saved skill points to learn the new core compression bulldung, which made me not want to return to the game even more.
I don’t think it would be ridiculous to have another branch of exhumers that gives a “mining barge”, “exhumer” and “role bonus” to drone mining yield. I don’t even care that Orca/Porpoise/Rorqual mining boosts dont apply to drones.
I don’t know jack about mining but I imagine how that has to suck. That’s the trouble with MMOs nerfing things, they don’t seem to consider the players who spent time money and effort on something then one day to the next it all goes POOF! Seems very unfair to me that all that personal sacrifice goes up in smoke because they can’t balance the darn things once and for all.
Ouch. See, I believe that everytime they nerf something they should reimburse the SP spent on that thing for those who can show they owned said thing before the nerf.
2 years spent on it + money spent for negligible to no results… I sympathize with you.
Again, I know nothing about Mining but if there are mining drones then there should be good reasons to use them ( whether it be yield bonus or dual purpose mining-attack or whatever ) otherwise why have them in the game at all?
That’s one thing keeping me from investing lots of time and effort into EVE ( let alone money ) is that one never knows where the nerf’s ugly face will pop up and ruin your entire playstyle.
I have lots of time to play ( when I’m not overseas ) and money isn’t an issue. The effort is worthwhile if the game is worth as much but there are too many negatives to consider for me to jump headlong into it without being sure that I wouldn’t find myself in the same situation as you.
Fortunately I’m taking my time and taking notes.
To me, there’s only the PvP/Pve-pew-pew that’s interesting so I think I have less chances to have stuff nerfed on me than someone who might be into, say, P.I, although the last round of nerfs on Hisec Ganking is a perfect example of how nerfing may impact me.
I imagine it would be ok if I took Omega for 7 days at a time if I really wanted to fly a t3 ship with t3 modules and go do battle with it or join a roam… I don’t yet see how the game is so incredibly great that I would permanently pay for Omega given the limited things I’m interested in.
The Orca and Porpoise are (and always were) supposed to be command ships, so their role would be to support a fleet. However they reached the point where they had a huge yield, alongside a good tank and a huge ore hold, so they became afk boats, the change was meant to address this and to put them back in their role.
I’m however not against a mining drone boat for flavour, but it should not have the other characteristics of command ships and it should have a small enough ore hold to discourage afk gameplay as much as possible.
The Machariel seem to be the current afk mining boat meta, but it is still dependant on finding 2 big enough rocks, with a drone boat one could set drones to 5 different rocks, so the limitation has to be somewhere else (i.e.: the ore hold)
So I’m 100% fine (now) that orcas and porpoise do whatever they do now. My point being, I suppose, is if you’re not going to dedicate time to using those ships to be drone mining (which are the only ships that give a bonus to drone mining) then spending time learning any drone mining skill at all I think would be a waste. I used to mine in my Orca . . . -because there were no other ships at all that gave mining drone bonuses- and even though it was slower than using exhumers (and I personally love jetcanning), I just loved the drone mining.
I havent registered in over 2 yrs so I forget the I’d say a Skiff’s mining hold, specially after the update, but it sits at 35k? I think that’s pretty huge for a non industrial/hauler ship.
So I think either make an exact replica of the exhumers but give them mining drone bonuses (and so now they dont get orca bonuses?), or drop the ore hold by whatever number, 50%? and make them faster, mayhaps not as bulky . . . essentially a higher class expedition frigate with a brand new ship model that focuses on mining drones >(
Like my main ships are Vexor and VNI and like who spends so much time getting something like heavy drone V . . . give me heavy mining drone V too while I’m QQing about it
The Vexor mines as fast as a Porpoise now? How sad is that >( if the porpoise mined . . . like it did before the patch I’d honestly be 100% ok with that too. There are no options to effectively mine with drones (compared to strip miners) and jetcan the ore. Industrial Core is the trashiest thing CCP could have implemented. I was working towards making a Rorqual too. LOL Industrial core
I dont know about you guys but my max skilled mining drones bring me in about 40% more ore than my strip miners do alone and an extra 40% is a whole lot of ISK as you add it up.
If you want them to do more perhaps its your greed and gluttony we should be talking about instead.
CCP removed hours and days worth of mining drone training because they messed up what they wanted to do with mining, ruining the experience for anyone that was having fun. It’s silly im still complaining about this stupid update 2 yrs later. I’d like to give them money, and the only reason i keep QQing over this is cuz the game WAS fun. I’ll keep QQing tho since all it takes is a bit of time to do so
In general, if you decide to pursue what you know to be the most optimal strategy today, you should also be aware that it is the strategy most likely to be on the chopping block for a nerf tomorrow. For people who enjoy the process of optimizing for its own sake, this is not a problem since they’ll get right on finding a new optimal, but for people who follow in the wake of the optimizers simply because the strategy is currently optimal, this can lead to a lot of disappointment, especially if there’s a long time horizon of investment before the strategy can be employed.
A better way might be to optimize the ISK output for something you enjoy in and of itself so that if the payouts become the lesser, you can still be having fun while you re-optimize for the new status quo. If making less money makes a thing less fun, then it seems to me the thing wasn’t fun in the first place. If that is indeed the case, the mining drone changes just helped you to realize that your time would be more enjoyably spent doing something else.
