So its been like 3 years now since that mining patch that made the dedicated drone mining ships into what they were supposed to be, support ships.
Please consider making a dedicated drone mining ship. It doesn’t need to pull more ore than a hulk, plus the drones don’t benefit from the buffs anyways, but come on, It’s still super frustrating that I (probably alot of other people too) lost a bunch of training points to this patch, plus ended up spending more to get those industrial cores. Honestly even if its just a copy paste of a porpoise model. The new ship needs the old “role bonus” % for mining and I maxed out “Industrial Command Ship” to get the best mining drone bonus. I guess make a brand new skill like “Mining Drone Captain” that just gives the same mining drone bonuses.
Pretty sure I’m gonna perpetually bring this subject up so I truly am sorry not sorry to those that hated mining drones’ existence.
It was such fun in those days. Greedy miners with their ‘Augmented’ trash doing the work while they zoned out to Netflix, secure in the belief that their vessel was entirely safe from interference.
Enter, the Ganker. Blaps the ship, scoops the drones and takes whatever else drops.
Sometimes I’d use bombs and a Venture - just to waste the drones. They certainly cost more than the Venture. Mining drones are an encouragement (if one were needed) to slothful behaviour.
The Orca, that wonderful utility vessel, has indeed been repurposed. Is the OP trying to wangle a replacement out of CCP? Good luck with that…
No everyone. No more industrial ships! Just a mining barge that uses drones instead of lazers. T_T
EDIT: this guy talking about drones makin people lazy - whtas the difference between sitting watching a lazer fill your mining hangar vs watching 5 drones do it? I remember tryin to maximize drones on the t1 and t2 mining barges (i forget their names its been a minute). If anything its a bit more of a drag cuz now you gotta swamp atleast 1 drone to bring out a combat drone, if you’re just mining with a lazer you keep your combat drones out and afk PLUS benefit from porp/orca buffs.
I think a specialised drone mining barge could be nice for the game.
It doesn’t need to mine more than the existing barges, just mine in a different way.
The downside of mining drones that don’t get buffed by mining boosts can even be a unique strength and role for such a drone-based mining ship: it makes a perfect solo mining barge with above average yield for solo miners but below average for fleet miners.
A few years ago I had a similar idea to give the Retriever a more unique role by turning it into a solo drone mining barge, but a new hull would be good too.
