I recently posted in a thread where someone asked if Bowheads were useless in hisec and I posted no. During the normal level of trolling you get on this type of thread I looked at the Bowhead and compared it to freighters:
[Bowhead, Simulated Bowhead]
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Damage Control II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Capital Transverse Bulkhead I
Capital Transverse Bulkhead I
Capital Transverse Bulkhead I
That was a tank fit, but you can of course fit it to fast align with inertia stabs, but the above detail was only to give a view of the fitting options available. I should also point out that Bowheads have been attacked and blown up despite a number of gankers complaining about their tank. I have been on two saves where we got someone in line with the bump and the bowhead was able to warp to it and then align fast enough using the MWD to get away before the bumper could get onto him with combat probes and warp to him, but only just.
The use of the MWD will enable you to get into warp faster making freighters less of a painful chore in a game where time is needed for the game, it also offers players a counter to bumping without changing bumping, and applying some sort of timer, the counter is in the players hands, he has to make it work with others, but there is a more realistic and doable counter to bumping.
My question is why can’t freighters who have no realistic counter to being bumped have the ability to be fitted with a MWD like this and this question is directly asked to the Dev’s and the CSM.
Conclusion:
Add a mid slot to the freighter class and bonus them to be able to run an MWD and at least make it a realistic counter for freighter pilots to have fun with and develop more gameplay on what is currently truly stale game play.
Thank you for the bump, a ship without a pilot in and being transported within another ship is by definition cargo. The difference is that the ships are fitted and not packaged but they are still cargo nonetheless, Please feel free to ask more as required.
PS talking about cargo and freighters, what happened to your Keepstar?
The bowhead isn’t a good example of good design, or perhaps it’s too good.
There isn’t any trade off. You fit tank, because you don’t lose any capacity for it, and you fit an mwd, because it makes the bowheads agility almost irrelevant.
Freighters on the otherhand have to choose between tank, capacity or speed. This is much better design (see different fits on freighters)
Counter proposal; change bowheads to have fittings like freighters.
Unfortunately this is true. The Bowhead represents pretty lazy design on the part of CCP. Basically there is pretty much one fit with minimal to no trade-offs to be made. Don’t get me wrong it is pretty useful ship, but as an example of game design it isn’t CCP’s finest work.
That said, I don’t mind the idea of trading off tank, agility and cargo for bump protection with a new set of low slot modules. It would take more work and another rebalance so I don’t see it likely any time soon if ever. Although didn’t CCP announce a dedicated balance team with much fanfare last summer. Maybe if it ever materializes they could look at freighters and the Bowhead again.
There was a thread where a player asked if the bowhead was useless while you ganker types say it is too good, if both sides complain then it must be fine, but this thread is not about the bowhead, this is about the freighters having the ability to fit the MWD, go and create another thread if you have an issue with the bowhead,
This thread is talking about the MWD being added to the freighter class by having a new mid and the bonus to fit it.
The MWD does not help against bumping. In the 10 seconds to spool up, the Machariel or Tenug or Nomen can hit your MWD freighter with ease.
The Orca is a mining boost and command ship. The DST is a transporter, yes, but it also does not rely on cargo expanders for cargo space, just like the Bowhead. Only skills influence the cargo space of the DSTs.
No, an MWD would not have saved the Charon. As you might notice on the killmail, there were heavy interdictors as well as interdictors present.
You have obviously no experience on what I am talking about, there are three things that adding a MWD to a freighter will do. I get the impression you are just posting in this thread to either troll or massage your ego. I am not interested in the Bowhead and its stats, the Orca and cargo hold or fleet hangers, just the adding of a mid to the freighter and a MWD being bonused for it to fit.
The objective is to add another variable, not total safety, so if you cannot work that out… Your points are noted now go and troll another thread.
Make using a freighter a lot easier in terms of time
Give more of a chance to get out before a bump, it is 5 seconds against a good bumper by the way.
Using the MWD to warp out to a ping when being bumped
Item 3. is the most important one.
In terms of that Keepstar loss then what the hell were you guys doing, no wonder people in my alliance call you lot a joke, though I know some people win your alliance who were pretty good and I put it down to attitude about a certain Aussie TZ corp.
I mean to be rude here but I doubt your experience with freighters and bowheads, and in particular bumping. I gate freighters through Niarja every day. How many freighters do you bring through Niarja every day? May I ask for a video how your “experience” works because an MWD does not help against bumping or to make warping to a ping possible.
Do you mind telling me how you get to the 5 second figure because the cycle time of the MWD is always 10 seconds.
I am not trolling you. All I do is telling you that I am not interested in something that costs my already paperthin freighters even more HP and which does not give me any gains or improvements.
I am talking about item 3. that is the key part and you obviously have no experience of that.
That is the time that a good bumper has to get on you.
Well you are speaking through ignorance then, why would it cost EHP and this is to give more of a counter to the person being bumped, as I stated at the top I was involved in the saves of Bowheads being bumped, which you have no experience of.
Sorry but it does, we have done it. So you are ignorant of what I am talking about, fair enough, noted.
For that you have to hope he is not good, but it is better than what freighters have now which is the point.
And then the EHP got added from the DCU change because of wreck EHP changes. But there is no reason for CCP to change the EHP for adding a mid and MWD ability to freighters.
A couple of years ago I spent several months hauling professionally, and ransom bumping was fairly common at the time. My technique when bumped was to stop my ship and set the camera to look forward along the spine of the ship. If something passes within 15 degrees of your bow - simply right click and warp. Since the bump will have you travelling at full speed you will warp instantly.
In places like Uedama and Niarja you can create some bookmarks but my experience was that it rarely took more than two bumps before I was aligned to something I could warp to - and that was before the proliferation of citadels.
I was told that there are bumpers good enough to prevent that type of escape but I never encountered one.
My understanding of the bump mechanic is that above a certain speed the ship will not warp, so playing with the MWD gies you more chance to hit it the warp speed and also helps in nudging yourself into the right direction better.
Most ransom bumpers are not really bumping properly by the way.
I have BM’s for that reason all around certain gates.
I don’t think this is true. I’ve been able to warp when bouncing off a station at ridiculous speeds but in a convenient direction. Like wise looking along the spine of your ship might not work, what matters is the direction your ship is moving, which isn’t necessarily the direction it’s facing (especially with freighters).
I’m against freighters getting mwd’s for the reasons in my first post. It’s just not a good enough trade-off. If you want to align faster, fit i-stabs.
I’m not against a module that makes you harder to bump. But I’m not sure how it’d work. And there are already counters to bumping.
I disagree with that. In any case your first post gave no reasons apart from a dislike of the Bowhead as being too good, which it is not in my opinion.
And this may well be the case but with a MWD you have more chance to nudge into the right direction to enable you to warp. I must say that there is a lot of confusion on how this exactly works. Still I have used an MWD to massive affect in a carrier when bumped by a super and that is where I am coming from.
The MWD works well and I want to add a counter that reduces the I can only sit here and wait to die which is currently the case once you get bumped, as I said it still requires work, skill and effort and a bit of luck and whats more the MWD has been shown to work in a number of other areas.
No, i said the mwd makes the bowheads agility irrelevant. If you’re gonna put mwd’s on a freighter, then why even bother with a slow align time? Just give it an align time of 10 seconds and save the tedium of fitting mwd’s. It’ll just be another MUST HAVE mod.
So what you are saying is that people who operate freighters should not have the right to make any fitting choices to improve the performance and survivability of their ship. By your logic you could apply that to every ship in the game.
Just now I moved a DST using the cloak MWD trick, Freighters are the odd one out and that is clear, I have a carrier fit where I have a Cap MWD and a BS MWD, I make choices, the freighter is the odd one out and it should have the same choice as every other cap ship in the game.
