From Extraction To Production: Update

what im saying is that if you want the orca more in line with the other command ships instead of saying it needs is mining done capabilites nurf it needs to be buffed with the ability to use strip miners.

Nobody wants the Orca to be more in line with the other command ships, as that would mean that the 150k m3 ore hold would become a 30k m3 ore hold, the fleet hangar would be removed, the drone bonuses removed, the remote repair capabilities would be removed, the health would be severely nerfed. And it gains strip miners, yay.

Basically it would become an Exhumer, but with mining command bursts.

Then it would be in line with the other command ships, which all are T2 versions of the base hull, but with command bursts.

I don’t think any miner would want that to happen to the Orca. The Orca is way more useful and unique in the current role as mining fleet support ship.

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They do not reset every day. They refill over several days time. The normal belts are not fully refilled every day. If you completely empty a normal belt, it will take a couple of days to fully replenish all asteroids. That system was implemented from the start of EVE by people who better understood how mining should work and how to organically move people around, as opposed to force them all over the place with weird mining timers.

Have you mined in null sec at all? Just look at the latest MER to see how much mining is going on there.

REDNES

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He means in line as in having direct gear equipment in the highslots you ninny…

that or remove weapon turrets from Combat Command ships…

that is called balance.

Of course he only wants the positives of his inaccurate comparison and wants to ignore the negatives.

Balance is that you keep both in mind.

If the Orca is to be the ‘Command’ version of barges, like an Eos is a Command version of a Myrmidon, the Orca will need to have the same characteristics as the base hull - barges in this case.

That means no fleet hangar, small ore hold, no other bonuses that make the Orca unique…

Only then can you make a case for adding strip miners to the Orca ‘because it is a command version of a barge’.

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if saying that industrial command ships should be treated different then combat command ships then why when the command ships were changed to require being on field was the orca and rorqual changed to this requirment to? if you are to make changes to one type based on the what the player base wanted. boosters actuall on field so they can be engaged instead of in a safe some where then you would have to make changes to all command ships. if you take away the industrial commands ships ability to mine then you need to remove combat capability from the combat ships. what you should be asking for is a combat command ship the size of a capital ship.

yes of course,

and i understand what he is saying…
Which is Command Ships do not need weapons…they are “Combat support ships”

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Okay I agree with you
But the combat command ships are not the pinnacle of a combat fleet
They are ONE part of the fleet, as they are supporting all the other members.
They can still shoot, but their damage is less than some of the other ships in the fleet
Else… there would be a meta where ONLY command burst ships are used and nothing else, and then people would complain that EVE Online becomes Command Ships Online, because using anything else is pointless

See the issue?
Orca’s were far superior to any other mining ship out there
With the changes, they CAN still mine with drones, just not as well as before, and they are easily out-mined by other ships.

Since I can understand that alot of Orca and Rorqual pilots are feeling a little left out
I have no solution for Rorqual pilots
But for Orca pilots, maybe all the other ships in the fleet which are ongrid, can “loan” their mining drones to the Orca, so that the Orca pilot can control them all (20 Skiffs + 1 Orca is 105 Mining Drones on grid)
All the drones deposit directly into the Orca for compression

Maybe the same can be done for the Rorqual, but only 5x Excavators would be allowed for obvious reasons
Those ideas would ABSOLUTELY make the Orca pilots happy. Not sure about Rorqual pilots, since they would still be fielding a very expensive ship

Anyway, let me know what you think

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Me 'n my skiff are clearly getting a mining boost.

orcas are not more superior to any other mining ship. an orca mines as fast as an unboosted skiff. it is more the matter of the tank. i am not against the reduction in mining amount. i am against the idea that you spend all the time and isk to train into something that has little to no ability to make an income. before mining drones few players want to take the time and investment to became an orca pilot. after the ability then it became sustainable.

the idea to allow the orca/rorqual to use mining drones from other miners is an interesting idea. excavater drone can currently only be used with the rorqual. it is to big and requires to much bandwidth for any other ship to use.

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Damnation would like to have a word with you

no they were not, a fully yield fitted orca did only about 1200 m3 per minute, and only if you were right on top of the rock.

Feck NO!!! get your own ore hold!!

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Their incredible tank (especially in HS), is exactly why they’re superior
Also their larger ore hold is awesome for AFK mining
I for one absolutely hate the idea of people being AFK at a keyboard for longer than 1 minute
Do they wanna play a game, or have a screensaver?

I for one like most of the changes CCP is proposing, but not all of them
But then again, with every change, comes new opportunity for new meta and new ways to make ISK

Adapt and overcome
That’s what makes a good EVE player IMO

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Of course the orca is very tanky it is one of the few capitol ships allowed in high sec. the tank is the reason it is used. industrialist are tired of lossing 250mil + ships to 35mil worth of ships.

afk anything is frustrating to players that playstyle is more active. in reality what dose it matter? you play your way they play there way. currently ccp is working to reduce the afk game play. i myself do not afk in my orca. if you really want to reduce afk mining then a mechanic would need to be introduced to help with it. not just remove the capability. when mining drones were first introduced they had the capability to work like salvage drones. repeat mining. that was removed.

instead of increasing the size of the rocks. add more rock to the belts. why not make more rocks and reduce the amount of the material in each so that you have to shift targets more. shifting targets is one way to counter afk mining.

look at the changes ccp tried to implement with the combat drones to reduce afk npc farming. it required that for your drones to engage an npc you had to target them. unfortunatly the mechanic did not work out and ccp rolled it back.

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Well the survivability would be fine if the value lost would match the value required to kill them. its just bogus to spent 300+mio isk on an exhumer if it can be destroyed within seconds without any chance of either escape or the teeth to fight back vs a combined shipvalue of 10-14mio isk.

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@CCP_Swift I think someone here has access to my documents…

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Interesting changes. I understand the need to do these for the overall health of the economy. However there is a few points i believe have been missed. Maybe intentionally?

First a bit of a background of what i do to counter the “reeeee filthy solo miner!” or “reeeee despicable ganker who never mine!” spreg that may come.

I have three separate accounts all running on omega. No plexing. I have three separate computers on this desk but i generally play eve on two of them and have streams/TV/web resources like DOTLAN up on the third most of the time.

I like to do a little bit of everything, and have been since i started playing in early 2004 (with some attempts to retire over the years but i seem to be terrible at retiring as i keep coming ack for more :slight_smile: ) I currently live in nullsec and im part of a “nullblock”. I generally do a lot of mining nowadays, but im a small time miner. Though my time for EVE has been limited as of late due to us having our second child. One of my accounts can field both a Rorqual and Orca with pretty much perfect skills and i own both ships. I dont use them as primary mining ships though but rather as boosting/orehold platforms. Them being able to mine makes the account running them more than a boost account that i can ignore once it on field, so more ways or reasons to actually interact with a boosting platform is welcome.

In current TQ meta i have stopped fielding the Rorqual after the industry changes making the cost spike to over 10B. The benefit of using it is simply not justified compared to the risk and cost of replacing it. Anything that gets tackled in Null is going to die most of the time. The rorqual has a higher chance to survive due to panic if you are in an alliance but its far from a sure thing. Whalers and Wormholers have perfected their hunting to a degree that has pushed small time whales into extinction. This has been further accelerated by the changes to wormhole spawns and filaments making industry in nullsec an extremely perilous endeavour for people without billions in their pocket.

So how will these changes impact me as a small time null miner?

There’s plenty of people who run an orca/rorqual and 30 barges solo that crash the ore market. They are like locust swarms that move from anom to anom wiping them clean. These changes will greatly buff that kind of solo player that has a lot of accounts. These accounts aren’t paid for with real money omega either, they have SP farms and use part of their yield to plex their accounts. They don’t use the indy command ships for their mining prowess. They are used as ore holds for barges to dump into where compression makes this playstyle even more powerful. But they make do with orcas if its too dangerous and use a T2 Transport ship to haul compensating for lack of compression.

The above playstyle is responsible for a lot of the problem with there being too much ore flooding the market. Not fleets of rorquals or AFK Orcas in highsec. All of these proposed changes makes this kind of playstyle even more powerful as these players rely on multiboxing large amounts of barges.

For me as a smalltime miner that may field an orca and an exhumer or at most two barges along with the command ship i can still make do as i have three accounts. I can thus provide my own boosts and in the future my own compression. I can mine when i have time to play and don’t have to plan my gametime based on when my corp or alliance has a slot for that activity. So in that sense its no difference from how it works today. Having two or three accounts gives me freedom to decide what to do with my time in game more than having only one account would have. I prefer to play with friends and allies and i love chatting away on Voice when im online. But i also prefer to be able to play when none is available for a certain activity.

I have a couple of concerns with this though. The first being that the yield boosts of barges, while welcome, will push down the value of ore further, no matter the rorqual nerf, as its the multiboxing hydras using tons of barges that keeps it down as i see it. And they are getting buffed.

Second is the proposed changes to the indy core for both Rorqual and the Orca. The increase in fitting requirement will make it very tough to fit these ships for survival. And as mentioned before, in nullsec you are pretty much toast if tackled even with current situation on TQ.

Take the Orca as an example. If you want to fit an indy core and three command bursts you will not have powergrid to fit a 500mn Microwarpdrive. The latter is the only way to give your orca a slim chance to get off grid when tackle arrives as it is today on TQ. it takes 10 seconds to spin the MWD and that may get you into warp if you paid attention to your game and arent AFK but its very very tight on time so its in no way a sure thing. So this means these changes seems to be intended to push Orcas from geting off grid to stay and tank instead. The bonuses on the Indy core to shield boosting seems to indicate this as well.

The problem with this is that a max tank fitted orca can not survive long enough on grid in Nullsec for help to come. Its the same problem Rorquals had before PANIC was implemented. The new fitting requirements for the indy core and the requirement to go from buffer tank to more of an active tanked orca also makes the actual tank you can fit worse after the changes if the numbers i have been testing is correct. Keep in mind that a cap booster is an absolute must in such a situation and that removes a midslot, if you are going to make your own calculation. This also means the cargo hold has to be full of charges for a cap booster so compression absolutely can not use the cargo hold for its operation come early 2022.

A 2.5 minute cycle on the indycore is a death sentence in null. Without an MWD to cycle it takes a lot of time to get into warp with an Orca so the actual time you are on grid will be far longer than the 2.5 minutes. It would be more fair for the Orca Indycore to have a 30 second cycle time like the marauder Bastion Siege module. To be fair the bastion module give huge bonuses to a marauder compared to the paltry bonuses the Orca gets from the compact indycore and still the Orca pays with such a long “flying coffin” timer without having the survivability and PANIC of a rorqual or the ability to have a reasonable chance to get off field with an MWD.

So Orcas will have issues fulfilling their intended roles as an industry command ship in the future due to the lack of survivability in nullsec. It will be another example of the risk averse blow that has already struck the Rorqual. If its suicide to field it and its too expensive to replace then few will undock them in Null unless they are by themselves multiboxing a fleet of their own.

So i hope the next balancing pass takes a look at the Orcas viability and survivability in Null. Im sure CCP wants us to actually use them for their intended role and not be afraid to undock them in the future.

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And if you allow this new capital miner to enter highsec, like freighters do, this will be even better.

How often in a single operation do you mine different stuff, to make such holds viable?
I haven’t seen such operation for the last 15 years.
Even if you do, you have to refit your highs to switch to a different target, which implies either an Orca/Rorq nearby, which means, you could unload your trash just as easy, or a mobile depot and a lot of cargohold taken away by equipment you are not using, which means… I don’t want to be you when things go south. THAT is what I call impractical. “Don’t mix guns” still apply fully.

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the issue was in the coding. ccp has stated that due to the coding they are unable to make one hold.

Double of 1% of what it actually needed to build something is still only 2%.