To think that many, many years ago, the mining ships as a whole were much more sturdier than their modern day counterparts and still were getting ganked in the belts - anybody remember the yearly Hulkaggeddon events? But then, gankers started adding up their costs to rewards and realized that a great many times, they were behind in the ISK. So CCP nerfed the ships - especially the Hulk, and miners were reduced to the Skiff for better survival rates. Miners lost the yield with the Hulk, but tanked better with the Skiff - a trade off. But Skiffs still exploded; so miners moved upward to mine with Orcas - even slower yield, but still better ability to survive ganks. But then the cost to gank a fairly decently tanked Orca probably did not balance out in the black for gankers so…
Most full-time gankers are -10.00 sec status - red flashy. They can be popped by anyone, anywhere, without consequence. No-one needs to wait for them to become vulnerable.
You know this.
Also, professional gankers do not use implants with their regular ganking characters, so getting podded - it happens but rarely - is of no significance to them.
and thats one of the problems with the intendet changes neither do they have enough hihgslots to fit remote repair when they have 3-4bursts as i guess they will implement a waste reduction boost aswell probably on the least used mining boost +shieldboost or armor boost + indy core + compressing unit and you have no highslots left on an orca to support in the way you suggest. nor do they have the fitting space when they want a bit of utility and survivability through their mid slots.
Keep the Industrial Command Ship mining bonus of +50% like it should be.
Reduce the Heavy Water consomption per cycle 100 for T1 / 300 for T2 (with skills that can reduce that even futher, keep in mind the Orca don’t have skill to reduce that further currently , it’s only the Rorqual that have this.)
Increase the MINING drone Velocity by a factor of 100% to compensate for the changes you’ve made to Belts. the Orca have a huge mass , it’s very slow , warping at 0km/50km of a bookmarked asteroid will bump you 80-250km away… having to make 50 bookmarks per belt is insanity, If the drone takes too long in travel time between moving to asteroid → coming back from asteroids , i would just be wasting Heavy Water for nothing.
Make it so it’s possible to compress directly from the Ore Hold / Ice Hold / Gas Hold (This should also be the same for the Porpoise , as it’s cargo size is very small and cannot even fit a single ICE BLOCK inside of the Porpoise Cargo without adding cargo extenders…)
Last note for the MINING drone velocity, it should be tied to the CiC bonus , i know there’s currently a +10% and 12.5% velocity bonus , but this one affects every drones… MINING drone velocity bonus should be independant from that Global drone speed. and it should only be in effect when we are in Industrial mode , T1 variant 50% velocity T2 variant 100%
As for the current proposal on the mining yield , with the +50% from industrial command ship (let’s call it passive) and the T1 CiC of +50% (active) and the T2 CiC 75% (active), it’s fine , it’s a slight nerf of 25% from TQ, but if you can add the MINING drone velocity on top that would be fine.
the Idea behind these suggested changes is I’m a SOLO miner and if i want to go solo i don’t need to slot in Command Bursts. so instead i would fit drone link augmentors, with the changes to belts (spread out and huge making their hitbox feels like it’s 10km away even tho i’m at 0km of them) that would be Quality of Life. Trade off and balance you ask ? Locked in place without a PANIC button and fuel consomption. with a slight nerf to mining yield.
A long long time ago…
I bought the Orca to give mining bonus to my alt who was flying an exhumer, back then the Orca could give mining boost while sitting in a safe spot , not on grid. Back then it made sense to use it as a “boosting” 2Bil for that was worth it when trying to optimise every yield bonus possible. Then you changed it so the Orca have to be on grid to give bonuses to mining. Which encouraged using mining drones with the Orca, after some research it was similar mining yield than an unbuffed Skiff which made it not feel like it was useless. In fact it made it much more appealing because of the big storage it has hence why it became popular. Not because it had “OVERPOWERED” mining drone yield… It’s decent mining with a huge cargo. for as miner that’s a wet dream come true , for a solo miner ? the Magnum Opus. Unless you make drastic changes to the exhumers cargo size i will never go back to those as a solo miner.
Sorry for quoting you this much…
but that again is a problem with the horrific sensor strength of barges and exhumers. no “worthy” ganker starts a fight from 50+ km distance. and slowboats towards you to give you the required time to lock them.
On the other hand the suggestet criminal state they should have is easily mitgated through tags. i´ve never encountered a gank attempt on mining ships by -10 “criminals” in highsec as they face far to many problems that way.
mining is different by region. having defenders in addition to miners requires larger groups. mining ships need to deal with NPC’s (fight or flight) but dealing with gankers is just not a realistic thing. watching local means nothing when everyone shows as neutral.
increasing resistiances may buy time for a getaway, but that doesnt make it a combat ship. so again, we have a pointless discussion about mining defenses. drones against npcs work if the miner survives long enought. but are only meaningful in larger groups as an anti player defense.
my concern is still the move towards making miners too similar. diversity was good, why are we moving towards banality?
You do realize this has not happened yet and still is being talked about.
6% does not increase the shield nor armor very much at all. It is CCP calculations, not a 6% add to say 30% resist, it will not be 36% it will be 6% of the 30% or just over 2% to 32.2%
Mando you keep trying to argue for status quo ante. This is not acceptable to the industrial community, as per the posts by industrialists. Eve has lost over half of the active players in the last 9 years. Do you want to lose the game altogether, or bring in new players who will enjoy it as much as you do?
My point is they all need them. Either go back to the 3 specialized Miners or go to one good miner. Having 2 crippled miners does no good, except in Null where the fleets protect the area and neuts die at the gates, not the belts.
CCP has many options, I hope they choose wisely. Many Miners may rage quit and close their accounts if this goes badly.
Gerard, what slots do those go in? there are no free slots.
And at 51K My drones will make an impact, I hope CCP makes it a greater impact and lets us at the very least defend ourselves. We do not need web/scram we just need to make the other guy warp off or die.
No-one uses tags to repair a -10.00 sec status - but perhaps you weren’t suggesting that, Cara. Tags may be an easy way to repair status, but it certainly isn’t cheap. I know some gankers with negative sec status do it, for a variety of reasons. It costs them heavily; that’s balance, surely?
And mining ships do get ganked by red-flashies. The logistics are not difficult to overcome. Allowing for trigger-happy scalp-hunters, the FacPo, the Navies, and what-not, it’s part of the ganker’s essential preparation and training.
All slots are free slots if you really want to fit a certain module. Whether extra targeting speed is worth a decrease in yield, hitpoints or something else is up to you.
Gerard, I fly mine in Null where little gankers do not make it out alive. Most do not make it to our systems.
There is no use for a single mid slot in HS, Concord will not show up in time and other miners can’t target them before they kill a Covetor and warp off.
I tried ice mining in a Covetor once, there were 50 ships in the ice belt, I was ganked with one salvo and he left b4 anyone could even try to lock him up. Other Miners said to only use the Proc, but the small ore hold means you have to jetcan mine or warp off to dump. both have risks, the hauler can get ganked as well.
The easiest way to repair status with a faction is run the career agents in 2 or three systems. Also how long does it take to create a new toon and train to use a destroyer to gank someone or even a little t1 cruiser, like the vexor? once the sec status is bad, create a new one and gank on.
Anyway, complaining about a slow lock time on barges that are intended to shoot rather large static objects that cannot fire back isn’t really useful.
If your mining fleet has issues with hostiles that appear, kill one of your miners and get out before any of your fellow miners can respond there are much better alternatives than to try make a ship that isn’t primarily created for combat to take on a combat role.
Have you considered having combat ships in the fleet to defend the 50 man mining fleet?
There was a time I was in a group that regularly dropped bombers on the same group of miners. The miners responded by adding a couple of T3D, frigate logi and command destroyers to their Procurers and Porpoises. Good luck snagging a kill there!
Also, they used to be specialized, for Ice or ore mining, now they all have 2 strip miners and no appreciable mining bonuses, like they used to have many years ago. the rebalancing (NERF) was not good and going in the wrong direction. The 3 are only slightly different and a 50M3 drone bay with 50mhz bandwidth is the best of the lot of them. None can be configured to mine with strip miners and actually have even a modest tank, even with lvl 5 skills. I call for CCP to fix their mess and make mining ships good for the first time in Eve history.
All of the ships mine but 2 are so crippled in their defense they cannot be used for anything but bait in HS.
I think it’s great that the mining barges are not locked to ice or ore mining as that takes away player choice.
Players can now both choose what to mine and what ship to use based on their preference of profit, safety or convenience. I think that’s far better than ‘oh you want to mine ice, then you use ship Y’.
Hulks are pretty good if you manage to find an empty system. I used one a while together with a Porpoise for ice mining, but it’s been long since I was living in a relatively low visited part of null sec space.