Well, 30 man gank fleets are good for the economy by stimulating a lot of destruction, and they give a lot of reasons for industrialists to play the game, but they aren’t especially common. Low attention miners in Orcas are everywhere, and contribute to the easy overproduction that brought the economy to the edge of collapse, such that the Ecosystem team had to step in with such drastic actions.
But they are apples and oranges. I’ll agree the highsec crime balance is kinda borked when you need so many alts to knock over a defenseless industrial ship, but it does kinda have to be that way when you can multibox so many ships effectively. CCP should spend some time to fix this, but I don’t see an easy solution here.
I was more referring to the Rorqual, before the three, four? nerfs.
The Orca is just a low attention miner. It’s hold and tank make it both very scalable and the preferred choice for low attention mining and as such has become the dominant mining ship in highsec as a result.
At least that is what I see. CCP has the exact numbers though and seems to think the same. So I guess that means change is coming as the OP points out.
The description in the devblog was “Contribute with powerful mining drones”, but that does not have to mean the ability to mine independently. If anything, that implies that your mining drones should contribute to the fleet, not take the ore for yourself.
In any case, if you insist the ore must be collected directly by the command ship pilot you could even design these Excavator drones to “piggyback” on the mining lasers of the fleet, collecting extra ore that goes to the command ship pilot. There are plenty of ways CCP could still let the command ship pilot contribute to a fleet but not be able to mine as much as a barge alone and I am guessing we’ll see one shortly.
“The third pillar is the biggest change from the existing mining foreman gameplay, and the #1 request we’ve been hearing from the community on this topic over the past few years. All mining foreman ships should have their own mining ability to allow them to contribute directly to the results of their mining operation, and give them productive gameplay in between their other tasks.”
Allow me to include the primary portion about that pillar from said Dev blog also. This was considered one of their three pillars that the mining foreman ships could mine and get direct results, not indirect results.
Now, your idea about piggybacking is a fine idea, that one I have no major complaints with. I think it’s a complex idea and you would need to give the Excavator drone a short cycle time but multiple cycles per run, otherwise you’ll run into weird issues like you are boosting the barges so much they mine the rock out before your drone can ever finish a cycle.
I’ve even suggested my own simpler idea which will significantly reduce the ability to AFK an Orca also, as I do agree that the ‘start drones mining and walk away for 15 minutes’ scaling is an issue.
But I strongly disagree with any proposal that is going to outright remove an Orca/Porpoise/Rorquals ability to do a sensible level of direct mining while active. And any that simply add makework presses of keys like ‘No autocycle’
Balance is fine, mechanic is not.
I think you’ve seen my posts on ganking elsewhere and this isn’t really the thread to sit here and rehash the overall issues around ganking.
Personal thoughts here but, I don’t like the combo of hauling and boosting since they counteract each other, especially as your fleet size increases.
But going back to the “AFK is bad” argument, just boosting and hauling can be very AFK. In fact, way back in the days of system wide boosting, my booster sat in a safe spot and boosted and once logged in he was never used again. All of my hauling was done by another pilot so that my boosting was never interrupted.
Mining is a low attention activity, you are not adding anything by adding “low attention” to that activity.
The irony is that drones were added to remove that actual AFK gameplay of boosting, and now people claim that mining is AFK without any idea what AFK means.
But there must be a reason why orca (which I think we can agree is meant to be a boosting ship?) is so ubiquitous (well, according to my anecdotal evidence ;p), rather than exhumers/barges. And, dare I say, that’s not how they’re supposed to be used.
Mind you my view has nothing to do with AFK mining (because it cannot exist, unless you’re ok being extremely inefficient). Just seeing more variety in mining ops, and having a specific role for each mining ship.
No, we can’t. It is an Industrial Command Ship.
It has been specifically designed by CCP to be able to mine as well. this was a main pillar of their redesign philosophy behind it that they should directly contribute as well as indirectly contribute.
And while AFK Orca’s are an issue, the presence of them should not result in throwing away one of the primary design elements.
Leaving aside the point others have already addressed that it is supposed to be able to mine, I think the idea that they are ubiquitous is misleading.
As I mentioned above, for HS mining they are an aspirational ship for solo miners. If you go to an HS ice field, trust me, the ships that are stripping it in under an hour are swarms of exhumers, fleeted with a single Orca and a freighter, probably a lot of them multiboxed. Yes, there are extra Orcas around like me, but I think they are solo artists like myself, trying to get a few crumbs before the locusts devour all.
Yes, you will see Orcas mining solo on asteroid belts, but that is because it is a sensible choice for solo miners at any range from their home station - as I have said before, functional rather than very competitive. If you are talking AFK or very low attention mining, then what I see quite often (saw one this morning while I was mining in my Mackinaw) is a Miasmos fitted with mining lasers - very slow, but big hold.
I fly all types of mining ships (except barges, since why bother when you can fly an exhumer). Ventures for my Alphas, since that is the only option if they want a little local ore, but also for my primary Omega if he is risking a trip into WHs - I have never lost one in a WH, but it makes sense to fly something small and cheap. I fly Expeditionary Frigates occasionally, esp for LS, for the jobs for which they are best suited. Mining at short range from home, an exhumer. Mining further afield, where the tedium/risk of hauling ore/ice back outweighs speed of actual mining it, is where the Orca is at its best.
If the Orca gets nerfed as a miner, the real impact will be on mining at range for a solo miner. I won’t stop mining, but I will not be going more than a jump or two except on a major expedition once in a blue moon. Which actually reduces vastly my exposure and the opportunity for those who constantly go on about “creating conflict”.
This makes no sense. The Orca conveniently has a Ship Hanger than can carry a couple barges/exhumers and a few Mining Frigates to meet the challenges of any ore/ice/gas field. You can just go to the system in your Orca, dock up and then mine what you want in the appropriate ship for the resource you are after.
no point. Just drop one a couple of the ships in each system. Less time to dock, switch to a shuttle, go next system, dock, switch to mining, rather than dock, switch to orca, place ship, go next system, dock, switch to mining.
If people have problems with the afk aspect of the orca, remove the ability to assign drones to seperate asteroids.
Edit:
Even better maybe, give it bigger drone mining bonus, and less bandwidht (or other type of drone), so it keeps it’s yield but looses the ability to be that afk with seperate asteroid targeting.
Wouldn’t you get better results if you put an exhumer or barge inside your Orca to do the mining far from home while the Orca hauls the ore (and exhumer/barge) back to your home station?
Even with an Orca yield of 0 that would be as effective as now.
You assume one is mining in a system with a station where one can dock. Still requires back and forth to the station even then with the exhumer. If no station, then one or more jumps. All this takes away from time spent mining - and I often like to mine in short bursts when I have the time available so to do, the very antithesis of the AFK Orca myth. Plus, a solo exhumer is much more vulnerable to gankers than a solo Orca; the latter is definitely not invulnerable, but it is harder work for them. Seems a reasonable balance - safer, but costs a lot more, more difficult to train, and slower at mining.
I come back to the basic point - the claims that Orcas are horribly unbalanced and ruining the economy just do not seem to be based upon any facts, just dodgy assertions.
The Venture can fit AB and MWD as an option, and still have two slots and fitting (grid/CPU) for other modules. I am seriously asking why mining barges and exhumers do not follow what is the common paradigm for most ships in New Eden. I would point to the former mining Osprey which did fit within the ability to mine and still provide the player with options. Mining barges should have inherited the Osprey’s capabilities. The Barge design stems from November 2004.
Ship fitting is the most core skill that players need to learn. But Mining Barges (which is the base activity for Industry) teaches nothing in regard of this primary requirement.
The 2012 and 2016 updates were band-aid solutions to address many of the faults with Mining ships. But whilst I understood the point and purpose of these updates. They completely side-stepped the ability of players to have a learning experience.
I would call for a complete rethink to Outer Ring Excavation line up. Starting from the ground up - instead of the supposed focus on the end; Orcas and Rorquals. To me, they should be built upon the template that the venture provides.
And yes, to answer your question. I do have requirement for prop-mod on a mining ship. My own work around is to under-prop a skiff to partially over come this. I could use an Expedition Frigate as well for this role. But how does a newer player have this understanding? They certainly would not learn it from flying the Retriever.
Because CCP don’t like giving fitting options to industrial ships, instead baking in any bonuses into the hull.
Had they given them real slot layouts as appropriate for cruiser/BC ships for the barges they could have just had one hull. Or made them significantly different sized with different focuses in order to create differentiation (I.E. Skiff, Cruiser sized DPS platform which can side mine, Mack, BC sized hauler which can side mine, Hulk, BB sized pure miner, as some toss out examples), and then it’s up to the player if they fit each ship for yield, tank or cargo on top of those basic ideas. And a mining fleet then starts to actually look far more interesting, and an ORE NPC fleet can actually fill all the needed roles sensibly.
The orca is ruining the space bully economy. I have watched them warp into ice belts, see there were 90 percent orcas and maybe a skiff or two, quietly pour salt into their pod goo, and warp off to some other place where they probably found much the same.
I think the people complaining are those who only know one thing about the Orca, and that is that it doesn’t blow up even if you smack it with two catalysts, probably not even ten.
The Orca is still being ganked like most other high end ships. The yield on an Orca is garbage. The Orca only shine when you are boosting other ships but I would D#MN it any miner should fly a ship that can not mine. The has to have the mining drones so the Orca pilot can still be productive. If they remove mining from the Orca, then I expect CCP to remove ALL weapons/cloaks from all combat boosting ships at the same moment.
If you don’t like the changes @CCP_Rattati has made to mining and mining ships, then walk! CCP will not give a $HIT till it hurts their bottom line.