Latest orca yield buff

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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My question to the CSM:

PATCH NOTES FOR 2021-12-09.1

Orca

  • Drone Ore Mining Yield 15% per skill level, increased from 10%
  • Drone Ice harvesting cycle time 5% per skill level, increased from 2%

According to CCP: https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-version-19-11

For a long time, the choices in mining ships were limited, with players rushing to the high-end ships with the most survivability and largest yield - in particular, the Rorqual in Nullsec and the Orca in Highsec. There wasn’t much interesting choice, and these ships were so dominant there was little room for smaller miners in the ecosystem to make meaningful income. The large ships had such an advantage, they suppressed the value of ore across New Eden.

We are addressing the power of these high-end ships to bring them more in-line with the Mining Barges, allowing them to be the centerpiece of mining fleets, rather than being the whole mining fleet.

However, with this latter patch increasing the mining yield, why would someone risk to use another barge than an orca for mining? We are in the same spot than before. How CCP justifies this increase in yield?

2

You need a large indu core II which pins you down on the spot for 2min in order to get the yield back. Also it consumes fuel.

3

yes, now they have a core, but until when is the core a counter to avoid AFK solo orca mining if they increase the drone yield? I do not see any explanation about why did they increase the orcas yield 1 day ago in their patch notes.

With that yield reestablished the orca becomes again my choice to AFK mine in highsec, but I do not see the point if CCP wants to make the orca a support ship with some mining capabilities.

Compared to the initial nerfs proposed by CCP in the begining, It looks like in the end CCP was chickening out under the pressure of all the orca fleets out of there in highsec.

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@El_Digger

Once gankers realize they have 180s de-activation + ~30s alignment in which to destroy an Orca the gank math changes considerably. (Not even taking the core re-sale value into the equation)

I know, “watch local” When would any actual high-yield mining get done if you’re constantly turning the core on and off? (remember 3min on - 3 minutes off)

Mining isn’t simply rounding the horseshoe any longer. Going roid to roid is too time consuming in an Orca in these expanded fields. Even if you have the range of drones supplemented, you can’t get the high yield until you are within a decent range to retrieve your drones quickly and take the 180s to get the core activated, by which time a good chunk of the rock has been turned to residue. (Value of Mining Drone I’s is going to go up)

I had thought that carefully bookmarking rocks in fields would mitigate that problem but with the new mechanics of the fields respawn trigger it’s not. There’s a big chance the field will be void of high value rocks for weeks.

“Each asteroid belt contains a finite number of asteroids (which disappear once fully mined), but the asteroids respawn after downtime if there are no asteroids left. – Asteroids and ore - EVE University Wiki”

No longer can you expect to get targeted roids every day unless you become an Asteroid Field Gardener and blow away the entire field the day before. (Hence type C crystals) This activity would be beyond a solo miners ability to accomplish this on a daily basis.

Attention to ‘residue’ and modifying drones and crystals based on the value of the rock you’re mining will become an important factor. You aren’t going to want 40% residue via an augmented mining drone on a Rich Plasioclase rock when there may not be another one for days/weeks.

Furthermore, with the industrial release there’s already been a 30% reduction in the isk value of Titanium. Now with prosperity there is going to be more ore than industrialists need to build. So I predict another 10-20% drop in the value of Ore in the next 6 - 9 months as miners try to cash in on this new ‘Prosperity’.

No matter what, killing what ever time it now takes to fill an Orca (use to be 4 hours) the actual isk return is going to be down in the not to distant future and will be further challenged by being 2b worth of gankbait.

What CCP has done, which is what I believe the intent was, is effectively make asteroid field mining a corp activity. The gardening of a field combined with the yet to come compression for the Orca are the only real path to achieve an effective mining efficiency.

As a solo industrialist the equation I have to figure out now is if a Hulk can pull enough Ore efficiently - daily, to maintain my builds. It is no longer a revenue stream.

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The math doesn’t change, it’s expensive to kill an Orca now and a T2 Orca usually doesn’t drop enough value to make it worth ganking for profit. Locking an Orca in place doesn’t change that math, unless the T2 industrial core is worth hundreds of millions of ISK.

I do not understand why CCP added the yield back to the Orca.

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It’s more expensive to make than the old now capital cores was thanks to industry change. The core 2 will be on the market within the next 12h I guess, let’s see how much profit can be made. I love all Orca pilots. :slight_smile:

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I always enjoy watching to see whose predictions come true.

But the above positions are very well done. Thank you one and all. Mostly I think that solo Orcas will not be as much of a thing as they once were. They were supposed to be command ships but even the average command battlecruisers have weapons and I would expect the mining command ship to be able to mine.

m

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Industrial Command Ships bonuses (per skill level):
15% bonus to Drone ore mining yield (was 10%)
5% reduction in Drone ice harvesting cycle time (was -10%)
Role bonus:
0% bonus to drone mining yield (was 100%)
0% reduction in drone ice harvesting cycle time (was -25%)

if you think that’s an increase you may want to knock some of the waste / residue out of your head :slight_smile:

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They first nerfed the yield, then raised it again.

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^ This is what my question is about. Next time they are going to raise the yield to 20% and you will answer me with the same arguments, but it has nothing to do with my question.

Why did they nerf it and then 1 day later raised it again? thats all. I dont see the rational behind.

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I see the rationale behind the nerf to Orca yield. It encourages people to use barges and exhumers instead for mining, and to use their Orca to bring support to mining fleets.

I don’t understand why it was raised again, except to ‘give in to the complaints’.

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Not only that, but they essentially gave in to the complaints of AFK’ers. I looked at the yields of the Orca pre-patch, and they weren’t exactly pulling down rorqual numbers. In fact, they were about on par with a procurer pre-boosts. So, why would a miner field orca’s other than to boost fleets (in which case, the orca boosts outweigh the loss of any drone yield), or AFK mine?

Sigh.

Maybe someone can explain this one to me, because it seems like a bunch of selfish afk assholes and turbo crabs red-pilled other miners into bitter vets so that they could bully CCP.

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no argument , just the complete facts . seems obvious ccp felt they went too far with the nerf and raised the yield to offset the loss of role bonus . the last change may have been to keep it ahead of the porpoise in drone mining yield .

i posted for those players that hadn’t logged in for the one day the first changes were live and may have been mislead by your post which left out the bulk of the changes , and show it was indeed nerfed .

although ice mining with a core II may be better due to the drone speed boost … :slight_smile:

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I see the rationale behind the nerf to Orca yield. It encourages people to use barges and exhumers instead for mining, and to use their Orca to bring support to mining fleets.

I don’t understand why it was raised again, except to ‘give in to the complaints’.

This is what I am still asking myself, I can not understand it.

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look at the author

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I know who the author is. Explain to me why she’s wrong. Explain to me why anyone but an afk bot aspirant would care that much about the orca’s drone yield. Because, based on what I do know about mining, it would appear that she’s right.

So, for real, I’m all ears. Break it down for me in a way that a non-miner can understand.

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  1. The article is satire

  2. As a solo industrialist my 1 Orca (AFK only for bio breaks) was my 4-5 hour a day work horse.

So there’s that.

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You mean, the article posted to Eve Onion? No way.

But more importantly, explain to me why the drone yield of an orca matters to anyone but an AFK’er.

Was it’s pre-patch yield not on par with a procurer’s? Thus, wouldn’t any solo active miner chose a barge? Procs are like 3% the price of an orca. And literally any other barge or exhumer had better yield.

And as for boosters, who the hell would care about such a small hit to fleet yield when the fleet was getting such a large buff?

So, I’m still waiting for someone to actually break this down barney style for me. Don’t just say, article was written by a troll, or it’s satire. I know it’s satire. Explain to me why the point that she was trying to make with her satire is invalid. Explain to me why anyone other than an AFK miner would care about it’s drone yield so much.

And if you were an AFK miner who was pissed about the hit to your AFK income, ■■■■■■■ own it. God damn.

At least the AFK ratters pissed about the drone aggression changes straight up said why they were pissed.

I mean, am I not making myself clear, or are people intentionally not trying to dodge the question. I want it explained to me barney style. If non-afk miners had a legitimate reason to be upset about the change, explain it to me in terms that I can understand.

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a non miner talks to a non miner… :upside_down_face: but yeah @Paliphany_Bradbury breaks it down. more or less.

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Are you talking about his reply to El Digger? Because El Digger and I had different questions, and his reply did not answer mine.

Am I not being clear here? Is there a communication error here?

I am available to be persuaded. Persuade me. Explain to why someone other than an AFK’er would care so much about the orca’s drone yield.

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Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m wasting my time in this thread.