I’m probably not the first to suggest it (and I’m probably going to be called a carebear by forum warriors for creating a topic about the need for a new mining ship, even though I’m far from one), but I find that the inability of alphas to fly Barges should be compensated by letting them fly a bigger mining ship than Venture, ideally a Cruiser with yield somewhere between a Venture and Barge and 10.000 m^3 ore hold. I know, alphas will be able to fly a Rokh in a month or so, but that ship has its issues in terms of high price and necessity for jetcan mining. This Mining Cruiser should also be a slight improvement over Venture for gas-mining omegas, and should have 5 turret slots.
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Alpha’s are limited on purpose on how much they can mine,manufacture or research to stop people from making a free character army to cause chaos to the market.
-1 for your idea
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Seems a little strange to ask for a new cruiser size ship with a 10 000 m3 bay when what you are describing essentially exists in the Mining Barges. Why not just ask for alphas to be allowed to fly barges?
But there is a reason alphas are restricted in their industrial capabilities and their efficiency at mining things. I don’t think CCP is ready to relax these restriction, but if they ever do in the future I am sure it would be simpler just to give alphas access to the existing ships.
So, that means a -1 from me, carebear.
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Why not just slap some mining lasers on a cruiser, throw in some expanded cargo holds and pretend you’re flying a mining barge?
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You would get up to 2k cargo on a Maller, which is with 6 low slots, 480 m³ base cargo and 5 turret slots probably the best ship for this idea.
Not really a good alternative for the 5000 m³ ore hold of a Venture.
Yet they are going to be able to use a mining Rokh in about a month. I’m looking for a ship to fulfill the gap between that and a Venture. In addition to being usable by alphas, it would be suitable for mining gas in nullsec where clouds can damage your ship (yes, I know that you can already use Gnosis for those). We alredy have few cruisers with mining bonuses, and this ship I proposed would fill one hole in the ship lineup.
There is no hole in the lineup. You can put mining lasers on any ship with turret hardpoints. The ship of choice for gas-harvesting before the Venture? Hurricane
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Hurricane may be a little overkill, Exequror is cheaper and does it just a well, you can only use 5 Gas harvesters anyway (max, limited by skill).
Before the Venture was in the game, the cane was the gas-huffer of choice due to its large cargobay and the ability to fit a decent tank. Things have changed a lot since that time though.
We had mining-bonused racial frigates and cruisers once. They were converted into the current logistics ships. So CCP clearly doesn’t want racial mining vessels in EVE at this time.
The ship between a non-mining ship and a Mining Barge is the Venture. It’s by no means the base mining ship.
-1 ,Carebear, How do I remove someone else’s post?
please explain how you may legally run an army of alpha accounts?
I support having a cruiser that mines slightly better than a Venture, but primarily just has stronger versatility and combat potential in its mining fit.
In addition to 4 or 5 turrets, the cruiser could have a drone capacity high enough to launch a full flight of mediums and possibly room to store extra backup drones. It should have much less powergrid than a normal cruiser, but high enough to use cruiser modules such as a large shield extender, large shield booster, or 10MN afterburner. About 300MW powergrid is probably what you want. Maybe 50/100 drone capacity. Should have 1 fewer mid and low slot total than a normal combat cruiser, so probably 8 mid/low slots. 5 mid and 3 low seems good. It’s shield focused but versatile and not too strong for defense. Lastly, its cargo and ore holds should be larger than a Venture’s, maybe 7500m3 or 10,000m3 ore hold, and 100m3 cargohold.
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I have two ideas for the high slot and skill bonus layouts:
5 high slots, 5 turret hardpoints
Mining Cruiser skill bonuses per level:
10% reduction in CPU cost of fitting mining lasers
4% bonus to shield resistances
Role bonus:
1+ bonus to ship warp core strength
20% bonus to mining and gas harvesting yield
5 high slots, 4 turret hardpoints, 1 launcher hardpoint
Mining Cruiser skill bonuses per level:
10% bonus to mining yield
7% reduction in gas cloud harvesting duration
Role bonus:
1+ bonus to ship warp core strength
The first setup relies on its versatility for strength, with the increased CPU availability being up to the pilot to spend wisely. The second setup allows for a single missile launcher or other utility high slot item to be fit without reducing mining output, however it will have low remaining CPU if a full rack of tech 2 mining lasers is used. Both setups have a bit higher raw mining output than a Venture but also feature a larger capacity, improved hit points, and greater versatility at the cost of a more expensive hull, higher skill requirement, and lower agility.
I think this would be a useful ship and reasonable to give to alpha clones.
Remove the +1 warp stab and you might have something that isnt total garbage
Actually yes, one dedicated mining vessel such is better by 60% than Venture but doing 40% of a cheapish t1 barge could do.
Orehold 7,500 m3, could launch 35m/b bandwidth for drones, 5 high slots, 3/3 for the rest. 4% to mining and gas harvesting yield and 7,5% to modules duration. And we are good to go.
And please please replace that silly legacy min in drones bonus on Vexors and Arbitrator
You know an Alpha can fit and fly a Gnosis, tanked, with drones, slightly more cargo than a venture, and can mine ore at approx the same rate, might be a tad better at gas.
Just so you know…the vexor has a mining bonus AND a huge drone bay, 5 mining drones!
A cruiser that mines, cool!
You know you have mining barges and frigates right I suggest they shot make a capital mining barge dreadnought, mining barge carrier and titan version off it mining barge dreadnought class 3x dual Strip Miners, mining barge titan class 4x dual ore triple 4x Strip Miners, mining barge carrier 0 Strip Miners but 6-10 heavy fighters ore mining fighters
first… embrace being a carebear theres nothing wrong with them especially if you’re a carebear with teeth 
not sure if its been said before but in the past there were cruisers who were mining vessels, but they changed them to have other bonus’s.