Also, I don’t know how anybody else feels about this, but I like variety…even within a specific task. Right now, there is “THE” best ship for a thing. For mining, if you want max yield, you fly a Hulk, if you want the best tank, you fly a Skiff. If you want to The best missile mission ship, you fly a Golem. If you want this specific thing, you fly this specific ship. But that isn’t true for all areas of the game, although quite a few, I like the idea of choice. Why can’t we have 2 or 3 or 4 different ships that all have fairly equal stats. Why not have 2 ships with max yield, a Hulk and a -----. Maybe a rival corp to ORE. Just because there would be no advantageous purpose to having this, it would be a cool option. And far more realistic…
In no world/galaxy/universe where humans exist and create things, would there ever be only one company that makes a type of thing. Why is ORE the only mining ship builders in New Eden, This would be a great opportunity to introduce a new fleet of mining barges and exhumers, maybe armor tanked versions, so they are different enough to want to make a choice.
I definitely don’t know enough about the META to know how these additions would make a difference in game terms. But from a New Eden perspective, it would make sense to have rival companies producing ships for different tasks.
Or maybe you fly a Hawk, because the Hawk can run burner missions, while the Golem cannot. Likewise, in most missions where you have to either move around alot (taking a lot of acceleration gates) or the hostiles are mostly non-BC/BS types, heavy (assault) missiles, light missile or rocket armed ships will be competitive, or even outperform a marauder.
The Caldari Epic Arc for example has 5 missions where you get to fight some stuff, with quite a number of BS for the Golem to farm, but in the other 10 missions its’ just “do X jumps”, all in all I wouldn’t be supriced if a Rocket Jackdaw could run the whole arc faster then a Golem over all the traveling implied.
Likewise, both will lose to endurance / prospect class ships if mobility becomes an issue. The expedition ships can also be considered more tanky then either of the exhumers over the fact their small signature and higher velocity means anything in the game applies less damage to them and allows them to escape from ganks exhumers would get fried in. They can also fit more powerful tank modules then the exhumers.
There are counterfeit products all over new eden. The mining ships and equipments most capsuleers use are those built by outlaws in low and renegades in null, who sell their low quality products in empire space at a so much better price then ORE’s products are traded, that most miners consider the counterfeit products to be the original, and the legitimate ORE equipment is “bling”.
Just look at how the counterfeit hardware litters the asteroid belts with “residue”, and miners are selfish enough to even load mining crystals that result in even more precious minerals being lost.
The current ones can be armor tanked, it’s just that noone wants to armor tank them. The Amarr T1 hauler is supposedly an armor tanked ship, too, until people notice that fitting shield tank modules on it provides them with one of the most tanky ships in the game, and significantly more shield-tanky then its caldari counterpart despite the latter having been “designed to” shield tank.
Likewise, if an Exhumer with 8 low slots was introduced, people would put 8 shield flux coils into it if they want it tanky to rats, a damage control + 7 bulkheads if they want it tanky to players, and 3/4 MLU + DC + flux coils or power diagnostics for the generic solution.
What can armor do, that hull can’t do better?
Unless we active (remote) repair?
If the RR originates from the mining command ships, how to stop the afk-ers from spider crabbing? If it doesn’t originate from the mining command, but from, let’s say Augorors … we can have it right now, so no change is needed, right? But as the Augoror alts could be barges that farm isk, too, we have the situation we have right now.
Barges aren’t shield buffer tanked because no other option was viable, they’re shield buffer tanked because it’s more afk-able then other solutions.
Literally nothing you said changes/argued against what I said.
First, while yes some missions would be better in a Hawk or a Jackdaw…the vast majority of LVL4 security missions are not even completable by a lone Hawk or Jackdaw. (Except maybe mission blitzing) which I’m not a fan of doing myself.
Secondly, I was speaking of yield ships…no other ships can come close to the yield of the exhumers. Max yield is still the Hulk, and best tank (with still higher yield) is the Skiff. While yes, the expedition ships may avoid ganks better, they will never make as much ISK/hour mining. But all of that comes down to balancing your options. It would simply be a waste in high sec to use an expedition ship vs an exhumer, but in low sec, you would likely not last at all…regardless…
None of that was even remotely close to my point.
My point is that right now, the ship selection is mostly broken up into specific roles…even among a specific racial ship tree. You wouldn’t use a Merlin for scanning, and you wouldn’t use a Heron for security missions. But if you want to scan things down, and you only had access to frigates, in Caldari, your only real choice is the Heron. I’m not saying that is bad or wrong, only that I love variety and would be cool to have multiple options. For no other reason than to have them. Not that it is needed or necessary, or that there is something missing like armor tank mining ships. I’m simply expressing a desire for more choices. More options for everything.
Why not multiple choices for every type. Like a scorpion based marauder, or a Rokh based Black Ops. I know that right now, each type has its specific thing. But I like variety for no other reason than because its cool to see more different types of ships in space.
In pretty much every other area of gameplay you at very least have the choice of 4 different racial ships. If you are mission running in a Marauder, you can choose to fly 4 different ships. If you are flying frigates, there are more than 2 dozen to choose from between all the factions. But if you want to mine, and do it efficiently, there is only 3 ships. 1 for Ice, 1 for Ore, and 1 for Tank (for both Ice and Ore)…
No matter where you are in space, if you want max Ore mining yield, there is only one choice, the hulk. No one argues that, it is a known fact, and designed that way. Well, that sucks. But only from a choice standpoint. The exhumers do the job, and do it well. But ship SKINs are a lame way for variety because it offers nothing in game for differences.
Another 2 or 3 choices in types of ships could change the whole dynamic of the game for the better too. If you are a ganker and you are after blingy mission ships to pop and loot. You have to be aware of what ship is being used. What you have setup might be perfect to gank a Golem, but would fail against a Kronos, for example. (I don’t actually know that much about ganking)
However, if you are after mining ships, you only need one setup, because no matter where you go in space, a Hulk is a Hulk, and has very little variation in tank. But if there was 3 or 4 different types of exhumers, then what you have fit today may not be suited for one type or another and one group of miners may get lucky today because they choose to fly this (Hulk-like ship) vs this other (Hulk-like ship)…
so OP
you want devs to spend time, time that they won’t spend on other aspects of the game that NEED to be reworked, to create something which is not needed, to spend time on how to provide equilibrium, how it will impact or not other ships/other activities etc just "For no other reason than to have them. Not that it is needed or necessary, or that there is something missing ". Just to answer your "I’m simply expressing a desire for more choices. "
I see this counter argument every time miners as for more ships. Even though we have maybe a dozen mining ships compared to over 200 combat ships, you never hear these complaints when CCP adds a new Pirate Faction or when they add new Navy Destroyers and Dreads.
As as for NEEDED rework, most of what CCP has been working on lately is graphic/interface changes. Did we NEED Proton UI? Did we NEED new hanger/docking animation? Did we NEED a Rifter reskin? Did we NEED The Soundscape of Uprising? There is plenty of effort that CCP could apply to something like new mining ships.
In Echoes, strip miners are AOE and mining lasers are targeted. strip miners still collect more ore over time, but if you want a specific ore you use a mining laser.
You could also change the fact that mining equipment are the only turrets that allow you to stop a cycle early for partial benefit. You cant stop an artillery mid cycle to deal half damage. Once that has changed, you could have strip miners that takes big bites over long cycles (better for big rocks) and mining lasers that take smaller bites over short cycles (better for small rocks).
While you can get solid yield from a Vexor, you also can only get a fraction of the ore hold, which means you are back single cycle fill times.
It is not a child’s whim to want my favorite game, that I spend my hard earned money and my limited time on, to be better or have the things I (and others) want. There is no reason not to have more ships. I’m also not under any delusion that just because I offer an opinion of a matter, that anyone (let alone CCP) will care or listen.
As Lugues Slive said, there are over 200 combat ships, with roles and purposes and overlap.
There are however, really only 9 ships designed for mining. A frigate, with 2 tech II specialized variants, and 3 Barges with a tech II variant each. That’s all there is, for a game with a living economy that completely depends on mining.
Not only overlapping purposes, but even completely redundant in many cases. There’s also the ships that got nerfed to be useless and basically disappeared from the game, and the ships that aren’t on the ship tree. Some of those ships are ORE ships, too. I don’t see why I would pay hundreds of billions for it, but I guess getting myself killed in a Primae (Noctis variant that isn’t displayed in the ORE ship tree) would show the other capsuleers I was able to afford one. So I guess its’ the miners’ counterpart to the pvp-er’s Marshal.
Not really. Sure, the nullblock and its afk income reaction alts live from t2 manufacture, but not only are they not “the economy”, but also in many cases the T2 ships they produce are challenged in performance, or even outperformed, by faction and pirate ships, which can be redeemed from LP stores, avoiding the nullblock alltogether. The modules you put on your faction ship, if you go cheap, drop from NPCs, and if you go expensive, the modules originate from the LP store, too. Being inferior to the LP store equipment, the nullblock manufactured T2 modules are just a compromize.
If you want to go cheap not just in terms of isk investment but also in terms of performance, you can fit T1 modules on your ship. The T1 module, which has inferior performance to its’ NPC loot variant, can be built from commonly available BPOs by reproccessing the NPC loot to materials, and using those materials to build the T1, avoiding any miners here, too.
If you live in null, loading Hail M mining crystals into your autocannon and jumping on a few belt rats will make you more minerals then spending the same amount of time in the belts with a procurer, just that the rats also pay ISK on top of providing you with minerals, while the rocks don’t pay you any bounties. Eventually you can chain belts for a hauler spawn, which drops around a day worth of orca crab in minerals, though it doesn’t pay any mentionworth bounty and if you don’t have a DST or freighter at hand you’ll have a logistic problem, as the hauler drops minerals rather then compressable ore, so the m^3 to be hauled is ridiculous. The haulers also spawn in highsec, but their drops are two (or three?) orders of magnitude lower then their nullsec counterparts.
I don’t agree. I’ve found I make more ISK/hour in lowsec with a Prospect than I ever did with a Hulk+compression Orca in highsec. When I scan down lowsec data and relic sites with my alt (instead of sitting in the Orca in highsec) that ISK/hour can increase dramatically depending on the day. Of course it takes some time to pore over the Dotlan maps to find possible candidate systems, and some recon, but in the end, I’ve discovered a far more lucrative way to make ISK via mining and exploration. By paying attention to what’s going on in your system it’s also safer than dealing with gank corps in highsec.
Ah, but you see I specifically said make as much ISK/hour mining. If you are going to do ANY other task, with any ship, the discussion is now completely irrelevant. We are talking about mining, not exploration, scanning, missioning, etc… The Expedition Frigates are designed for specific types of mining, and I don’t do enough Gas or Ice mining to know specifically how the Expedition frigates can stack up against the Exhumers. But from a purely Ore mining standpoint, all else being equal, you cannot outmine a Hulk.
And back to the point, I don’t know of any other area of the game that has only 1 definitive ship for a given task. As was argued earlier, while the Golem “may” be the best shield/missile lvl4 mission running ship, that is highly specific and not the best in all situations/for all missions.
OK - I make more ISK mining gas in lowsec, even alone, than I did mining ore in a Hulk in highsec. Something like 45ish million per hour in the Prospect vs. 25ish million per hour in the Hulk. Could I make more ISK in lowsec in a Hulk? Maybe, but I doubt it. I would get killed more for sure. This I why I like the plethora of choices I have when it comes to mining.
That is not a plethora of choices…that’s not even a decent amount of choices. At best it is a small amount of choices.
As I said before, I don’t know much of anything about Gas mining, but you certainly are not going to be able to mine more Ore in lowsec in an expedition frigate than an Exhumer would…maybe safer yes, but not more.
Beside all of that, I still don’t understand the argument against having more choices. Is there some reason why you think that only having a limited choice is better? Like, I can understand an argument for balance, or for quality, but not having more choices simply because, doesn’t make any sense. Right now, there is not enough choices for mining ships.
If you have maxed mining skills, and it is more profitable to instead fly a lower skilled ship, then that is a complete waste of those skill points and time to train it. All of that comes down to lack of choice.
Take someone with maxed mining skills. Right now, it is safer to fly an expedition frigate in lowsec. You make less ISK than you would in an Exhumer, but only topline. You would lose the Exhumer, because they are like heavy glass bottles sitting in space. But your Prospect is quick and agile, and you can fly away quicker and save your ship. Plus it is Way cheaper if you do lose it. But by flying the Prospect, you cant utilize the days and days worth of skill points you wasted on those higher level mining/ship skills. Knowing that you will make more money in the long run by flying the frigate over the exhumer, that is no choice at all. At that point, maybe there should be another class of miner. A lowsec, tankier type exhumer.
Mining Dark Ochre in lowsec makes around 100m isk per Covetor-Hour if you have a Porpoise to boost and compress, probably around 60M hour w/o foreman and significantly less if you need to dock/jetcan.
Yet, using the “orca alt” to scan and hack sites while the miner toon huffs gas will be more efficient: gankers in lowsec hunt for expensive killmails and not slippery mining frigates, decreasing the odds you get ganked, while bringing an exhumer to a mining anomaly, or even better, sieging an orca there, is like giving them a christmas present. Odds you get successfully ganked in a gas site further decrease by the fact most gankers lack knowledge on how to gank huffers.
While the mining toon is huffing, the exploration toon might discover additional gas sites on top of finding salvage and data, so the prospect can continue to huff. So the Propsect soloes the veldspar income of a hulk+orca while anything the explorer finds in hacking sites is extra income.
I was analyzing that setup myself and it is (rightly) not very survivable for someone who mainly plays solo as I do - hence my choice to solo gas huff.
No. High and Low are very different things. Null is very different, too. And WH space again is different.
In High, you get ganked by “suiciders” in kitchensink fits, who have very little time to kill you before CONCORD kills them, and pirate faction diamond rats in the system are indicated by an FOB being in the same system.
In Low, diamonds can be there independend of whether or not there’s a FOB in local, in null as well, and gankers aren’t concorded in low or null. They can take themselves all the time it needs to kill a mining ship, no need to hurry whatsoever, and they won’t lose their ship to a miner unless they’re incompetent, so they bring more powerful fits then the suiciders which do quantity-over-quality ganks.
In Null it’s the same, just that the nullsec population is mostly carebears, so they hide from you if you bring a prospect fearing you might light a covops cyno with it, and safelog to deny you of pvp content if you don’t leave their system soon enough. While in high and low it’s more important to get content for yourself, i.e. you either go fight the intruder or hope the “neutral” miner is non-hostile and continue your (mining) activities, in null it’s more important to deny content to the potentially hostile intruder then to get it yourself, so you dock up and call it a day.
In WH space, things are completely random, including quality and mindset of player adversaries. There’s no diamond rats, though there’s drifters, which are more predictable and less dangerous then the diamonds.
combat relies on a paper/scissor/stone design, which justifies to have many different options (tank, armor, damage types, range, speed) etc
mining has nothing do with this design, and OP admitted himself that the only reason to have more mining ships is because he would like to have more mining ships. Which is not enough to justify to invest dev time/money in something that has no other justification that “one guy would like to have it”
