I find it quite strange to say the least that a ship like Proteus has only 440 m3 of cargo while some of the Gallente frigates that are 2 tiers down have almost the same amount or close AND when we look in relative terms by comparing the ration ship’s volume/ ship’s cargo ALL frigates have lower ratios than Proteus!
So a ship that has 4-10 times bigger ship volume than the frigates, has its cargo volume bigger by 1-3 times, which means that in relative terms the ratio for Proteus is at least 3 times bigger, which means that on average it has about 3 times less cargo volume relative to its total volume when compared with the frigates!
I don’t think it would brake the game if the ship’s cargo gets looked at and changed across ALL tiers in order to have cargo volumes that are more in line with the size of the ships and that’s from pure realistic point of view!
Also from a gameplay point of view bigger ships should be able to collect the loot of the missions they can do but that is not how things are currently. If I run missions with a Proteus and its 440 m3 cargo, even L3s that have several rooms end up dropping more loot that it can carry and because I use a mobile tractor unit with its 100 m3 it makes it even worse to collect everything in one swoop but I have to warp to a station in the system refit with cargo holds then go back through the rooms and pick everything up! And that’s in SOME of the L3, with the L4s it’s worse, here A LARGE percentage of the missions drop loot larger than 440 m3 and they have even more pockets than the L3 on average.
The ships’ cargo space have nothing to do with lore, logic or size of the ships but everything to do with players constraints so that they cannot play the game as it could or should be played but played as CCP wants them to play it.
And it’s that way for the entire game.
You’re not playing EVE Online, you’re playing CCP’s Whims Online.
I agree that the Proteus needs some attention from CCP; there’s certainly a whole thread where its limitations are thrashed out, together with suggestions for the ship’s improvement.
I don’t believe that merely increasing the Proteus’ cargo hold size would be sufficient to make flying the ship an attractive proposition in most situations.
Eve University’s summary of the Proteus contains the following observation:
‘It is not a good choice for missions, due to its limited range with blasters and poor tracking with railguns.’
I am fond of my Proteus, with all its faults, but the size of the cargo hold doesn’t strike me as its main or only issue. You could choose a different cruiser for your L3 missions.
As I said, I love my Proteus, but it has very specific uses and you skill for it knowing in advance that you won’t be able to use it for everything you want to do. It’s the same for the other Tech 3 Cruisers, though they are far better at what they do.
Your choice. If a larger cargo hold is what you must have, and CCP agrees, then you’re flying; otherwise, fly something else.
Not every ship has to be good for every purpose. The Proteus is one of the Top Choices in PvP, be it as BlackOps Hunter, WH Covert Assaulter, 100MN Solomobile or even Railgun Doctrine Kiter with the ability to fit 2x EWAR due to the additional Lowslots over the Legion for example. It performs incredibly well in Event sites where all the stuff comes close.
So, while the ship clearly has it’s downsides, it is far from being bad or needing buffs. It is just a specialist for special purposes, but it really shines at these tasks.
You’re comparing the regular cargosize of a cruiser to a frigate that’s known for it’s extremely high cargo space.
T1 exploration frigates are specialised in salvaging, exploration and looting and have 400m3 cargo which is huge for frigates.
It’s no surprise that the cargo of destroyers and cruisers isn’t much bigger than the cargo-specialized frigates.
As you have correctly noticed the cargo of the Imicus isn’t much smaller than a T3 cruiser like the Proteus, but the outlier here is the Imicus, not the Proteus.
I have listed all the T1 Gallente frigates and the navy comet, I did the math for all of them, and I showed that compared to ALL the Proteus is at disadvantage when it comes to the cargo, and yet here you are cherry picking. Dude, its all of them not just the fattest one! 440 m3 cargo is SMALL for a ship with the length of its main axis at least 5 times LONGER than that of any frigate, and thus its cargo should be at least 5 times the smallest cargo volume of any frigate and that’s 700 m3.
I’m not here for any of that extra issues, all I care is the cargo discrepancy and I bet such discrepancy exists for the other big ships too, so I’m just trying to get the attention about something that I felt was OFF.
The issue with any increase to cargo space for PvE is that it then also skews things in PvP. I’d love more space on my current fit - but I’m not willing to lose a rig or low slot.
Maybe CCP will allow us to expand certain hulls (cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship) with1-3 extra specialized slots.
To be honest, @Syzygium, I was surprised that the Proteus was being used for L3 missions; that was my main point.
I use it for a very specific purpose, and it performs just fine. The flexibility afforded by the Strategic Cruisers does make them capable of a variety of activities in EVE, but, as you write, neither the Proteus nor any other ship is good at everything.
I use it for L4s but I can’t jump into L4 straight away after not having played for a while, I have to start with L2 and make my way up, so L3s were a step I had to take.
you’ve cherry picked the Proteus by comparing it to a bunch of frigates
cargo volume doesn’t scale the same as ship volume, which makes your ‘ratio’ a bad way to compare these ships
The only reason the Proteus has the lowest cargo ratio is because it’s the biggest ship in your list. That doesn’t mean the Proteus is an outlier, it’s just a result of your cherry picking.
If you had for example also taken other cruisers, or even battleships like a Dominix you’d get a ‘ratio’ of 605, significantly bigger than the Proteus and any of the other ships.
This doesn’t mean the Proteus has a bad cargo space, it means your way of measuring cargo space isn’t really practical.
Yes, bigger ships have bigger cargo space.
Yes, bigger ships are also bigger than small ships.
No, cargo space doesn’t go up as fast as the size of ships. That’s not a problem, it just means bigger ships can more easily hold bigger modules, bigger capacitor boosters and the likes. But cargo size doesn’t scale linearly with ship size. I don’t see why it should.
I feel like there’s a false assumption here, which is that cargo space should be a linear percentage of overall ship volume (i.e., every ship should allocate 5% of it’s total volume to cargo space).
That assumption completely ignores ship roles. Obviously, the designer of a cargo ship is going to allocate more space to a cargo hold than say, the designer of a combat ship (who will allocate more space to weapons and support systems).
A sports car might be bigger in overall volume than a four-door hatchback, and yet have considerably smaller trunk space.
This! If larger ships would have a linearly scaled cargohold, their capacity for Capboosters, Ammo, Deployables, Containers and Refit Options would be insane. I personally think the balance is quite good at the moment. Yeah I would love to have more cargo on my beloved Amarr ships because they would be quite imba with nearly unlimited capacitor from 3200er booster charges… but well, I can accept that every piece on the chessboard has to have it’s downsides.
I never said that the cargo space should have a linear relation with the ship’s size, which isn’t even within the frigate class precisely because of the role each one of them has, but so does the Proteus, its a multirole ship, with the subsystems it can be refitted to excel at anything that the frigates do, including scanning - I never said the scanning fit should have 2000 m3 because the cargo of the scanning frigate is 400 m3, did I?
I’m only talking about combat ships here, dude, ships which ROLE is to run security mission, where did I say anything about cargo ships? That’s another topic entirely.
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