New ORE Ship type for greater flexibility and variety for Alpha and Omega players for various resource gathering.
Concept: A modifiable ship for ORE Corporation to be more competitive in a variety of roles. Utilizing sliding bulkheads to increase, decrease or eliminate specific areas in the cargo spaces to optimize for a specific role. Can only be modified when docked, tethered or at a mobile depot but allowing the pilot a greater range of option from one ship for multiple roles in resource gathering operations.
I have been working on the stats for this new ship and have them available for anyone interested. Basic premise is similar to the tactical destroyer in that it has 3 “modes” (industrial/pi; salvage; mining) but can only be transitioned from one mode to another when docked, tethered or at a mobile depot. This design allows a player to use one ship and “configure” it to the specific resource gathering operation through the use of sliding bulkheads to increase, decrease or eliminate areas in the “cargo space”.
With the introduction of the new expansion “Life Blood”, I figured this would be a great time to share this concept for comments and possible development. If there is interest, I would be happy to post the stats that I have for this design.
The question I have is “what vacant niche is waiting for your ship?”
The existing deep space transports can carry up to 80K M3 of refined material in the fleet hangar with giant secure containers and a bit more in the regular hangar. The Orca can carry 187K of unrefined ore and ice in it’s ore hold and up to an additional 140K of general cargo in the fleet and standard hangars depending on how it is fit. Freighters can carry over a million M3 of general cargo. For refined or compressed materials, you can use giant secure containers to expand the cargohold by 30 percent.
The DST can be fit to align and warp at a gate in 8 seconds (1 pulse of the afterburner) and an Orca can be fit to align and warp at a gate in 10 seconds (1 pulse of the MWD). These ships can move around surprisingly quickly once you know how.
The T1 specialty haulers are basically intended as a low cost, low skill option for newer players - they can all be replaced by a DST that can get the job done faster and safer.
I don’t see a gap that we need a new ship to fill - especially since you’ve given the ship T3 functionality which will put the skill and price requirements on par with the transports.
I will grant you all that as very true. I was looking at this as a concept for Alpha players to be more functional either solo or in a corp or Omega players who let their account lapse until they reactivate. Alphas can only fly certain ships but allowing this in, would give them a functionality for resource gathering in a variety areas. Being able to have one ship and just switching out a couple modules, going from doing PI, to mining, then jumping in with some friends on PVE missions doing salvage.
With the new expansion coming out, and its focus being on resource wars and the new moon mining, while trying to open up the options for Alpha accounts, it seemed like a possible concept to hook players in. It isn’t meant to replace anything, but to give ORE corp a new design to be competitive in multiple areas while still operating in the resource markets without having to purchase and fit a number of ships for each situation. The “cargo” area is limited enough to to push any existing ship out, and the options for high slots are limited to only allow small turrets or maybe rockets but only in PI/Industrial mode. In salvage or mining mode, high slots are only for non-weapon modules. To counter balance this, only in salvage or mining mode is a drone bay available. Trade offs for the pilot to work around.
The concept could still use some work, granted, but at this point it is just a concept for those Alpha players to be involved and more useful in resource gathering in various situations until they can/do upgrade to Omega.
The whole idea how Eve works is that you have different ships for different uses. That’s why people still keep flying frigates when they have trained bigger stuff as well. This idea would make most industrial ships obsolete.
IF such a ship would be added, it would be a tech 3 -ship and alpha’s wouldn’t be able to use it.
The original idea that another pilot and I had would have made it an upgradeable T3 ship design. It would be available to Alpha players as an Alpha level ship with very limited functionality (basically only one mode), then you purchase and train up for each of the Tech level mods to increase its ability, eventually opening it up and topping out its abilities as a T3 ship. I simplified the idea a bit, trying to make it a very low level “T3” type for Alpha players to use. Trying to encourage them to keep playing, and upgrade to the strategic and tactical ships while branching out to other “career paths” on an Omega account.
Maybe it was a silly and useless design idea, but just trying to throw out and idea that I, and maybe others would be interested in just for fun. I still play around with frigates just to see what silly ideas I can do and make work, just for fun… and isn’t that part of the game? Not every ship has a “niche” that it fills. Some are just cool ideas or just for fun.
This is too generalized ship and too advancedto be anything besides a tech 3 -ship and as such, no alpha would have access to it.
Yes, every ship in the game has a purpose for being there. This ship is so good that it would obsolete all other types of industrials, just due to it’s flexibility and always being the most convenient choice.
So it would be better as the original idea of the upgradeable T1 Alpha to the T3 Omega ship? I am not so certain it would obsolete the other industrials since its cargo space is so limited and due to the design, cargo expander modules would not be useable in the low slots so the space it has is all it would have.
Yeah, maybe this was just a “flight of fancy”… just for fun.
The idea of “flexible” is the core design pivot for t3 ships, dat is something ccp won’t change for eternity.
Plus, there are numerous of specialized t1 industrials for alpha to choose once they are upgraded: Kryos has its mineral hold; Miasmos has its raw ore hold; Epithal has its pi hold; and hell, hoarder even has a specialized ammo hold!
And if you think dat is not enough, you can always use a Rabisu to cloaky haul some corpses.
But yeah, we already got specialised transport ships, with their roles and stuff, only way this would happen is already said and copy pasted by everyone, a T3, and in order to keep all other industrials useable the cost to produce such T3 would have to be considerably high to give that risk/reward when flying it.
TBH I got no idea why I want a transport ship to be versatile in what I want to haul, just use the other ones and tank it like hell so those cruiser gankers don’t kill you before CONCORD shows up.
I agree with you here that there is enough options for mining ships and versatility. Although I understand the want for more mining ships. It would unbalance the game if you added in a mining ship that could configure like that. It would make it too easy, and everyone would just stick to that ship and nothing else.
