It looks like Orcas intended purpose is support. If it could mine faster than barges/exhumers then people wouldnt use barges/exhumers most of the time i think.
Thats why i am in favor of boosting the amount of hostile NPCs that spawn, so that the Orca pilot has something to deal with. Currently he just warps in, maybe launches drones, starts command bursts and goes AFK. There are some people who want to make it so command bursts turn off randomly or something, so he has to turn them back on, but that is not engaging. So more enemy NPCs for the Orca to deal with, more wrecks to tractor and salvage.
OR
The symbiotic / entosis thing where the more barges/exhumers are in fleet and on grid the faster the orca mines. It is inspired by nuclear reactor from Factorio, if you build two next to each other they generate more heat compared to if they were built separately. But that might be too fancy
I’m not suggesting faster - just closer in terms of total volume. Right now even configured for max mining drones you’re still at roughly half the rate of the slowest Exhumer for easily 10-15x the price tag. And yes, I know the Orca is intended as a “command” vessel - but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t suck less in terms of mining capability.
Yea, a good Orca can increase the mining speed more than 40% on each barge afaik. But there is still something wrong with an Orca just sitting on grid AFK, its possible there is no good solution.
An Orca boosts mining yield of the barges in fleet by 87% at max levels, which is significant.
It doesn’t need to be AFK, it can kill NPCs, remote repair barges or drop off ore of the fleet at the station in between boosts to maximise your fleet’s effectiveness.
You shouldn’t be AFK’ing in an Orca anyway, even in a fleet. You should be drag-mining with a Higgs, at speed, and aligned to a station at all times, ready to warp out in an instant.
oh, when considering it’s other convenience options besides the pure mining boost, of course. Even the Combo 1 Orca + 1 Miner is better on field than 2 Miners, because of Compression and Storage.
So, even asking to make this ship “better” in any way is nuts. I don’t know why we see this same topic every some weeks…
Installing a Higgs Rig on your Orca and/or barges, which will greatly increase its mass and greatly reduce its maximum speed. Start at one end of the belt, above the plane of the belt, and slowly make your way across the entire belt with your fleet of barges/exhumers in tow, aligned to a station the entire time. Due to the Higgs Rig, you are already traveling at the maximum speed of the Orca (which is now only roughly 20 meters per second), and if undesirables enter the system, all you have to do is right click once and instantly warp the entire fleet to the station you are aligned to.
Done correctly, there is absolutely zero chance of getting caught, as long as you are paying attention to local.
we use that in WHspace sometimes, being aligned to a POS tower (or our home hole).
All the Barges/Exhumers don’t need any tank and use the medslots to doubleweb each other. Together with a HiggsAnchor rig you almost come to a “standstill” while technically being aligned all the time. So you can mine with the whole fleet even on huge roids without getting out of laser range and in case anything happens you have the whole fleet in warp instantly.
Under a POS FF or when escaping through a WH the aggrotimer won’t matter and for the boostership it’s also better because it can’t be tackled in front of a Citadel because of its Link-timer.
Mining is the Orca’s secondary role.
It’s primary role is as a mining support ship. Providing boosts and compression, it fills this role very, very well.
No one’s disputing that. But don’t you think it should mine a tad more than 25m3/s? (this is half the rate of a Skiff) A 50% buff to mining drones wouldn’t be that unreasonable.
The problem is that if the Orca’s mining yield is too high people will use it as an AFK mining platform in high sec, because of it’s huge ore hold and high EHP that makes ganking a T2 fit Orca very cost-ineffective.
In fact some people are already using it as an AFK mining platform in HS.
There’s no reason to make that problem bigger, as the Orca already is a strong mining support platform that isn’t in need of buffs.