I’d like to see the Orca’s shield boosting bonuses get applied to remote boosting instead of self-boosting. The Large Industrial Core only buffs self-boosting. This is only my opinion, but I’d like to see that switched to further benefit the team instead of just the Command Ship. The Orca’s already pretty awesomely defended without those buffs. For those that don’t know, the Large Industrial Core gives a huge buff to both the duration of the boost and the strength of the boost. Properly skilled and fit, an Orca could take a beating and not even feel a thing - even with the breacher pod destroying the ship from within. I managed to reach 1,019 points every 1.2 seconds, but not everyone is as crazy as I am- props to the one for telling me to experiment with Abyssal mutations. That coupled with over 940,000 EHP and you’re safe from a small group of 6 Amarr Destroyers.
Meanwhile, this huge Industrial Command ship that is supposed to provide fleet support is only capable of barely providing any remote shield boosting at all (even with the use of 2 heavy shield drones). It’s not nearly enough. It even contains a fleet buff that can increase shield boosting, but again- it doesn’t apply to remote shield boosting. This would require all ships carry a shield booster, but mining barges and exhumers don’t really get much benefit from them. They’d lose too much shielding by sacrificing that medium slot for a booster.
Anyway, this is simply my opinion. I wouldn’t mind losing the self-booster if it meant providing more buffs to the fleet. It’s what the ship was designed for.
One more note: The Orca gets a fair amount of range to remote shield boosting- Optimal range is 45km. It’d be nice to see it be put to good use.
We could use a battleship-class shield logi platform, but the Orca ain’t it. This role’s armour counterpart, the Nestor, is highly mobile (thanks to its low mass letting it gain a lot of benefit from AB/MWD) and features considerably less EHP, with considerably greater combat potential.
I’m thinking the battleship shield logi could be a new Deathless hull. The Deathless are in many ways parallel to the Sisters (secretive, highly involved in mysterious research, cloaky, friends with bad people like the Angels/rogue drones, hostile to the SOCT, and not really pirates even though this is what their ships are classified as), and in other ways their polar opposites (shields vs armour, and presentation).
The added range on the remote shield boosting options of the Orca and Porpoise is very useful in keeping the mining fleet safe from NPC damage. I’ve frequently used it.
That said, these repairs won’t save a barge against players.
While the (self) shield booster buff of the industrial core seems useless, which makes it an easy trade, this might be because you’re flying in high security space. Not everyone flies in HS where buffer is the only viable option.
Now on the Orca buffer is a very attractive option because it has a huge amount of shield to begin with, but ever since the industrial core added shield boost bonuses it is a viable alternative for all parts of space where fights last longer than 20 seconds.
If anything the self-shield booster buff needs to be increased to make this alternative more viable, not removed.
And those barges? They’ll live.
Just remote repair the barges against NPCs and if players arrive: warp away. Only the Orca is stuck in industrial core, not the barges.