As a dedicated miner and someone having Mindlinks, i did consider using an Orca. But one thing stopped me.
Its price and what it can do for its cost.
I will not lie if i say that orcas are just insanely expensive, everyone knows that. The biggest problem i see with it, is how little of an upgrade it is compared to a Porpoise, what is like 1/8th it’s cost. A porp can boost at 38% unsieged, an orca can do about 40. with t1 siege porp does 40%, orca does 43%. With t2 core orca does 45, porp is 41. I am not max skilled, but even at max its not much more.
The biggest problem i see with the orca is how expensive it is for the amount of boosts it can give, and i don’t think a ship capable of compressing moon goo and ice should cost 2b. I don’t even know why citadels can’t compress moon goo and gas, but back to topic. I am pretty sure porpoises would be kings if they had ice/moon compressors.
So my idea is, why not to do one of these things with an Orca:
Higher cycle reduction (i was thinking about 50% with max skills, a bit lower withou without)
Make it cheaper (cut its price in half)
As of currently, Orca is just not worth it for many people because of it’s cost, and how little gain it gets for general ore mining. While i am aware most use it for ice, other than that, its not very effective for general ore mining, only with very large fleets what not everyone can have/run.
I am open to discuss this with anyone, and any other improvement what can be made.
That’s probably the main reason why Porpoises do not have ice and moon compression.
As result the Orca is by far the cheapest option to get compression for ice and moon ore for about 38% of the hull cost of a Rorqual.
Why should the Orca become cheaper and why shouldn’t it cost 2 billion ISK?
I see you’ve told us that you don’t think it should be 2 billion ISK and that you think it is too expensive, but you fail to give a reason aside from your preferences.
Aside from the extra compression options the Orca also gives over 9% additional yield to all miners in the fleet compared to a Porpoise.
Considering that miners always have cheap and expensive options and some are willing to pay a lot for top tier yield rates:
Covetor: 45 million ISK
Hulk: 300 million ISK for 35% more yield
Inherent Implants ‘Highwall’ Mining MX-1001: half a million ISK for 1% mining yield
Inherent Implants ‘Highwall’ Mining MX-1003: 20 million ISK for 3% mining yield
Inherent Implants ‘Highwall’ Mining MX-1005: 145 million ISK for 5% mining yield
Mining laser II: 9% mining yield for 1 million ISK.
‘Aoede’ Minin laser: 10% mining yield for 800 million ISK
Mining drone II: less than a million ISK
‘Augmented’ mining drone: 13 million ISK a piece or 65 million for a 12% drone mining increase compared to T2
‘Harvester’ mining drone: 566 million ISK a piece or 2.8 billion for a 16% drone mining increase
And all those numbers are upgrades you have to pay for each individual miner.
The lower tiers are cheap, but when you can get a 9% yield increase for the entire fleet on top of that, an Orca doesn’t seem that expensive to me.
It has its uses for a couple of specific things: it has better range boost on mining and other boosts enabling the right fleet to sit in the middle of an asteroid belt and strip it,
It has a fairly large fleet hanger which can be useful
It has a fairly large fleet maintenance hanger which is useful
In various roles it is really good for transport and as a defensive core, or as a mining support vessel.