It’s a trial account. It’s supposed to be incomplete.
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To the opening poster: I have not seen any specific information released by CCP, other than saying that mining ships will receive a re-balance. So I cannot give you a definite answer about exactly what will be changed.
The only thing I can do is tell you about the changes they made in the past -
Long ago the mining ships were a lot more similar. The main difference was the higher mining amounts as you went up from Porc → Cov → Hulk etc. The Covetor and Mack had ice bonusses.
A big change CCO made to barges and exhumers were giving them different roles - their current state. You can choose between tank, or cargo space, or mining amount. I think it was a good change and added a lot more choices and options for mining.
Long ago the Orca was just a support vessel designed for boosting. Back then fleet boosters did not consume charges and were system-wide for the fleet. It meant Orca pilots would often sit at an station (or inside the shields of the old non-dockable player “stations” around moons) and all miners anywhere in the system would recieve the boosts.
The Orca was bad at mining back then. Barges easily out-mined it. So it stayed in a boosting and hauler role for a while. (The one nice thing about the old Orca was that people could be semi-afk in an Orca parked somewhere while doing their RL work and still be able to give boosts to other newer players in a corp - which helped small corps with new players a LOT actually, especially if a few were in awkward timezones)
After a while CCP felt that they wanted a more active type of gameplay so they removed the system-wide range for boosts, and made them require charges. Orcas could no longer be parked offgrid. (Of course these boost changes were not just made because of mining, there were pve and pvp reasons too)
Orcas now had to stay ongrid with the fleet. But they were still bad at mining compared to barges. The problem was Orca pilots had almost nothing to do - just sit there. CCP saw it was a prolem, so they added mining bonuses to the Orca. They did the same for the Rorqual. Now Orca and Rorqual pilots did not just have to sit there and feel that they were not contributing. They could actually mine and help the fleet at the same time. It was a good idea.
But the mining bonuses CCP chose meant the “support ships” can now out-mine the actual mining barges in some ways. Which is one of the many reasons why stockpiles of minerals were built up faster and bigger than CCP liked.
So maybe the support ships will get reduced mining bonuses and be more support-ey? Maybe mining barges will receive tweaks and fine tuning to some stats? I don’t know. We will have to see and wait what CCP says… when they say it… soon ™
The only change that is sure is the addition of new types of cargo bays as some people have said for example, for gas.
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And this is exactly what @CCP_Rattati wants to return to.
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I really hope he does not do it. It would be too much of a step backward I feel. But I am kinda getting used to disappointments and bad decisions from CCP and bracing myself for them. 
When I hear about new updates and patches long ago I used to be “Oooh I wonder what new things or new content are we getting”… but now it has changed to “Sigh. I wonder how much will be broken.”
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With the introduction of difference resource holds, I think we might see a return to resource based roles on barges/exhumers instead of the current roles.
I also think that Orcas are going to get a return to AFK alts instead of active (or at least semi active) pilots.
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I’m somewhat in agreement with you. I’m worried about the “rebalance pass” but hopeful there will be some resource and indy changes that tilt my way.
I would like to see game play change to so that npc belt rats could cause qualitatively and quantitively higher damage. This would make few true AFK pilots pay a different price. The offset would be adding reactions to 0.5 systems along with rarer ores.
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If they go with resource based roles for the barge/exhumer hulls, I would hope they would balance the hulls with each other. For example, I wouldn’t want a tanky gas only Skiff or a huge hold ice only Mack.
Instead, I would hope for more mids and lows, and take all the current bonuses and make them modules so that the hull might be resource specific but you can fit the current roles if you wanted.
The Skiff has tank and drone damage, there are already mid and low slots for those.
The Mack has hold and… hold?. So new low slot resource hold modules could be added.
The Hulk has yield and range, there is already a yield module and a new mid slot range module could be added.
That way you could have a yield/tank fit ice Mack, or a hold/range fit gas Skiff.
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They already stated they want "equal survivability " for all mining ships.
We all know what this means in practice is there won’t be any “tanky” mining hulls anymore, they will make them all equally easy to kill for gankers.
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I hadn’t heard that, thanks for the info.
I’d love to see “illegal” mining equipment.
Offers better mining yield- but using it gives you suspect status.
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similar to Polarized Weapons, more damage, less tank. Only for mining its more yield, less Concord.
From the ‘Ecosystem’ dev blog early this year:
" Establish a sustainable role for Rorquals and Orcas and do a general balance pass on mining ships to ensure that they each have a unique role and they are balanced in terms of wealth generation and survivability."
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Bleh…
It’s not going to be a hap-hap-happy holiday for me then.
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That statement by CCP is quite vague and worrying.
It could mean, as, as you said, that all will be reduces, so that none will be tanky anymore. Which would be bad. Very bad.
It could also mean they might do a “up+down” balance. (don’t know if that is a word) Reduce the tanky ones slightly, and increase the tank on the non-tanky ones a bit. So that they are closer in terms of survivability. Perhaps they want the markets for the non-tanky ones to improve and more of them to be made, sold and used.
Even CCP’s own monthly graphs show the declining trend in mining and industry lately. So I hope they think carefully about the changes they want to make.
If the same guys that worked on the Interceptors are involved we might get some weird changes though - the ‘passive’ mining bonus is remove from traits. And it would require an active module that gives either bonuses to ore, ice, or gas. Would be another bad idea… I still don’t like what was done to Interceptors, so I really hope they don’t do the same here.
Of course if that happens the awesome things is shuttles will get a passive mining bonus. \o/ Just like they got the nuliffication bonus from interceptors…Because in the case of Interceptors it makes total sense for a tech 1 shuttle with no equipment to have better warp engines than a Tech 2 ship specifically designed for the role… (note my sarcasm)
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I’m sitting with two accounts in limbo waiting to see if these changes are good or bad… if they make mining interesting again and more social I might resub one and try to find a new Indy Corp to join up with. If not they lose both my accounts (biomass all the things - some of which can’t be sold in game because of how old they are).
Personally I feel that the recent changes were ill thought out, almost as though they wanted players to quit on them and replace them with new “wallet warriors”… this game stopped being a social MMO and became a multi-boxed solo MMO a long time ago and has become less fun and interesting because of it… it used to be about people enjoying each part, most corps had a mix of PvP crew, PvE crew and industrialists of all kinds and information was shared by talking to eachother. If you couldn’t do something there was usually someone else in the corp that could, so you asked them… ironically that’s how I got into my first corp years ago (I couldn’t salvage a wreck and someone helped me out). Now it’s “how much isk can I get from this end stage and how many accounts do I need to do it on my own!”… it’s sad to see this happen to such a great game, but that’s what happens when developers stop looking at making a fun game and start thinking about profit margins instead.
I’ve lived in High and Null sec, roamed through wormholes and had a blast evading big alliances while doing it, done small gang with a Blackbird to support a friend trying to do a lowsec escalation and been jumped by a bigger fleet (I lost my ship but got the pod safe and my friend lived to get home in his considerably more expensive ship as well as both of us having a laugh with the group that tried to kill us afterwards)… but now it feels as though people are taking the game too seriously and insults and vitriole fly freely. It’s sad. That’s why many veterans miss the older times… the atmosphere of the game was totally different, even an enemy was a friend playing a game with you. Now it feels like they want to kill you for being who you are and make your life in and out of game miserable and that drives people away…
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I really really hope they don’t do that. I love that we can currently pick the right barge for the job based on circumstances.
If all barges would have equal yield and equal survivability, then there is very little left for players to optimise their own gameplay by allowing players to choose higher survivability or higher yield.
So I really doubt CCP would do that.
That’s a vague text, I could interpret that in different ways. But it seems they have chosen the word ‘balanced’ and not ‘similar’ in terms of wealth generation and survivability.
Currently the Covetor has high yield (= wealth generation) and low survivability, the Skiff has lower yield and high survivability. That sounds balanced to me, even though their survivabilty and yield aren’t similar.
It has also been stated that CCP wants every mining ship to have a “unique role”, which, with the addition of new specialized holds for ice, gas, etc, leads me to believe there will be a barge/exhumer just for ice mining, one just for gas mining, etc
Every barge already has a unique role, for defensive mining, high yield mining and solo mining.
Would be a shame if all barges were copies of eachother specialised in a specific type of ore/ice/gas so if I wanted to ice mine and only had one possible ship choice.
Boring.
I really hope CCP continues their current system, but improves on it. Right now the Covetor and Procurer (as well as their respective Exhumers) have a well defined unique role. Maybe they could improve the role of the Retriever and Mack a bit more, as it doesn’t really stand out right now, I never see a reason to undock one of those.
I’ve had an idea before that gives the Retriever a more unique role: solo-drone-mining-barge-retriever-redesign.
My guess is that CCP also wants unique roles for barges, but unrelated to the type of ore/gas/ice they mine as that would remove player choice for their equipment.
Anyone can pick the correct ship for the correct type of mineral:
It takes more skill for players to do a risk assessment on their current circumstances and pick the ship with a matching unique role with the right balance of yield versus survivability that they need in their situation.
As someone who PvPs, this is dumb. I got nothing aganist ganking either. But the option of a tanky exhumer should be avaliable, balanced out by less yield or hold size. Its a reasonable trade off.
Covetor/Hulks can be glass cannons. Easy to smoke rocks but also easy to smoke.
Sigh. Hopefully they don’t go full Tropic Thunder on this one.
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I’m able to draw in pretty decent(ish) income multi-box mining in HS. I strongly suspect that the whole thing is a game by CCP to encourage multibox mining for the obvious financial reasons under the perfectly innocuous guise/goal of ah- “diversification”.
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