Change the rorqual so it is harder to afk mine.
Remove the excavators and give the rorqual a titan doomsday boson like weapon from the industry core that saps rocks in an area.
Make the capital tractor beam on the rorq allowed to tractor asteroids into said boson.
Maybe even give it a capital sized strip miner that can utilize crystals (maybe a pack of 10 is required to keep it running).
Boost the basic stats and get rid of the panic maybe even or make it more like the ADC where it last a shorter amount of time but is reusable after a short or moderately lengthy time.
Rorq mining isnt strong only because of its output but also because it doesnt require much input.
I think that it would be better to change the Rotqual in a way that she does mine as much as a fully boosted Hulk, and best reduce the amount of Excavators to one so only one roid can be mined at one time. But to give a reason for the ship, increase it’s boost bonus. The Rorqual should be a ship that immensely boosts the yield of other ships, not being the best miner itself.
A high yield mining fleet should consist of one Rorqual, and many Barges
The OP has nothign to do with the volume they mine, and instead how they mine. More to the point, how you’re able to run 30 of them at once without significant difficulty (by the time you’re finished with #30, #1 is only just now needing input from the player).
By making excavators work like fighters, they’d require constant input - much like how you can’t really run more than 2 carriers at a time, because there simply isn’t enough time for all the input that needs to happen.
Remove dronebay
Make excavator drones work like fighters hell, even give them a basic light (anti-rat)fighter attack and a long-cd shield booster in addition to the mining laser. (No prop mod)
Make them only launchable and usable during carebear-seige
Honestly letting the rorq mine at all is retarded, but there you have it.
The Rorqual is fairly balanced, I hear some guy working Delve was having fun killing AFK rorqual excavator drones but one upped that by figuring out you could jam a excavator drone and scoop them so hes made 150 Billion stealing them and selling them back to the same people he stole them from using the NPC station in Delve. He had a AMA on reddit a few weeks back.
Happy for ‘this guy’, but deciding that a ship is, ‘fairly balanced’, based on its drones being stolen while the rorqual pilot was taking a dump or catching up on game of thrones is idiotic.
Also, i note that your source is at best second hand account and at worst a fairy-tail some reddit poster created.
Here is the real deal: I mined for the goons for 8 months and made hundreds of billions i realize this is just one persons account but at least i know it is a first hand account, even if you don’t. I was attacked three times never lost a drone or a rorqual. If you come into Delve looking to take out an aware Rorqual pilot you better bring the next 3 largest alliances with you or its game over.
I know that mining in Delve has a level of security unmatched any place else in the game but it was you that brought Delve into the discussion and hence my response need not apply anywhere else but Delve.
You can feel free to sort by AMA in the eve subreddit, there has only been a few and there was plenty of goons in there that knew who he was and even gave him props for being innovative.
You aren’t the only one who knows something about mining, I made all my isk multi-boxing hulks back through 2014, tried out rorq mining last winter when I came back to the game went with a half dozen but just didn’t take, decided I really didn’t need this isk and wouldn’t rather spend it on ridiculously terrible fits and die in a blaze of glory a lot. So I might know a bit about mining and i know more than I’d care to know about goons, I’ve suffered through illuminati jabber, thanks I’m good.
But my comments weren’t related to delve, my comments were directed at afk mining in general and the fact that that blowing up excavators is painful and just as much as a pain in the behind as losing the rorq. It’s not like you are going to un-ring the bell on rorqual, you more likely to see a massive rework on capital material costs along with other some ther potential mechanics that create isk sinks around supers and titans. I consider myself a retired miner, I dont think 1 rorquals = 2.5 hulk in mining is terribly unbalanced considering a property fit rorqual is running a 10bil. Just becuase some groups organize bette than others doesnt mean it needs a nerf IMO.