I am a simple Orca player, I am not a member of any clan or such. I work from home, In the morning which is 4 hours before the daily reboot I fly in high sec in 4 or 5 jumps to an asteroid belt (never found all to be empty). I mine for 3-4 hours, return home with a full hull, and close Eve. After lunch same routine. I make about 40 Mio a day. Save it up for a large Injector (16-17 days) which boosts my training cue for 3 days. I have met a few other nice loners which I freely boost and chat with between meetings. At the weekend I do some Level 4 missions.
After this upgrade I have to:
get an industrial core 2 (expensive!) to get close to pre-upgrade production
I need to fly to Jita to get cheap heavy water (14 jumps there, 14 back)
you run an extra risk because when you use the core and can’t fly away from gankers
the new asteroid belts are much further apart so I have increased travel time for my drones
there is also something about waste but I have no clue how that affects me (probably negative)
So why have I been nerved in SO many places? What did I do wrong to deserve this? I don’t empty asteroid belts. I am social to anyone in the belt. Why destroy this gameplay? I only want to advance a little quicker in the training cue.
Result? I cancelled my Omega subscription (auto-renewal) and I am very sorry for the money I put in the past years. Can’t believe that is the result you want.
It’s a shame CCP reverted the yield nerf of the Orca.
This patch was finally a good opportunity to get the mining support ships back to their intended role as mining support ships, but no, they gave in to complaints like these.
Just because you don’t know how it affects you, you assume it’s negative?
Waste combined with doubled rock sizes means you can now get more ore than before, just not twice as much if you’re using T2 equipment or drones because of residue.
I am confident that you’ll be able to establish a new routine and get back to mining relatively quickly. You could change the ship you’re using, find a friend or two to play with who do similar things, or just keep doing what you were doing before, if you want, and accept that you’ll mine less than you did before.
This is a change the entire game is dealing with, not just you, and it will take a few months for the meta to sort itself out. Change is hard, but it’s part of EVE. Almost nobody likes these changes, but they’re here to stay.
thanks for the kind words! To get my augmented drones up to 75% I need an industrial core II. No one is selling them, when are they introduced in the game?
Now we are talking about settling in for the new meta. Industrial core 2 brings back the drone yield to 75% (close to where it was before - 100%).
It consumes 500 units of heavy water, is that per cycle of 150 seconds?
So for an hour (24 cyles) it requires 24.000 units, cheapest in high sec is 77 isk per unit. Each hour costs 924.000 isk?
unit heavy water is 0.4 m3, fuel bay is 5000m3, holds 12.500 units. So you need to add units every 30 minutes approx. 6 refills to make 3 hours, 2.7 mio
In order to use one you have to be at a dead stop. Also with the residue @40% for the augmented mining drones I’m not sure the math makes them worthwhile anymore - though if they significantly increased the augmented mining drones speed and radius they would still be worth their (currently) high price. I’m thinking the biggest hit from these changes for me is that building them will cease to be a revenue stream.
I’m still testing as I have loved my Orca solo mining routine and I really don’t want to give it up. I know CCP thinks forcing socialization is the biggest key to player retention - primarily because that’s their experience, but they seem to be on the edge of cutting solo players out of any growth path. The Orca in HS was a viable solo career path and from what I’m seeing that is no longer the case.
I’m only a few tests away from giving up on my Orca and seeing what my daily revenue is from switching to a Hulk.
Industrial core 2 brings back the drone yield to 75% (close to where it was before - 100%).
It consumes 500 units of heavy water, is that per cycle of 150 seconds?
If so, so for an hour (24 cyles), it requires 12.000 units, the cheapest in high sec is 77 isk per unit (Jita). Each hour operating the Industrial core costs 924.000 isk?
unit heavy water is 0.4 m3, fuel bay is 5000m3, holds 12.500 units. So you need to add units every 30 minutes approx. 6 fills to make 3 hours, 2.772 Mio isk (still have to correct for the drop in yield of 25%)
To get this amount of heavy water you need to run an Iteron to Jita to fill it for 95% with heavy water and you have enough for 1 run for a full mining hold with the Orca.
It is even worse than I thought. To run the Orca:
you need one run to Jita in an iteron to have enough heavy water (for 28 (2 x 14) jumps)
run the core for 3 hours Costing 2.772 Mio
run the risk of being ganged with this core
Negative influence on these numbers not taking into account:
25% less yield than before on the drones
need to refuel 5 times
normally all asteroids are with 10km and with the news setup they are MUCH farther apart. Means more drones on the same asteroid and thus more micromanagement. Or longer travel time means longer time to fill the Orca (if you can carry enough heavy water)
Hey Robert. There are some things in your post that are spot on but there are a few things that are incorrect. Not sure this will make a difference to your point of view but itys worth noting.
The first thing is that CCP announced yesterday that they are changing the Industrial Command bonus from 10% to 15% per level. It hasnt been well publisised but it makes a massive difference.
So our orcas before had a 50% bonus form industrial command and a 100% role bonus. It will now have 75% from industrial command and 75% form a T2 industrial Core. So overall we are back to the same place. CCP have suggested due to drone speed changes we are likely going to be better by about 2% but I think this has been more than offset by the spread out asteroid feilds and as such we are probably looking at a travel time nerf. But its not that bad.
The next thing as the fuel for the core is linked to the new skill. Each level of industrial reconfiguration will reduce the amount of heavy water needed by 50 (i think. It might have changed since i last checked). That will make a big difference. I havent had a chance to test this with the T1 to comment on cycles and how much this is likely going to cost. Undoubedtly a nerf but not as bad as you are maybe suggesting.
There was a post above where there was a discussion as to whether augmented drones were worth it and why wouldnt we just use T1’s. I think this is a fallacy based on not understanding the residue mechanic. Essentially…….If an asteriod was 10k before the patch it will have doubled in size to 20k. 40% on average (its rng) will be waste or residue. meaning there is 12K ore in your hold. So thats a 20% increase in available ore after the patc at augmented drone speed. If you want to make sure you collect all 20K of that ore then use T1’s. You will get it all but you will get it all at T1 speed. There may be occassions when that is preferrable but in most cases ill be coming up against getting the Orca filled quicker will be more important than getting all the available ore.
Finally remember that compression was taken out of this patch and wont be implemented untill 2022. So the downsides………fuel cost, travel time for drones and being immobile while the core is active will be balanced against the ability to compress when it comes. To me i think the tradeoffs are goign to be workabale. But i do apprecaite not everyone will agree.
Also not sure if it’s possible but if you can transfer from cargo hold to fuel bay in space you can carry 8 times enough to fill your fuel bay so you wouldn’t need to dock to refuel .
Hope you find a game that works better for ya op. These developers have been destroying everyone’s gameplay without any care about the time or cash we invested. I’m glad they will no longer be getting your money, they don’t deserve it.
Orca’s are not easily gankable if you fit them correctly, so even without being able to move you should be relatively safe.
As for heavy water, you don’t have to fly to jita. Find a nice ice belt near your and mine your own heavy water. It is very abundant.
The belts being further apart is annoying yes. Sadly not much we can do about that.
Waste affects everyone if they dont use T1. But as stated elsewhere, the end result is a net gain.
However, with the changes to mining, if you are someone who pays attention to local and actively mines then I would recommend switching to a mackinaw, or even starting another account and putting them in to a hulk. These updates favor barges/exhumers and greatly increase their output.
Solo player here. I’m the type of guy who would rather look up guides on how to solo content meant for groups, than group up with randos.
There is nothing wrong with playing a MMO solo. However, CCP needs to do what’s best for the game as a whole. And often times that means balancing the game around the average player, and not solo-player weirdos.
And, not for nothing, but Eve’s nature makes it conducive to multiboxing, which makes it extremely friendly to solo players. However, even if you don’t want to multibox, there’s still plenty of opportunity for solo players.
Anyway, it sounds like you’re chasing new strats, so I commend you for that. Hopefully you figure out something that works for you.
No, the issue is that the players who say this can’t stop focusing on their own selfish desires in order to look at how changes affect the good of the game as a whole. Thus, any adversity that gets thrown at them gets perceived and labeled as bad for the game.
