Should I remind why ICS’s have mining drone bonuses or we should agree to disagree?
There are many things in this game that seem to be intentionally the wrong choice and have no clear or good role, or nearly so, or something super niche. Its the same in real life. The point seems to be that players are supposed to use their brains and figure this out.
One role of the Retreiver/ Mackinaw hull is pinata. But I tell you what, if you really want to tank a retriever, it will surprise you, and it can became a salt miner of unsuspecting ganker tears.
After doing some reading I realized my suggestion of “Morning Star” for a new t2 exhumer was not historicially correct in my concept (and a common mistake thanks to lazy historians). So I would change it to Thresher. (which maybe too similar to Thrasher…sigh) Or perhaps Kisten, which was a type of military flail from the eastern Baltic region.
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that would make retriever really OP but still a good idea…
Name the ship “Karen” and have it constantly complain and ask for the manager… 
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Newbros rushing into a Ship that they don’t know how to fly
I respectfully disagree with your reasoning. The retriever is clearly the best solo mining barge, and I’m confused as to why anyone would think otherwise. I mean, is it because lots of retrievers die? Well, consider this. Maybe the problem is not that retrievers are bad at what they do and in need of a buff, but that lots of newbros rush into them without knowing how to fly the damn things. Case in point, I rushed into a retriever as a newbro, and lost it within about 2 hours.
The retriever is an exceptionally good yield tanker for solo miners
Now, the retriever is a terrible ship for afk, semi-afk, and inattentive miners. They are better off just flying procurers. However, it is an exceptional good yield tanker for attentive solo miners. Of course, in order to successfully yield tank, you need to practice proper risk management strategies so that the increased yield more than makes up for any losses that you experience. And the key to yield tanking in a retriever is quite simple -pay attention to your surroundings. That’s it. That’s big secret. Watch local and d-scan, and dock up or switch to a procurer if you see trouble. And I know this strategy works and is easy to do because I used it extensively as a newbro.
Note that this chart assumes perfect skills, damage application, and execution
Solo gankers already have a small engagement profile, and buffing retriever tank will reduce that further
Then there’s the matter of how this affects the ganking play style. I know that a lot of people do not value the play style, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this post. So, I’m going to proceed as if everyone believes that ganking is an important part of the player ecosystem.
Now, with that out of the way, making a profit from solo ganking is already straight up impossible. You have to have at least one friend or at least one alt to scoop loot. And, if that wasn’t enough, the engagement profile of a single ganking ship is also quite small. Yes, they can increase their engagement profile by upshipping, and yes many people will fly sh1t fits which allow gankers to hit targets bigger than they otherwise could. However, the fact remains is that you are effectively proposing a nerf to gankers that disproportionately hurts new gankers.
Whenever people talk about ganking balance, they always think of it from the perspective of newbros as prey. But what about the guys new to ganking? Making this change would drastically reduce content availability for guys that already need an alt account or a friend in order to have any chance of ganking for profit. And it’s completely unnecessary. Players should either learn how to fly a retriever safely, or they should stick with procurers. And those that make stupid mistakes deserve to die. They deserve to be prey for those learning how to hunt.
I’m not opposed to buffing yeild
Now, all that being said, if you want to buff yield, that’s fine with me. It would make yield tanking a mackinaw easier (which, is admittedly more difficult thanks to its price), it would give people less reason to solo mine in command ships, and now that capital ship prices have been de-tethered from subcaps, it would make t1 subcaps more affordable without resulting in capital proliferation.
btw, buffing drone mining will primarily benefit multiboxers and afker’s (who may also be multiboxing)
Yeah, I know a lot of people like drones. But, much like auto-target missiles, they drastically reduce the amount of inputs you have to do, which makes multiboxing a lot of accounts easier. Personally, I do not have a problem with multiboxing, but some people do. Moreover, it could have economic consequences depending on how it was balanced. So, something to think about, at least.
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One question though is why drone based? I don’t see how having a drone base mining ship is important over mining lasers?
Why does the max tank Retriever in your chart only has 20.4k EHP against void ammo ?
I have 26.9k against void, on my max tank fit Retriever (just t2 fit) .
I don’t understand how this gives the ship a new niche. It’s still less yield than a Covetor, and less tank than a Procurer.
Seems like the more straight forward approach would be to make the ore hold on a Retriever even larger, so that its existing strength is more pronounced.
Also, the Venture and its T2 hulls really disrupt the old balance here. Many solo harvesters are going into dangerous territory for more valuable resources.
For variety!
Why is the Algos drone based and the Catalyst gun based? It allows a pilot to choose a Gallente destroyer that matches their best trained skills. Catalyst if they have good hybrid gun skills, Algos if they have good drone dps skills.
Similarly here: we have no mining ships that specialise in mining drones, apart from the mining fleet support ships, so it could be nice to have a barge for people who want to primarily mine with drones.
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The niche would be ‘solo drone barge’.
It would be the barge that relies least on mining support ships to be effective (and also has the least benefit of mining support ships).
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Thanks for the feedback!
Survability vs ganks
I never mined much in high sec beyond my first weeks in a Venture and it is good to see that figure with engagement profiles.
I do not wish to make ganks too hard, yet I do want to give the Retriever significantly more tank than a Covetor (yet still far below Procurer).
If an increase from 2000 → 3500 hull hitpoints is perhaps too much, how much of an increase would you suggest?
First time I hear that, but it may be true. What makes it so exceptional? The third low slot? Because the yield isn’t that much higher than that of a Procurer and it is far behind the Covetor.
Wouldn’t you rather yield tank in a Covetor and jetcan mine? If you’re going for max yield to pay for any ships lost, I don’t see how the Retriever is any better than a Covetor.
I agree, (semi)afk miners will benefit from a drone mining ship like this, which could mine 6 separate rocks (5 drones and one strip miner) at the same time.
However, with barge-level EHP and drones without HP bonuses I would think it is less effective at ignoring the game than for example an Orca.
Are there ways to make this reworked ship less useful for inattentive mining? How about reducing the shield EHP? A reduction in natural regeneration means you’re more likely to get hurt when you don’t notice NPC pirates in time.
Me neither, but I wouldn’t mind either if the yield stays the same.
Buffing yield is not my primary intention with this suggestion, I want to mainly change the role to allow more survivability solo and to change the primary mining system to drones for more distinction from the other two barges and allow players to specialise in drone mining.
I’m not yet sure if we should keep the solo yield at same levels or give it a small buff. We’ll see.
Well, I say “max tank,” but what I really mean is maximum tank I can reasonable expect to face. So, I consider max tank for a retriever to be a T2 multispecturm shield hardener, T2 DC, and T1 shield rigs. I mean, you can get even more tank by swapping two mining laser upgrades for reinforced bulkheads, but at that point, a procurer has more tank and more yield. So, I dunno. Did you figure they’d be using more slots for tank, or did you just come up with a much better tank than I did?
Yours have MLUs then , that’s why you have less EHP .
Well, the truth is is that I discounted jetcan mining. But I haven’t mined in years, and I used to mine in a relatively busy system. So, it was a mistake on my part to not even consider it. Regardless, I’ll take your word for it that it is a viable strat, which paints the retriever in a new light. In other words, yes, I would rather jetcan mine with a covetor in a quiet system. Perhaps the only time I wouldn’t prefer the covetor would be with Ice mining. Once again, it’s been a while since I mined, but ice belt spawns used to attract a lot of miners, which tended to attract a lot of attention from those who preyed on miners (gankers, bumbers, jetcan theives). Of course, at that point I’d probably go with a procurer rather than ■■■■ with a retriever.
Long story short, I think you’re right -the retriever does kind of suck, Which means it’s more a gift to gankers than it is to miners. But I still don’t want to see it’s tank buffed, as it’s on the edge of what a lone ganking ships can take on. Yes, their are still other ships that he can take down, but retrievers are very common and tend to have much better loot drops than the common venture. So any buff to tank for this one ship would have a dramatic impact on the amount of “good” targets for a single ganking ship. I dunno. I’d still rather see it get a buff to yield than anything.
But what about survivability? Well, I don’t know. I’m not married to any idea right now, but I wanted to answer you. So, I’m more thinking out loud that saying that this is what should be done. Regardless, what do you think about a +2 bonus to warp core strength? It would reward active and attentive play on the part of the miners, afkers would effectively get no buff, and a lone ganking ship could still take one down. Of course, gankers could ensure that they tackle retrievers by fitting 2 scrams, but that would also require fitting specifically for one ship at the expense of lock time. Naturally, the increase in lock time wouldn’t save a lot of barges, but an extra 2 seconds would help a lot of people save their pods. It would also help various ships get away when the ganker was fit suboptimally for that particular ship.
And, of course, I have no idea how miners and hunters in other areas of space would feel about this.
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Hello,
At first I was like NOO… but after reading through the post, I believe and feel that a good discussion has taken place here. . .
The point I liked that most: That people don’t know how to use the ship properly, which is the case for a lot of ships in EVE with newbros (and old bros doing something new).
Looking at the ship tree and playing with the fittings - the Porpoise fits what is being ask for rather well. Large ore bay, I can get fit it for over 50k ehp. (edited) Max skills and with rigs, the drones do 222.78 per 60/s for a total of 1113.9 (18.56m3/s)
While the retriever - t1 strips, and t2 upgrades does 1366m3 per (total of 2732) 162/s. (16.86m3/s) It has crap tank, tiny 22k m3 ore bay. Go with Mod Strippers and t2 crystals I’m seeing a yield of ~1593 per (total of 3186) 162/s. (19.66m3/s)
I do have to say, it really just needs for people to learn to fly it, and they need to train Advanced Paranoia V and not AFK mine.
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Personally and not to derail this topic: I believe what we really need are two new hulls in a new ship class.
Battleship hull size -
They gets bonuses to Mining Lasers, Ice Mining Lasers and Gas Harvesters at the cost of range (and maybe the inability to receive boost)
One of the hulls could go for tank, the other for covert operations (d-scan immune?). They would need a good sized piñata ore hold, and a fitting yield rate to go with them.
I would aim for pirate BS prices for cost.
I still think this is a good idea, bump!
isn’t the prospect already a drone focused mining barge? I don’t mine much but I feel there are a lot of people who like the ret for its large hold.
The Procurer you mean? Prospect is the covops drone-less mining frigate. 
I wouldn’t say so. While the Procurer does have a drone damage bonus, it doesn’t have a drone mining bonus. So where the Procurer is the barge with a combat bonus, I would like the Retriever to be a barge with mining drone bonus, which is something completely different.
Also I don’t want to take the large ore hold of the retriever away. It’s a decent attribute for a solo mining barge, but it’s not enough to set apart a unique identity for the Retriever in my opinion. That’s why I wanted to suggest the changes in the first post.
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Nah the other p one porpoise
Well, not a mining barge either, an industrial command ship. A mini-orca in some sense.