These would be supercapital freighters only able to be docked in large and x-large structures and banned in highsec.
They’d have ~10 freighters’ worth of cargo space, approximately the same ehp as a supercarrier, a +n/lvl warp scramble resistance, and possibly be able to fit a PANIC or a local active tank on par with a sieged dread or a rorq.
Maybe a drone bay restricted to combat drones or a single light fighter tube with enough fighter bay to prevent instant defanging.
The goal here is to create a big, semi-independent mover to go along with ore redistribution and encourage more gating of high value/volume cargo, escorting, and ganking by creating a tempting alternative to jump freighters.
Edit: Because it is now painfully obvious to me that the most important trait shouldn’t have been vaguely implied: These ships would not have jumpdrives
They would only be able to gate around and have far too much mass to be titan bridged.
They would do 10 times the damage, be covops capable with no targeting delay, get a bonus to warp scramble strength, and possibly be able to draw dicks on other people’s ships.
No jump drive. That’s the whole point for the other op/super traits.
It’s a big ship with a bigger booty slowly aligning from one low/null gate to the next, basicaly begging to be dropped on by someone with more firepower than three orthruses, a lachesis, and a tornado.
What’s lazy about gating a thick and spikey piñata around nullsec?
Personally, I enjoy the content that rorqs bring to the game. The hunting, the formups to go kill them, the frantic flashforms to respond and save them, it’s a great change of pace from bashing structures.
I believe that having a beefy low/null freighter that wildly outclasses the jump freighters’ cargo capacity but is only capable of using gates to travel would also provide an opportunity for unplanned escalations both to kill and to save them while also giving players a wholly new way to move crap from A to B.
Because you’re asking for a ship that will be completely safe to use.
For a ship that has “approximately the same ehp as a supercarrier”, virtually nothing poses a threat. Rorquals, which are arguably on par with the tank of a Super, rarely care about dying because of their tank (both local and cyno). It takes a dedicated force of many people in a fleet to actually pose a threat to ships with that much ehp.
So already, the “barrier to entry” to start being a threat against these ships is already ridiculously high. On top of that, you’re asking for PANIC or local active tank “on par with a sieged rorq”. So what you’re basically asking for is a Rorqual that doesn’t self-tackle via the Industrial Core.
You can look at the number of Rorquals that die on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis, compared to the total number that are active and realize that maybe 3-5 die per week compared to the hundreds that are active. Given that, it’s even less likely that a ship that is as tanky as a Rorqual, but also able to roam around without locking itself in place with an Indy Core, will ever die.
So yeah, this is outside the realm of “EVE Online as a whole can be benefitted by this” and lands smack in the middle of “some garbage kid’s personal fanfiction idea for the perfect, unkillable ship.”
It would be so much nicer if you just came out and admitted that you wanted a ship that cannot die to do your little industrial activities because that’s basically what you are asking for.
