Similar ideas popped up on the now old forum, and seems like the haulers are getting worthy of a rebalance, so I thought I’ll just leave here what I would do. The goal is to have all four main factions have equal number of industrial ships. Please note: I’m not going into numbers and fine tuning here, I’ll leave that to people who actually like messing with numbers.
I’ll start with the Itreon V: make it a legacy ship. Max it’s currently skill based stats and reduce the requirements to spaceship command 1, so everyone can use them. It’s blueprints will be converted to the Epithal, which will take over it’s current role. This also would fix the interesting case of the gallente DST Occator, which is currently based on a special hauler instead of the larger one like the other 3.
Miasmos and Kryos: make ORE license, and while we’re at it, also upgrade them.
The ore hold of the Miasmos becomes a “raw material hold” where you can put ore, ice, gas, the moon ores and the extracted materials of PI.
The mineral hold of the Kryos becomes a “processed material hold” for minerals, ice products, the rest of PI, moon reactions and anything else I missed here.
Also, to compensate alpha clones, they should get ORE industrials 1 too, so they can keep their current ships and get a (currently not too useful) salvager ship.
Noctis: nothing special here, but I found two ideas on the old forum that would make this ship awesome: AoE tractor beam and special wreck hunter probes.
Hoarder: this should become a legacy ship, just like the Itreon V.
At the end the industrial lineup is not a mess anymore and most likely everyone has better ships than before.
+1: make a SOE blockade runner, that would fit their lore and style perfectly
Why? Ignoring the whole legacy ship idea, why remove it at all? It fills a useful niche in the hauler ecosystem, and it’s iconic to the gallente industrial line.
Splitting PI like this breaks several current conventions and doesn’t make a ton of sense, considering that the vast majority of PI that people actually move around at all falls into the “processed” category.
The Noctis is fine as-is. It’s a niche ship but one that still sees plenty of use in the niche it occupies.
You’ve also not addressed how to deal with the whole “if you could fly it before you can fly it now” principal and what sort of compensation players should get for a major change like this.
Honestly it just sorta feels like the whole justification for this is pretty thin. There’s a lot of “here do this” and zero why it should be done in the first place.
It’s niche will be taken over by the Epithal in my concept. Currently the Itreon is the bigger ship and the Nereus is the smaller. Blockade runners are built on the smaller ships and DSTs on the bigger, except here. My reasons to do it this way are: we don’t have to mess with the Occator blueprint this way, and I think the ship looks silly, even for Gallente standards.
Maybe I’m making it more complicated than I should, that case either or both could double as PI hauler.
If the Noctis is fine than how do you explain that most people would rather use a destroyer with 8 salvagers, that’s faster and also much cheaper? The two ideas on the other forum would allow the Noctis to find wreck fields left behind by other players, and to tractor the whole field towards itself, making it much more efficient. This AoE tractor beam should be special for this ship in my opinion.
The only extra skill needed is the ORE industrials 1, it takes 30 minutes to learn, and it’s requirements are already available for everyone. Honestly I’m surprised this skill isn’t part of the alpha set.
Truth be told, the Noctis is pretty terrible. It’s a niche ship, yes, but new additions have resulted in a situation where, for most practical purposes, it is outperformed in that niche by ships that are otherwise far more useful. I can’t really think of a reason why I would choose a Noctis over an MTU and a salvage destroyer in most cases.
There’s the slight risk of the MTU getting popped, I suppose, but the time savings of being able to drop, bookmark, and circle back for a quick scoop and salvage so vastly outweighs that in most cases that it’s hardly a tradeoff.
Don’t really care much for the rest of the proposal, and I don’t know that AOE tractor is necessarily what the noctis needs, either, but I can’t agree with the assertion that it’s fine as-is.
It mostly comes down to that, right now, that niche just plain doesn’t need a dedicated ship, but we have one which really only does that, which makes it a lackluster niche for a dedicated hull, imo.
It actually sees use in Wormholes where the faster salvaging is a significant safety benefit along with the large cargo hold. Even if you supplement with an MTU the Noctis still out performs other options due to the salvager cycle time, and the profit in wormholes is enough to mitigate the risks of the more expensive ship since losing the loot is the real potential tragedy.
This kinda feels like change for the sake of change. The DST/BR thing doesn’t actually inconvenience anyone or matter in any way. This is just fluff, as is not liking the Itty 5. IMO that’s not a good enough reason to make a perfectly good hauler into a legacy ship.
That’s more a function of cost that speed. The Noctis still outperforms a Destroyer, but it’s a more expensive ship and therefore riskier to field. It still gets use in Wormholes and other places where time spent uncloaked and on-grid trumps ship cost. Plus mission runners do still use it, though it’s somewhat down to personal preference.
It’s still something that needs to be taken into account. Plus what about someone who has Racial Industrial 5 but no Ore Industrial level? Those ships do still have per-level bonuses, and removing them doesn’t seem like a good solution.
Are CCP just supposed to give everyone the appropriate level of Ore Industrial?
I think if you have industrial 5 because of the Miasmos/Kryos then you are a miner or industrialist and most likely have ORE industrial 3 too (to unlock the Orca).
Sure, traders also use them, but a DST will soon become a better option with a bigger, not specialized cargo hold.
I had three different racial indies to 5 for quite a while without training Ore Industrial after that skill was released. Plus quite a few people have those skills at 4 or 5 so they can haul their own stuff around, especially at low to medium SP levels where hauling your crap from station to station still feels like ta good idea and you have enough of it that it can all fit in an Indy.
If you’re going to propose flat out removing two ships and juggling around two more you at least need to be able to answer this sort of question about how to handle the rule of “If you can fly it before you can fly it after”.