I see a lot of new ships in my return to the game, love the changes and I see a lot of people unhappy that the Orca is now being used solo mining in High sec ( not going to get into that )
I think it’s about time that the exhumers got a T3 ship.
Some thoughts on how that might look would be a ship that combines a lot of the bonuses from all 3 current exhumers, sorta like the new Tactical Destroyers have all those bonuses, giving miners a new ship too work towards instead of going with an Orca for the end game HS solo mining, something that would provide the tank of a skiff , reduction in mining cycles and increased yield and the increase of ore capacity like the Mackinaw only larger say 60,000 m3 with an increase per skill level whatever that might be.
Since people hate the fact miners can now solo mine in an Orca, enter rant from every salty old player here, and the fact people just love to gank macks in HS, this new model would give something for everyone… A new ship for miners to train for instead of the Orca for solo mining AND a new challenge for those mining ganking corps, you know who you are, in that they would have to come up with new ships to use to take down a ship that would outshine the Skiff at it’s best tank fit.
Open for discussion, as it’s just an idea I had after I read for the half dozen time…Orca’s not a solo mining ship QQ smh.
my thought on this drifted towards the side of a ship that has the “siege” ability, perhaps to where you cannot move but the boosts are better for the duration of the cycle. Or maybe its a mining siege and it works better for moon ore? Something that gives a tempting benefit but also a huge tactical issue.
The solution to Rorqual / Orca dominance isn’t more powerful exhumers - power creep is never a good thing for the game. I do believe a rebalance is needed but it should be a nerf to the stronger ships, not a buff to the weaker - we need a bit of scarcity to give value to the ore.
I’m interested in reading what people have to say about this idea. So far, my mining experience has only been in using the Venture and Procurer (and corvette). I’m training towards flying industrial command ships for fleet work. But I’m thinking that I’ll still use a barge style ship for solo work. When I take boosting ships out of the picture, there aren’t a lot of dedicated unique looking mining ships, so some variety would be nice.
With the introduction of a more expensive T3, which miners would understandably want to be tough, I would like to see it balanced enough so that it could still be ganked if used in high-sec. I’m currently a miner, and I personally think that it’s too easy to AFK mine in high-sec. Things like Ventures and T1 barges pay for themselves fairly quickly. Financial growth feels too easy for a solo miner; not enough consequences. It may not be the biggest money maker out there, but it isn’t the most difficult either.
Procurer / Skiff is the tanky miner (best EHP)
Retriever / Mackinaw is the solo miner (best internal storage)
Covetor / Hulk is the fleet miner (fastest pace)
If you made a T3 that combined these features… it’d just be the new thing everybody strives for.
T3Cs are a Swiss Army cruiser. They can either pretend to be a HAC, or they can pretend to be a Recon. But they aren’t the end goal for anybody in particular. If you made T3 Miners with combined features like EHP, storage, and pace, everybody would skip straight to them and use them forever.
The reason people use Orcas and Rorquals is laziness. They want “passive” income. If you want “active” income, you use a Mack or Hulk (depending on fleet availability). If they’re lazy, they’ll still use Orcas and Rorqs. But if they’re active, they’ll use the ultra efficient T3s instead.
It’s not adding variety. It’s just changing the meta. Like introducing some PvE ship that’s better than the Gila is lately. You’d just replace the Gila, not make “an alternative”.
The problem is that mining ships lack depth. I was a total proponent of a drone based mining ship because I love mining and drones. But instead of adding a new line of ships, they give the roll to the Orca
I am also a proponent of removing partial cycles in ore mining. This way we can have mining ships that specialize in standard lasers to make fast, small cuts. Good for mining small asteroids. Then a line of strip mining ships that specialize in making slow, large cuts. Better for large asteroids.
But nobody wants depth and choices, they want KISS. Which can be boring.
Yeah that’s exactly my point people now don’t want to train for the current Mackinaw, skiff and Hulk they eyeball the Orca and I’m going to use the Orca, I’m going to use the Orca to Fleet my own Alt because that’s now what I’m seeing in mining so why not introduce a ship that gives the solo miner a ship that is A step above all the current exhumers and forgo the Orca because if you leave it the way it is then people are just going to use the Orca anyway and why should they Nerf the Orca you start nerfing the Orca it takes away the purpose of the Orca which is to boost a fleet but they made it available for solo mining so that’s what people do and I’m sick of tired of hearing all of the crying and whining from all the people that don’t like the fact that the Orca can solo mine.
I guess you didn’t really READ what I said…this isn’t about the current exhumers this is about introducing a ship that would instead of people using the ORCA to mine solo but a NEW T3 ship, because you know…NOTHING has been added to mining ships since ??? and no the Porpoise isn’t a new solo mining ship it was introduced to fill a need pre Orca. Orca is better in every way than all current Exhumers…if nothing is added…guess what I will be mining in …An Orca boosting my alt who’s mining in a Exhumer.
I see it all the time now, One man mining corps.
With this thought process, no ships should ever be added to the game again…because…we already have ships with guns that shoot stuff.
Remove the Gila from the game it’s too powerful nothing was wrong with the Moa in the first place.
I’d prefer more diverse mining ships instead of a new stronger one.
As proposed by people above in the comment, like one with lot of small miner for the highsec small roids, another one for concentrating the mining on one roid at a time, etc.
Dividing the ship by way of fitting instead of use is really boring imo. About the Orca, I could see it have the exact same drone mining yield as the porpoise (so 50% instead of 100%), with maybe a bigger boost to the mining command charges to compensate.
I am obviously in favor of nerfing rorq/orca and I would also love to see drone mining ships. Perhaps tanky variants could use drones instead and maybe be bonused for gas mining to also give that mining barge… But let’s rather consider the T3 proposal:
It would be interesting to have a T3 mining ship, but it needs to somewhat follow the current T3C/T3D with either configurable systems or modes. Now how to do that - well, the only idea I have is below:
Ship’s mining speed varies depending on how full is the ore hold.
Ship has good tank and perhaps also built-in 2 WCS, but when it is being shot at, it cannot mine - auto-end cycle upon firing, cannot restart miners until threat ends.
No drone bay - so you can’t get rid of even weakest NPCs.
So, if you are actively mining, you have a near-hulk-like ship in yield. If you are mining afk, you have almost mackinaw amount of cargo with just slightly slower overall mining speed. Under attack, you tank nearly as good as skiff, though you cannot mine under fire.
It would be a pretty neat solo active mining ship in hostile space and decent fleet miner, while useless as a solo afk ship.
Why not?
Offer more game possibilities for miners and gankers.
Siege modules would be fun… You can mine faster but your ship get weak and you need 60 seconds to disable the siege… Enough time to be ganked.
Also T3 miners could have special subsystem for specific ores… example… you could have a veldspar specialized miner? and if you die, you lose the skills like the T3 Cruisers…
T3C is one ship for all roles… when in hangar. Once fitted, it is about as specialized as other cruisers.
T3D is simply the best combat destroyer, but it is as general purpose as the T1 ship.
There is nothing preventing T3 industrials (if they ever exist) to be more similar to T3D than T3C (= higher yield, tank etc compared to T1/T2 variants). I don’t think it is plausible, but it wouldn’t be against what is seen in T3D.
There are mining crystals already, it would be a pointless pain to introduce and swap whole mining modules. While we are at that, why the heck aren’t T2 miners = T1 + ability to take crystals? (which would be nerfed to give the same total yield as now). It would be simpler.
As for siege, it would be interesting to have siege tied to ability to even mine - say your ship mines from ALL roids in 5km range with effective speed of 1 T2 miner per roid (getting the same skills/modules bonuses) and can’t move during that time. Puts new meaning to “strip mining”
I think the point was that T2 guns have better base stats than their T1 counterparts, even before you start factoring in the bonuses from Spec skills.
But T2 Strips are worse than T1 Strips, unless you fit an appropriate crystal. So if you don’t plan on carrying around a load of crystals and swapping them as you go, it’s easier just to fit T1 Strips rather than unloaded T2s.
