No need to nerf the Orca. Just delete it all together.
Get mining back to smaller ships, with fleets supported by both a Porpoise for boosts and haulers for ore carrying capacity. Fleets working together for everyone.
Utopia.
/s
2 Likes
I kind of want an Orca for non mining reasons. @delonewolf did a video or two that I loved about how he was using them to be nomadic and instead of mining with them was carrying around a bunch of smaller ships and all their gear.
I was very interested in placing a station at one point and even had one with all of its stuff just before they were nerfed to death the first time and I got rid of it when quantum cores were introduced. An Orca seems like a good alternative in a lot of ways, and in some ways better, it can go places.
The price of them however and the fact they are a splendid target has held me back on this. Iām also hesitant because Iāve had some serious hits from CCP to skill training and would rather not waste my time training for something that might just be wrecked as soon as Iām done. CCP has sort of gotten me trained to just stick with things that benefit all ships just in case they decide to do something rash to something I like again. On the plus side I will have things like tank, capacitor, CPU and navigation skills to V in the not so distant future, that will be nice and make me a lot more adaptable.
1 Like
Hasnāt worked in the past. Why would it now?
Itās not like the players in hi-sec are short on space/real estate. They arenāt compacted by borser frictions. Increasing the size of hi-sec will likely have no increase in players that wouldnāt already be just as happy in the already existing hi-sec systems.
Ha ha, thinly veiled attempt at an ad hominem.
Less than 50% of students in the UK take their education beyond compulsory level. And thatās including Harry Potter degrees, drop outs and fails (which should be almost impossible given how Universities feel compelled to give higher grades so students feel like they got value for money).
And itās tricky with unskilled labour because no one agrees what counts as skilled/unskilled/high skilled/low skilled/semi-skilled labour is. Nor does anyone release straightforward data on such.
So Iāll have to concede i canāt say that as a fact. But i can leave you with this suggestion to make your own conclusions: Employees in the UK by industry - Office for National Statistics
My point is, people donāt emigrate to the wealthy countries because of āsuccessā. They do it for an easier life. And thatās hi-sec.
But CCP make hi-secā¦ And hi-sec (and the game) had a retention problem before scarcity. Or do you mean nerfs like the wardec changes? Cause then we agree.
If you say soā¦
Oh, Orca! The bastion of my rookie dreams. How I do remember the days we spent together. How I used to mine mine mine for hours and hours and hoursā¦ How I saved up finally enough ore to pay the puppy off, break even, so I might finally go AFK in itā¦ A month, probably-- not long, but there I had it: the 1bil pile of ore. They only used to cost 1bil, yāknowā¦
Wow, I guess I didnāt fully give-up my bot aspirations until the industry update. That was back in March. Hi-sec ore prices plummeted. I had more than 1bil in ore by that time, est. value, but slowly the value dwindled and I made out with 900k iskā¦
Several skill extractors later, CCP has a little part of me I can never get back. What did any of that time or isk even mean? All relative, yes, but I didnāt make many friends along the way. I made a few connections, but none to speak of. I simply mined and enjoyed my IRL activities on the side whilst gaming.
Not everyone uses the Orca to solo mine like I did, sure. I wasnāt harassed once, barely even blinked at while traveling, and constantly avoided by all other miners. Align time is always around 10 seconds when stationary using MWD. EHP was 500k. I never left 0.7 security. I was miserable.
They say we are social creatures. Gotta wonder how cliches come about. Oh, I forgot, we are capsuleers. We are somehow fictionally mean and evil grrr. Then again, many Frank Herbert books discussed the morals and ethics behind a clone being treated the same way as one born from a woman. All life is sacred, even that of the lowly solo miner.
Save him by nerfing this sht to high hell!
2 Likes
I will say one thing the Orca is great at, is a mobile ganking platform where you can store 7 fully-fit Catalysts.
At least until you get the Bowhead.
Long ago when I was noobing about I was a miner, now as a vet I have everything I need, the skills to create whatever I need and the ability to just buy anything I need, as an industrialist I could care less if they nerfed the orca to satanās glorious bing hole, like everything, everything is nerf, nobody wants anyone to have good things anymore for myself I would pass out mining in an orca, boring doesnāt cover the absolute abysmal mining in an orca.
But honestly if I was starting eve today an orca would give me something to shoot for, take that away and there is less reason to play eve because whatās the point if you feel gimped before you even start out.
2 Likes
Honor?
Stop right there.
This is not White Knights kill Dragons and saving Damsels in Distress.
There is no honor, only victory and profit.
There are no made up bull ā ā ā ā rules, aka a code of honor.
And, from the weeping in this thread there is no such thing as a good loser.
1 Like
Maybe he roleplays a virtue signalling white knight so for him honorable victory is above all evenā¦ especially if nobody else shares his agenda.
Except when those made up rules, role play if you want to call it that, are used to judge other players OCC.
I guess you meant OOC though he may still be in character or is it entirely forbidden to do so outside the summit?
Overpowered for what purpose?
I use it as a command ship while mining with Barges . . itās not opā¦ itās just right
So you use only a fraction of this ships capabilities and then conclude itās not overpowered?
Apart from all the obvious mining crap like bonuses and ore storage, it has an insane tank if fitted correctly at no cost to ore capacity. It can fit an MWD to enter warp within seconds. It has a fleet hangar any fleet member can use to secure loot. It even has a ship maintenance array to store multiple ships and refit them in space. It can field multiple fleets of drones that can dish out some pretty good damage.
This ship has so much utility it is completely insane
2 Likes
I had heard that a pilot could quickly store their hulk inside their bulk tanked orca preventing a loss to a potential warp in gank.
That alone is OP as hell.
4 Likes
Orca is great. So many people use it just perfectly. If you donāt like seeing them in highsec belts, quit talking in forums and get some Catalysts.
Whatās with all the CCPlease when you can do something in game to change the situation?
1 Like
I only encountered this strategy being used a hand full of time. Itās even more frustrating if you wait until the ganker fires the first shot and then you switch to a Skiff or something.
On the other hand, I have an Orca as well, to store the loot after the gank. And if then anyone attacks my looter because he is suspect I have a variety of ships available I can switch too that completely counters what is shooting at me and demolish it. And I even get shield boosts.
Yes, itās OP as hell
3 Likes
Only in the right hands! 
Edit; let SI buy you that much experianceā¦
My response to @Gerard_Amatin is divided into 3 parts: suspension of belief; the Orca in the Eve ecosystem and null and low sec are the problems not the solutions.
Eve is a game of fantasy where the participants suspend disbelief in order to enter the game and take up the mechanics. CCP has done a masterful job at creating a dynamic system (Iāll call it an ecosystem even though the term is grossly overused) that would have gone black long ago had they not engineered the product so well.
The Eve storylines and lore give us a structure on which we can organize the many suspensions of disbelief and further immerse ourselves. From here the PvP backbone of the game arises along with the spine of mining and there is a purposeful tension between the two. Every career line seems to have tension with PvP and thatās a good thing. Deciding which is more important to Eve, mining or PvP, can be answered by examining the sport of baseball (Earth - circa 20th Century) and which position is more important, the pitcher or the catcher. Well, the pitcher/catcher question was never answered to the satisfaction of anyone on Earth so the point is: both relationships are simply symbiotic and not quantitatively different.
So we have a tension rigged symbiotic relationship that requires innumerable and significant suspensions of disbelief (wouldnāt want to live next door to that family) called mining and PvP. Further, every player has a different point at which belief can no longer be suspended and after living in a fantasy game some, come out shouting on this forum game postulates that in their view are inviolate.
Personally Iām willing to suspend disbelief at some point after miners are given the ability to silently tag ganker ships with homing devices during confrontations. And after gankers have done their thing, miners can later follow the offending pilot and ship to their station and leave a thermonuclear warhead to detonate destroying everything for 20 AUs and leaving it unusable for millennia. But Iām guessing the exhaustion of disbelief for PvPers and CCP are not out as far as mine.
We live (play) in a make believe world and saying certain game mechanics are imbedded in the natural law of Eve is not tenable ā itās fantasy. Like saying solo Orca mining cannot be allowed. It is an arbitrary point past where someone stopped suspending their belief in a fantasy world.
Which leads me to the second point: the Orca in the Eve ecosystem. The Mining Foreman Revolution in 2016 nerfed Orca system wide boosts in favor of command boosts and āpowerful mining dronesā
https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/mining-foreman-revolution#DRONES
In fact mining drones are considered one of the āThree Pillars of Mining Foreman Gameplayā.
So five years ago the Orca game play was restructured. Somethings were taken away, somethings were added and somethings were left. And from there, the dynamic ecosystem that is Eve, has grown and evolved where those attributes cannot be unilaterally removed to suit a disagreeing faction of players. You canāt go back 5 years and remove one of the pillars. The game has been shaped around, over, under and through these Orca attributes. The effects of five drones on the Orca are no longer distinguishable or enumerable. They have been countered, offset and coopted by various subsequent game modifications. All that said, Iām fine with the status quo.
The press clippings of low and null sec donāt match up to the reality. Plenty of people in this forum have constructed a narrative that high sec is a pathetically dull care bear land full of whiners and the other two secs are the real world where everything is cool and happening. I go through wormholes and low sec for PI, Missions, ratting and Ninja mining. Very infrequently I do travel to null sec through wormholes. It finally dawned on me that low and null are dead. Thereās very little activity, generally speaking with various but few exceptions. The game model of random violence (fantasy game play violence), asset loss and political balkanization is not a game experience being adopted by ever more numerous money paying customers.
High sec is a place where people can create and deploy capital and harvest a decent return. Itās when the return OF capital (not the return ON capital) becomes so tenuous, players stop creating and deploying same. Capital flight and rigid but chaotic political hierarchies have made null and low sec dead zones.
Mining in the open, moving freely between systems has won the votes of many thousands (tens of thousands?) of paying players and also the attention of the null/low sec inhabitants barely hiding the drool and envy wanting to change hi sec game play because there is none back home.
The Orca is the biggest target of people who see the salvation of their lost game play if only the high sec people would sit down and keep quiet. Where ever you see Orcas in the open mining away, commerce is thriving, capital is being put at risk and the concentration of paying customers is growing. Where you donāt see Orcas there is comparatively little activity and far, far fewer paying customers.
@Gerard_Amatin you gave a well-reasoned argument against solo Orca mining that is deserving of game modification in your opinion. I lumped you in with a noisy group and that was a mistake. Much of this response is also directed at them. Iām sure you tell which parts. Still, we disagree. gf
3 Likes
Praise James 315,
Always knew that there was a reason as strong as the very spine of Princess herself in this New Eden to support the bond between Mining and (PVP)
Hans_Devin, want to thank you for your inspirational view and only hope one day that it becomes doctrine.(if it had not yet already)
1 Like
Since CCPās stated goal is to balance the regions, in order to ensure that risk=reward, it follows logically from your observations that CCP should nerf Highsec mining, to encourage more activity elsewhere.
An obvious concern is the Orca, as AFK gameplay is not meaningful gameplay. Unfortunately, gankers have no incentive to gank a target which costs more to gank than it will drop, and consequently Orca pilots continue to AFK mine and profit at the expense of everyone else in the community (including other miners). Active players should not be disadvantaged by someone who runs a client in the background 12-16 hours a day, nor should CCP wasted limited resources maintaining a server filled with AFK miners.
By nerfing the Orca, and reducing the value of Highsec ores, CCP can encourage people to engage in more active gameplay.
1 Like
Have you tried doing that, please do and then see how effective it is for a sleepy miner to pull off in time. Note the mechanics carefully please.