I mean, not really. If they downcycle boosts, warp to a bm right on the undock of a structure, dump, warp back to fleet, boost as they’re landing. Its pretty easy to do. Getting something out of it as the orca pilot without your drones will be a ■■■■■ though. Seriously. Why do it?? May buy one just to do battle orca stupidity if it really gets boned by whatever hairbrained idea they’ve got cooking.
1 Like
CCP has already announced that they are adding ice holds to the game. If the ice hold is smaller, say 10k m3, but the Orca had manual compression so they could still actively support a fleet, would that make it better?
EDIT:
Same general idea, give the Orca a smaller ore hold and then give it compression.
1 Like
Not really any more, since scarcity. There is too much competition from multi-boxed fleets, typically one Orca and a flock of exhumers. Even if you get in early on a fresh field, the fleets strip them so fast that you rarely get more than five minutes alone on a single ice cube, and need to pay a lot of attention to be ready to find another when the locusts muscle in on your current asteroid. Once upon a time, yes, one might get a 100 unit ice asteroid to yourself and solo mine it to depletion, but not now.
How it used to work is the Orca was servicing a fleet of hulks and getting a cut of that, or more commonly the Orca pilot would pay the miners a cut rate to have their ore bought in the field.
Remember, we are not speculating, this was all working great for 10-12 years. Then some “genius” decided to change it to make it better for solo pilots.
All the nerfs since, to asteriods, to distribution all of it, stems from that one error.
1 Like
The general idea I have is to reduce the large ore hold and give the Orca 3 smaller resource holds, something like 10k m3 (depending on compression rates) for each ore, ice, and gas. Keep drone bonus as is. Then add a Industrial Mode like the Rorqual that gives bonuses to boosting, maybe logi, allows compression, but removes all drone bonuses. Something like;
- Boost Range or duration
- Remote Rep Cap reduction maybe more range if boost range is increased (have them about the same)
- Allows compression of ore/ice/gas
- -100% ice and drone yield
- Has activation time and cooldown so you can’t just toggle back and forth.
For solo mining, you could still mine but would fill up quicker. But since you are solo, you shouldn’t need the massive hold.
For AFK mining, smaller hold means shorter AFK time.
For fleet mining, you become a more useful support ship, depending on compression rate you could be in the field much longer than now and increasing support range allows the fleet to spread out more. But makes it so you can’t mine by yourself while you are doing fleet support.
Is nobody flew them that wasn’t flying for corp/alliance fleets where they had buy in field orders in place or the orca pilot was trusted at least somewhat by the miners he was boosting for.
Only for mining ops.
1 Like
People like this guy is why my advice to all in this thread is to keep secret any technique or method of isk generation you find/develop. People like this guy will literally crab you.
1 Like
The current progression is porp, orca, rorq, and rorq with industrial core. So no, not the same. Check the skill tree.
Orca boosting was added in 2016. Prior they were just an ore hold. I guess hauler could fit, but the skill path was mining foreman.
Lots of professions have some afk activity, hauling, research, manufacturing, trade, carrier, ratting, etc… orca mining afk couldn’t last more then the rock they are on. I would say low activity fits better. Boosting is actually more afk. Lol …
Made that up huh?
There used to be PUG mining fleets. It was commonplace.
No, it was nerfed in 2016.
What was commonplace was having your ore stolen by the booster. Pug groups were aids.
Hell yeah. I really hope that CCP add a stupidly low capacity ice hold to the Orca, that would be so much better than my drone suggestion, fingers crossed taht they do this, perhaps 5k m3
1 Like
I have not been active since October 2020, but I saw this going on at this point. It has likely developed as you said and I hope so. But what happens after scarcity has ended? It will be business as normal for these players, AFK ice mining in hisec. I want that ice mining hold for the orca with limited capacity.
I will believe that when it happens - both whether scarcity ever ends, and whether the proliferation of multibox fleets reverses. I do not understand why you say you hope the situation is as I describe it, since that means that a handful of multibox players are now getting a massively disproportionate share of the ice. In any case, as I have said previously, anyone who really did AFK ice mine before ran a very real risk of getting bumped.
Oh, I should say that it has got so bad it is rarely worth me mining ice now - I only do it when I want to run specific reactions and need to make the fuel.
It reads:
Exciting news! For the November expansion the world of fleet boosting will be revolutionized with the removal of passive, off-grid boosters in exchange for new, active, on-grid boosters.
That was when they nerfed the boosters.
Stop making stuff up.
oh snap, i think you are right, there was a passive boost before. I forgot about that …
what was it originally?
Kind of interesting to take a closer look at the combat drone capabilities, I had once witnessed Bornbee combat Orca a year ago or so.
On another note, the progression “porp > orca > rorq > rorq with industrial core.”
If the Orca were to have a ice/ore compression wouldn’t that require the orca to consume Heavy Water?