Thankyou so much guys for your kind reviews 
Can you elaborate why?
You don’t need more tank against normal rats, at least in highsec.
Against triglavians, slightly bigger tank won’t help you (well it gives you few more seconds to react and warp out but that is all).
so why ?
if you want tank there is Procurer/Skiff, if you want max yield there is Covetor/Hulk, Retriever/Mackinaw is something in middle. Ie. player already has choices.
Any buff to mining vessels tank will nerf suicide gankers and ganking miners is on the decline now, low profit, hell it is not even worth to do it for killboard when their cost dropped by 100mil since year ago. I still sometimes do it, because it needs only 3 accounts to kill it (two if you want to risk failing if it has tank fitted or if you take more expensive ship than catalyst for that purpose). If you grant free EHP to barges it will be huge nerf to this activity. I am not gonna sub another acc so I could gank miners.
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I explained why already.
Please read.
All we need are polarized and enchanted strip miners.
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It’s popular miner because it’s a negative ISK gank and easy to AFK.
Fly around hi-sec for long enough and you’ll see herds of them slowly grazing on ore belts, you can almost hear youtube channels playing as you fly past them.
It’s ability to use mining drones should be removed & replaced with bonuses for remote shield repair. In addition give it the ability to use a micro jump drive & increase it’s construction cost by 25%
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It is meant to have the ability to mine, and be a viable miner, this is specifically by design so that it becomes an active ship in a fleet, not an alt that you log in and barely pay attention to.
However it mines less than other barges yield fitted, so it balances.
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It has become the only ship in the fleet.
It’s not an active ship - you don’t even need the boosts just stick one drone per rock and go and watch a movie.
Fly thru Udema and check out the Orca fleets (Yes - Fleets)
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So, you fly it in the deliberately least efficient way possible to mine, then complain ‘it’s not very active’…
Yeah…
Thus encapsulates the failure of mining players. The issue with the Orca is that is both Jack of all Trades, as well as a Master. Need to haul, tick; need to mine, tick; need to boost, need to tank. And so the single and insular player has no reason to see co-operation. No need to attempt trust with the associated risks and rewards. A miner should not need alts, agreed, but I would argue that they need friends. There should be carrot and/or stick to seek a group. Either newer game-play or changing the old. Because the highest retention factor is when players are social.
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An Orca is not a master of yield. An unboosted retriever can mine as much as an Orca. A boosted hulk is about 2.5 times as much as an Orca. (& this is before taking inefficiency from drone flight time into account, which can halve an orca yield easily if you are lazy)
It also moves slower and I do believe warps slower.
So it has it’s downsides. But it is meant to be a capable mining vessel, and clearly it is meant to be a capable ore hauler and booster also. Also comes with a far larger price tag of course to go with.
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Orca mines slow because it’s a command ship /o thread
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If it is a command ship. Why it can mine in first place?
Because command des and BC have also guns ?
I mean, wtf is that question even worth ? Why not ?
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It does mine so this is a suboptimal question. It is not a mining platform thusly does not compete with actual mining barges, want to mine quickly get in a covetor or hulk. Want tank procurer, want to afk with a decent yeild retriever. Orca is not the end of the mining ship chain, it’s a fleet command ship meant to boost other miners.
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The Orca is a command ship, It’s not being used as one, in most cases it’s being used just as a miner.
Even with all the disadvantages listed high-sec miners are risk averse and would prefer lower yields to being ganked. As for being an active ship there is no need to boost when mining and Roqual mining compared to mining in an Orca is a frantic rush of activity.
The Osman system for instance has a couple of ice belts and there were 23 Orcas & 2 Hulks when I visited at the weekend.
- That’s 23 General Pattons & 2 Private Ryans
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And Destroyers are intended as an anti-frigate platform - yet the catalyst is primarily used for killing Industrial hulls.
Time to face the reality. Years of obsessive and a narrow focus on killing miners is what has brought us to this point. Those miners unable to adapt have long since quit the game, and the remaining ones opt for the tanking hulls. Yet somehow it the miners fault for electing a lower yield over higher and less defense.
Better yet, the Triglavians are providing further incentive for miners to tank. The nerfs of the March 2016 update to barges/exhumers means CCP has no reason to intervene.
Long live the silent revolution of the high sec mining meta.
As for the “safety” card. It’s rubbish. If it requires 30 catalysts, then that’s what it takes. There is no prevention of any of these ships being locked and shot.
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It’s simple really…
- Destroyers are combat ships and are being used for combat
- Orcas are command ships and are not being use as command ships
CODE:
- Do as James commands else we will GANK you… because we CAN
- Please do as James suggests or we will be forced to bump you just a little bit.
Except you are wrong. Orcas are ALSO Mining ships.
A ship can be two things at once.
but it’s not being “two things”… It’s being just a miner, in fact if you took away the boosts & fleet hanger hardly anyone would notice.
and all around EvE the command ships are not being …
Uotila - 14 orcas, 2 hulks, I retriever
Uedema 22 orcas
Halima 12 orcas, 2 Hulks
Osman 20 orcas, 2 Hulks
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Actually it tells everybody great story. CODE is Dead. If you cannot cover your “home” space then you have ceased to be Miner Bumping. If someone is a retriever or a hulk is defying you, what’s gone wrong? James won Eve would be the start of it. CCP Falcon once said “when CODE dies” and I was kind of disappointed when he left, and CODE remained. But lo and behold - Falcon was a prophet after all.