Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think the need has arisen to create a mid-sized hauler. The goal of this ship is to make an industrial that isn’t mining based, has a reasonable cargo hold, and adds something to the hauling game. My inspiration is based on hauling ore, minerals, fuel product, PI, and equipment through wormhole space, but I think it is applicable to all areas of EVE.

I am sure I will get jumped for the thought since there are several hauling variants, but let’s think about this. Itty V is the largest general hauling ship with a max load of approximately 48k M^3. Fair, that is a lot to haul, too bad it is Gallente specific, and is still just a paper airplane. Also, even with this storage it can still be a pain to transport items out through hostile wh space. Even High Sec now is filled with gankers drooling to pop your nice full transport full of goodies.Don’t want to take the risk, fly a Transport Ship. Sure but what kind of cargo capacity are you seeing. For the price, come on now.

Ok so then we see the freighter. Big, bulky structure tanked behemoth that is the epitome of sloth. Afk, much? Sure, it is great for large high sec transfer, or jump freighter for low and null, but what a way to kill activity on side of industry. Wait you want to take that through a smaller wh? Hahaha

Ah the orca, cool if you want to spend your time mining, moving ore, and training all those lovely skills. That is fantastic. Sorry but trade is a whole different class, can we keep it that way?

I would like to propose a mid-sized hauler that will carry approximately 100k m^3, be maneuverable and add a little extra fun with fittings. This would have to fit through a C2, I am not sure it is possible to squeeze this into a C1. It would have 4 low slots for adding storage, armor, or stabs. Three mid slots with added CPU for ECM, or resists, or heck an ab? Two High Slots, a cloak would be nice, maybe not cov ops but I am open to that.

Skills

Industry to V, Transport Ships IV, Specialty Skill

Cost

350 Million Isk

I could use some help on the overall logistics, but what do you think?

When I read mid-sized hauler, I thought to myself 'we already have those, what we don't have are large or small industrials.'

So what you're proposing is a mini-freighter. I support this. The gap from industrial to freighter is too huge in terms of size, skills, and isk cost.
+1

Also, I'm just gonna leave this here so that if any fool says "OMG ORCA IZ MINI FRIEGTER" then I can point to this and show them I knew what they were going to say. So before any of you make such a shortsighted comment and reveal yourself for a fool, please think long and hard about why that makes absolutely no sense.

Perhaps I was a bit ambitious with added CPU and the like. But honestly the gap in cargo between your average industrial and freighter is immense. Also I feel that it being a larger ship, probably a bit smaller than an orca, and that it should require transport ship training, that it should be able to have at least a bit of tank. I think that its cost should also help define the ships ability to survive an attack.
This ship would help industrialists to be more active and focus on other aspects of the game. It would allow for faster and more agile movement of items and help to change the market environment.

Having modules and hull bonuses it should start with a smaller base cargo capacity, 20k at the most. 100k should be "max fitted and skilled" cargo capacity.

No it doesn't. It's a hauler, and what keeps it from having the price and skill requirements of the orca is things like that. I support adding a combat battleship with a small ship maintenance bay for small roams, but not this one. If you want an industrial fleet with a mobile ship dock, get an orca.

The main reason I'd support the battleship is that carriers are hard to move around, not because they are too expensive or skill intensive for pvp roams.

Perhaps adding a few low slots would give them more room to have a decent armor tank without gimping their cargo space, or to fit a good armor tank if you want to make them really solid.

I think a better medium between 36k and 720k is 36k x sqrt(20), or 160k m3. At 1.39 x sqrt(3) = 2.41k isk per m3, that ship would cost about 385 mil. It's the same percentage of an increase over the transport as the freighter is over it.

As for skill requirement, both transport and freighter require the industrial skill at 5. Transport ships skill requires spaceship command 3, and freighter skills require advanced spaceship command, meaning also spaceship command 5. Perhaps the mini-freighter/large industrial would have a skill that requires spaceship command at 4, or it would require spaceship command at 5 without requiring advanced spaceship command be learned.

The third value of adding more low slots would be that they could potentially have more cargo space than a t1 indy.

I prefer the idea of adding a stacking penalty to cargo expanders, though, and changing the expansion amount on the modules and/or the base cargohold of ships so that the max is similar but you don't have to use all of the low slots and rig points to get close to it. That way, there's no problem with deep space transports having the same cargohold size as a t1 industrial if they also have a rock-hard armor tank to go with it. That could also give precedence to change some of the low slots on the Bustard and Mastodon into mid slots.

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Just an afterthought...
Maybe the mid-range hauler could simply be a tier 3 transport, which would specifically be designed for hauling a lot of cargo, and would forego most of its defensive or strategic bonuses with the assumption that any flying through dangerous territory would bring support. It would still have enough base HP to match its value and cargo capacity, of course.

If it had about 50-75% more carrying capacity than an Iteron V and it was slower and only slightly more expensive than a deep space transport, it would definitely get used. In fact, it could have a cargo size that's greatly reliant on the level of the transport ships skill, so that in a way it has higher skill requirements anyway. Like this:
5 low slots
6000 base cargohold
+25% cargohold space per level (transport ships skill)
Max cargohold at each level of transport skill (with t2 expanders and t1 rigs):
33,420 / 40,104 / 46,788 / 53,472 / 60,156

I agree. I'd love more than anything to see frigate and battleship-sized industrials. Both would be immensely useful.

I like. something along the lines of

1 high slot
3 mid slots
4-6 low slots

2 rig slots