EVE General Discussion

The guy makes some good points.

Who exactly would be hurt by giving the Hulk more cargo?

I'd go further. I'd remove the Ore Bay entirely and adjust the stats to allow miners to have a reason to fit Expanders again.
Miners could once again choose to increase cargo at expense of EHP.

Plus, loot would drop again, for gankers.

I'd love to see a Mackinaw expanded out to 40-50K, drop 50 blocks of ICE after a gank.

My plan would be:

Boost Hulk EHP to about 12K EHP (unfit), 33-40K EHP (tank fit)
Reduce Mackinaw EHP to about 10K EHP (unfit) and 22-24K EHP (tank fit)
Slightly reduce Skiff Yield to distinguish it from the Mackinaw.

Remove Ore Bays and resize standard cargo appropriately for their # of low slots.
(Hulk could expand beyond current amount, but base size is significantly less...)
Mackinaw I could see being expanded up to 40 or 50K with rigs/mods base amount significantly less.

Also, completely get rid of the stupid 'ice/mercoxit harvesting rigs'....seems tacked on and pointless.

Yes to make the most popular mining ship ATM easier to gank should be at the top of CCPs list. Not the POS rework not the new Destroyers.

You would think the poor Mack had some kind of invulnerable force field the way people whine about this. Gankers still crying about some mythical right to a profitable gank.

This thread really should have been rolled into the previous threadnaught.

To be a safe and convenient ice bot mining ship, of course. Duh.

Excellent article posted here today at:


themittani.com

Eventually someone went out and started actually counting the highsec Exhumer population.

Yes, the Hulk is going extinct.

Miners will keep trying to justify the over-buffed Mackinaw, but just saying otherwise doesn't make it less true.

One size-fits-all Exhumer design is a sign that another iteration on the barge buff is necessary.

Swap Hulk and Mackinaw EHP - problem solved.

The answer to all of this is reverting the hulk and mack EHP buffs.

The smart money will be on the mining barges. Why? I can pay for a tier 1 fitted procurer for 10m (no rigs though). A fitted retriever about 20. In the event of a gank they're cheap as chips replacements making profitable ganking redundant.

90% of this thread is people who don't mine trying to tell CCP how mining should be. They chose to listen to the people who do mine. I'd say they got it right.

Macki - Low yields, high tank. You are only seeing them if you hunt miners in .5 and .6 because the Hulk tank won't handle Tier 3 BC ganks of one or 2.

Hulk - High yield but requires and Orca or Rorqual for support and has a low tank. Tank not really mattering because it can't be on the front line. It needs a fleet to intercept hostiles making it the ideal ship for Null mining or a .7 to 1.0 space mining tool.

Skiff- Hard tank, unique bonuses making it a great mining ship for very specific and time consuming jobs either in null or high sec. Actually being used, something it has never had the luxury of claiming. If I wanted to mine Ice in null sec, this would be my choice with maybe a frigate alt double or triple webbing it all the time.

Now that miners are in a better place, that was in fact your best option all along. I never lost a Hulk during the glory days of miner griefing. It was triple webbed any time it was out. Who am I to ruin gankers fun though if Miners couldn't figure that out on their own?

The problem is the mack is doing the skiffs job.

Well since you're solo mining and the mack is well supposed to be for the solo miner I'd say mission accomplished. If you were running a fleet hulks would win out by a mile though.

Skiff's biggest problem lies in the mining laser being overly strong resulting in a lot of near empty roid cycles (lesser extent the mack suffers the same). A lot of the HS areas are mined out so you're going to have to spend a lot of time finding a system with large roids to run your mack for an "eon". Of course that will only work for a few days at most before you run out of large roids. The replenishment won't be sufficient to allow you to keep pulling +2100 m3 of ore for long.