Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the recent mining ship rebalancing haulers should get a makeover too. When an unfit retri and a mack flown without any modules have more total space (yeah I know, only for ore - thx Chewbaccalee) than - let's say a fitted mammoth - it is time to rebalance. So here I collect some of my ideas:

-Balancing with other ship-types

1. The easiest and non-invasive way to balance mining ships and haulers would be to just give haulers more cargo-space. I would say around 50k fully fitted... this would also correspond well with the in-game size of a mammoth compared to a mack or retri.

2. Give haulers an additional "goods-hold" much like the ore-hold for mining ships where everything except ore can be transported. One can argue that some goods need small, air-conditiopned compartments unsuitable for raw ore *blah*

3. Play around with an all new ore-hauler, so I did not train that skill for the noctis alone :P perhaps a mini freighter with 60k or something like that

3a. Ore-Hauler: Take the Primae hull and expand on it. Make two hauler varients, small natural cargo bays but one with a Raw Materials bay + refined materials bay (say 60km3 for raw ore / gas / minerals, 20-30km3 for refined minerals / gas / ice products). The second one would be a supped upped Primae, with a command center hold and large (40km3) Commodities hold. (thx Patrice Macmahon)


-Balancing haulers amongst their kind

1. small t1 - smaller cargohold but make them faster as fast cargo runner with near insta-warp

2. med t1 - make it a specialty ship for hauling cargo with the extra cargo-hold -> so no ore hauling here

3. large t1 - make it a large slow ship that can haul everything up to 50k - much as it is now only bigger!

4. fast t2 - leave them but rebalance so all 4 get up to 10k cargospace and can cloaky haul a bc with a little extra through space (yeah it's mostly the prowler)

5 hard t2 - make them über-tanks... if some ship has to bull through a gate camp and is meant to not die instantly please streanghten it further atm it is near useless (at least for me)

6 more high slots for blockade runners to make them more useful in black-ops fleets (Mr Hyde113)



-Wild Shots

1. Spice up the cargo-space: Why not fit haulers as massive carebear-gankers: badgers of doom extended. Devise extra rigs for haulers that make them a little better as deathtraps for trigger-happy pirates :P This is a wild shot but I loved the vids with the hulk of doom... why not allow for some hauler teeth too?!

2. Add a special hauler with subsystems yay! so it is more a large combat transport, perhaps with a cov-ops cloak, with fleet modules, triage, etc. DO IT! There must be more out there than the Orca :P

3. "Farmers Market in Space": semi-stationary trade ships for sys without stations (link below)

4. Cargo Drones - loading up your stuff and transport it 10 sys max to another station (and are fully shoot/lootable) on the way (thx Lokoboto)

5. Strategic Industrial (t3) - More customizable indys / a use for high indy ship skills


These are my 5 cent on this topic - I would love comments and feedback!


Cheers,

your friendly supply runner,

gecko

I won't go down the whole "Industrial Tiericide", but I will suggest a fix for the deep space transport.

It should become our micro freighter. An inbetween for the Basic Industrial, the Freighter and the Orca, with some limitations.

We know that containers can hold more inside than its actual size (3000m3 GSC can hold 3900m3). The same "technology" has been expanded to Deep Space Transports, though it is very experimental, therefore only the Deep Space Transport can handle the tech.

Due to the technology itself, the cargo contained within can only be safely loaded into the transport in station dock or in the security of a tower. The contents cannot be jettisoned into space (as such an act would tear the ship apart).

Essentially, all deep space transports should have 4 holds on it. All equal to what it can hold right now (the m3 inside expandable with equipment and rigs). A rigged out cargohold Occator can hold approximately 35,000m3. The new Occator (same rigs and fit for pure maxxed out), can hold 35,000m3 in each Hold.

Hold 1 (35,509m3)
Hold 2 (35,509m3)
Hold 3 (35,509m3)
Hold 4 (35,509m3)

Total hold on a maxed DST per ship throughout the 4 holds..

If the pilot wants to fit more agility or tank on the ship, they can change the fittings, but all the holds would reduce down based on the removal of the cargo expanders and rigs.

Maxxed out hauling capability of each DST.

Occator, 142,036m3.
Bustard, 122,540m3.
Mastadon, 116,972m3
Impel, 144,876m3

The holds "WOULD BE SEPARATE" from one another. This is not one giant hold (Done on purpose for balancing issues).

DST's cannot scoop loot, nor can it eject can's. It can anchor equipment, but should have the same limitation the freighter's "used to have". Can anchor/launch, can't fuel if its offline (You can read up on the old freighter limitations in the forums).

Now a alternative to the Orca regarding just pure hauling. A intermediary of purchasing and using a freighter.

All DST would get 4 Holds, and would be just under 20 million mass (more viable for wormhole transports). Repair bonuses would be replaced by resist.

Transport Ship Skill Bonus. +4 resistance to Shield/Armor (Racial specific) and +5% bonus Shield, Armor and Hull hit points per level.

Main Questions:

Q) Its too tanky, Resistances and hit points are crazy!!
A) The tank is skill based. if you want a tanky transport, skill into it.

Q) Why can't it scoop loot/Jettison?
A) Balancing issue. Having something that can can flip, scoop a field's worth of loot, carry off a ton of ore/ice from a belt, and have a inherent +2 warp strength would be too strong. Also, in anticipation for a possible Pure Ore Hauler (that and the DST is not a Orca), I would not want to step on its toes. The freighter's used to have this limitation till recently. The Deep Space Transport is literally meant to be a Deep.. Space.. Transport.

Q) Why 4 Holds, why not just 1 hold and just a lot of m3.
A) There is a very delicate balance between hauling M3, masses of ships, etc. The idea here was to address the issues of hauling repackaged ships in industrials. Separating the M3 into 4 holds disallows the transport of repackaged Battleship hulls (50,000m3). The mass limit helps address a few issues with wormhole life, though that may vary.

Q) Ahah!! its a wormhole buff, an UNKILLABLE transport.
A) I once saw a Proteus with a Shadow Serpentis Warp Scrambler (+3) and a +1 long point. With the proliferation of Interdictors, Heavy Interdictors, bubbles and points, I promise you the ship will die in a ball of fire if the person never bothered to get the transport skill past level 1. They'll die in a slightly slower ball of fire if they got the skill to level 3. They "Might" survive long enough to jump back into the hole if they got the skill to level 5. Then again, just jump over and finish them off, the thing align's like a freighter.

Q) Why not just use a Orca?
A) The Orca has its own uses and specialties. There is a need for a pure transporter that is comparable to the Orca, while not replacing it.

Q) Why not just use a Jump Freighter?
A) No one is saying you can't, this is just another option for haulers and a possible viable fix for the Deep Space Transport.

Q) This completely overshines T1 industrials!
A) DST costs between 100 million to 150 million (probably more). a T1 industrial costs less than a million. If you are just getting something small and simple from point 1 to 2, use the T1. If it is something more substantial, you can use the DST. I regularly wind up buying iteron's, fitting them and using them for 2 days, leaving them in the middle of god knows where, then buying another, fitting it and going out. I REALLY can't be doing that with the Deep Space Transport (1 million vs 150 million isk).

Also, those who want to transport and like it now have a new viable alternative. It is a reward to those who decided to go down the industrial track of logistics. Ultimately, they won't replace the T1's, as there are allot of people who will not take a 2 weeks off to train each and every character into a DST

Another idea is to unify the skill for industrial, maybe under ORE , or just add this skill and rebalance the primea as PI hauler. However keeping the current skill tree/ industrial ship line is neither intuitive or practical.