Player Features and Ideas Discussion

no... you might as well just use a carrier

The only way I see this balancing is if the Orca loses most of it's cargo capacity, transferred into pure ore storage instead.
Also, the same indy only ship restrictions that the rorqual must deal with for its ship maintenance bay.

If they want PvP ship support, the Orca should never be a better choice than a carrier.

Now, that being established, I could see this with jump ability.

He's right you know, none of what you suggested needs anything other than a regular carrier.

Well, other than the new PVPer thing, but how is someone who doesn't know anything about PVP going to A) get into a cap, and B) understand cyno mechanics well enough not to just die instantly?

This...no need to duplicate what is already in game.

The two are not equivalents on scale.

You might as well call a minivan with third row seating a bus. The scale simply is not the same.

Specifically:
-------------------------ORCA ---------------------------------RORQUAL
SMA Space: --------400,000---------------------------------1,000,000 (Rorqual has more than double)
Ore Hold:------------ 50,000-----------------------------------250,000
(I am suggesting orca cargo space be diverted, but this is current)

The Rorqual with 300 drone capacity and 125 bandwidth may not compare to a carrier, but it dwarfs the Orca's 75 capacity and 50 bandwidth.

The Rorqual can hold the clone vat bay.

The Rorqual dwarfs the Orca on structure armor and shields too.

Quite frankly, there is a gap between the two.
The Rorqual has greater expense as well as skill demands, plus can only operate in systems where a cyno can drop it.
The Orca, while capable of operating anywhere technically, has many of the same vulnerabilities as a T1 freighter when relocating, making it impractical to take certain places the Rorqual simply jumps to.

Agreed, it should be restricted to being as is, or locked down to Mining support exclusively so it does not take over freighter or carrier use.

Anything general purpose should want a general purpose ship too, not the orca.

orca with a sma of 160k wouldn't even fit a single hulk.

The point was not to give it a jump drive at all. It doesn't need one. There are at least two ships that provide the roles the OP wants added to the Orca. No. Orca doesn't need to be a do-it-all. It's designed for mining support role, and if anything, it should be nerfed into doing that role better.

No jump drive. Decreased cargo bay. Increased Ore bay. I'd go so far but stop before limiting the SMA to just Industrial/Mining ships. I enjoy that Eve is a sandbox, so putting whatever ship you want in there should be an option. Moving the ship to take over the roles of much more expensive/more highly specialized ships is where the line would be crossed. It's already bad enough that this MINING support ship can hold 80k m3, greatly out-hauling any Industrial short of a more skill-intensive (and costly) freighter, AND it does it with close to 190k ehp. This thread ought to instead be calling out for an Orca nerf to reign it back in line. That, or a new medium-sized, high ehp/high cargo bay transport should be introduced/rebalanced (DSTs anyone?) so people will stop thinking this mining support ship is the premier hauler.

Nope... not even close.

And the cost would be whatever it balances out to be, but the only reason it could even be in the same range as the Rorqual is due to the limitations that make the Rorqual practical only under limited circumstances.

Otherwise, the Rorqual's pricing would be a lot closer to that of a jump freighter. Don't kid yourself about how useful a Rorq actually is in practical terms.