Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Leave each race 2 dedicated haulers and transfer the remainder over to Ore and specialize them at your leisure (or don't)

The remaining ships can be have been rejected by the various races and the blueprints could have been bought by Ore.

So many times in RL arms manufacturers have their Ns rejected for various reasons, the lore could be that each race ultimately had to settle on two racial haulers and the blueprints for the remaining ships were scooped up and modified by Ore.

The proposed rebalance changes nothing. After a few days of training, no one will have any reason to fly anything else than an Orca / freighter if in high sec, or jump freighter / blockade runner in null or low sec.

Once a player is able to fly one of those three ships, the T1 industrials get completely obsolete. Unlike the succesfuly rebalanced T1 frigates, cruisers and battlecruisers, nobody will have any reason to go back to the former hulls.

There surely must be a way to rebalance the T1 haulers that gives them unique and imaginative roles that makes them excell in niche applications, so that every pilot can keep coming back to them if the tasks requires it.

Give T1 haulers roles and special cargo bays so that they don't get obsolete once you sit in an Orca / Freighter or Blockade Runner / Jump Freighter. Also, Deep Space Transports are completely useless in their current form, no one in their right mind would actually fly one of those into "deep space" aka null sec.

So there is still hope for drastic changes in the future? Or are you just trolling us?

gonna put it again, use the T2 haulers as en example before inventing new roles to the T1 haulers, it has more sense and actually gets on the line of player progression, using a fast hauler converging to the blockade runner, and a tanked hauler converging to the DST, and leave one hauler to be used in high sec as a big cargo ship.

people doesnt use DSTs cause they still need major reworking but that's part of the T2 rebalance.

still, you have the 2 roles there already, i dont see the need to create a ship with more agility and another with max velocity.

Ah yes this is a great idea. Maybe one of those extra haulers could get a warp speed bonus per level.

Since I'm still not seeing a response, CCP Rise, why would any new player bother training gallente industrials at all, in your new system?

CCP Rise,

First of all I'd like to explain why these changes are a bit meh for me...

Like many players I have to move stuff around New Eden. For large volumes I'd turn to a Freighter, for smaller volumes or more dangerous space a Viator is faster or allows me to offset some of the risk. There's currently a mid-ground where I want to move a reasonable volume of stuff, without the speed problems inherent with using Freighters. For those purposes I turn to an Itty5.

So currently of all the T1 industrials, I only ever fly an Itty5.

Now, as I understand things, one of the aims of tiericide or role-i-fication was to get away from the idea that's there's a single best ship. For example when flying a frigate, there was rarely any reason to fly something other than a Rifter/Merlin. One of the things that has changed massively when looking at Frigates/Cruisers is that there are now reasons to fly the other racial hulls in the class. Some of them I might only need occasionally - but you've attempted to give all of them a viable role.

Now looking at the industrials, and the proposed changes at this time - this just isn't the case. Yes you've given each race a hull that fits the role I'm looking for - but why would I bother going out and buying/flying any of them? The Itty5 still fullfils the role I needed and none of the other ships offer any other advantages. Even for a new pilot - there's little reason for them to ever fly other hulls.

So rather than taking a ship class with one ship worth flying, and making it have 8 ships worth flying - I'd argue that in actual fact for most players there's still one ship worth flying - maybe 2 if you haven't unlocked T2 industrials yet.

So yes the changes are a bit meh.

Secondly I don't see the problem with racial differences within a class. I can certainly fit damps to a Griffin, but if I decide that I want to specialise in providing damp support to my fleets, I really need to train into Gallente frigate to get the better bonuses. Likewise a Gallente pilot that wants to specialise into ECM will almost certainly need to start training Caldari hulls. In some cases the impact of this is worsened because there's additional weapon types/different tanking etc too.

I don't see why the same can't apply to the industrial ships. When I start in Eve I go off and train Caldari Industrial for all my general purpose hauling needs. When I start mining ice, the Badger Mk2 is a fine hull and completely capable of hauling my ice stockpiles around. Now if one of the other races has a bonus to ice-capacity, that doesn't affect the utility of my Mk2 - but the option is there for me to train that racial industrial ship and gain the advantage of the bonus hold.

Finally, having said all this - I can see where you're at at the moment.

As things stand on TQ now, there's no reason to train anything other than Gallente Industrial. So I can see why you would like to do a balancing pass now.

If you apply roles to different hulls you're not improving that situation as the differences in distinct hulls between races means that training Gallente Industrial is still the best general case as you'll gain access to more ship roles than training any other race.

So I think what most of the posters like me really want to hear is that this isn't the end for industrial balancing. That in the future you'd like to see additional hulls to give each race specialisations - maybe tied in with further work around industry.

Tell us that the long term plans involve doing more to the hulls - that in the future you will give me a reason to fly an Itty3 - just that this is a first balancing pass until other changes in the game (maybe outside your control) happen.

Well, if I can counter the bolded statement, it almost sounds as if you're suggesting that because you're putting *some* effort into it, we should just be satisfied with the bone we've been thrown. I couldn't disagree more. You've admitted that the industrial lines have never "popped," and that their purpose is to haul stuff cheaply. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. We (meaning the many posters who've passionately made the various suggestions) are merely advocating that there is room for innovation here, and if you're going to go through the trouble of rebalancing this line--not as some sort of afterthought or half-hearted effort--then you ought to give it the same attention you'd give any other line.

You could have argued that Mining Barges were boring and only served to suck up asteroids at the fastest rate. You could have buffed Barges' respective rock-sucking amounts and left it at that. But you didn't. You innovated on a line that could have used some help, and the results have been fantastic.

It's the same treatment we're asking for here, because, look, we all get that Industrials won't be even on the list after these changes are made. So give them a proper balance now, and have them pop. Give them the Mining Barge treatment where one can actually tank something (~50k ehp) to stop mindless ganks, make one really fast for afk, low-value hauls and make one enormously capable of carrying goods for the high sec bold or for those that live safely deep in the back reaches of space.

The "flavor" of the lines--at least as I understand it, since there isn't "traditional" flavor by optimal range or tracking, etc.--is how slick it can do its job. Is it engaging to have a ship that has a huge cargo bay? Is it satisfying to fly that boat when I need to pick up my daily haul? Does it feel good knowing that when I undock my Hoarder it'll actually survive the random ganking dessie? It can.

If you don't take the opportunity to innovate now, then it'll still be just a matter of who holds the most and train that--look how this has worked out historically: The Itty V carried the most, and it was trained into the most for haulers. The Covetor/Hulk sucked rocks the most, thus it was skilled into the most for this. In fact, in every instance where a ship did "the most," it was trained into and flown extensively until tiericide came along (Hurricane?). With the proposed changes, admittedly you're looking for viable choices, so as not to have them all marginalized, but it almost sounds like you don't want competitive choices. As players we like competitive choices and decision making. Adding flavor to the industrial line gives that--true choice with pros and cons to each.

I'm sorry, but I'm not content with holding off on the future promises when the issues facing Industrial rebalance can be addressed today. Besides, it's not worth being complacent today, since this is THE chance we'll get to innovate. Obviously, we haven't seen behind the candelabra and know what future industrial changes are coming. All we can speak to is what we know the Industrial line can--and should become now and not some future balancing period.

Lastly, just to address the point that T1 Industrials are effectively replacing DSTs' role as a "large" high sec hauler, I'd like to say that DSTs are horrendously broken at the current time. They perform poorly as tanky haulers, considering that their cargo bay is smaller than a blockade runner when properly--read: as intended--tanked, and they're far too slow to align when fully fitted for cargo for high sec duty. The Orca--the world's premier mining support ship--does their job better in spades, having an enormous hold AND a ridiculous tank. Certainly, the changes to T1 Industrials' cargo room is warranted (with other changes, to be sure) and their impact on a broken T2 line should never be considered. If that were the case, T1 cruisers would never have ended up so well if Fozzie and his team were worried they'd marginalize proper T2 ships (Deimos says hello).

So why give them any module slots at all then? If we are all just going to put on cargo expanders to do the boring job of moving things around, why not just add a freight bay that is the same for all?