Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Modular

All have strong resists to help mitigate their expensive hulls
All have natural range boosts on mining lasers

Set ups:
Performance>
Single high
Target limit 2
large boosts to cycle time
major reduction in yeilds
-overall the strongest miner but at the cost of raping mining crystals, single high to make playing the swap crystals before they break easier

Cargo>
Quad high
Target limit 8
Increased cycle time
moderate increase in yields
large cargo bay thats only a little larger then the mack
-a ship with similar performances to the mack but catering to the social/ afk miner (People where the ship is mining but they are focused on something else)

Balanced>
Triple high
Large cargo bay that's smaller then mack but bigger then hulk
shorter cycle times
increased yield per cycle
target limit 6
minor increased mining output
- a ship to bridge the gap between cargo and performance set up

Hostile enviroment>
Same stats as skiff
Has ability to use covert op bridges
- Still has the same problem a skiff does out of highsec but has the added flexibility of using the cheaper covert ops BS to get around (stealth bombers are much more economic and would get more use defending miners then a full out capital supported defense fleet locking down the system - so pairing them like this seems logical)

A T3 mining barge? Now that is an interesting idea. You could make so each subsystem gears for mining a different object. So instead of offensive subsystems you have mining subsystems. One makes good for rock, another for gas, a third of ice, and a final one makes it a salvage boat like a Noctis. No idea what you would do for the other subsystem groups: electronic, defensive, power, and propulsion.

Tech 3 no longer means expensive and OP.

Tech 3 is supposed to be a generalization of the specialized tech 2 hulls. In other words, it can do more than a single tech 2 hull, but never do anything as well as the tech 2 hull. What it appears you are proposing here is more of a super specialization over a generalization. The issue is some of these hulls do things better than the tech 2. That should never be true.

The upside to this is you get some customization, the downside is the "best" tech 3 exhumer would be a very expensive, slightly better yield and tank and slightly worse cargo mackinaw.

What you could do is being in more generalizations. Things like gang boosting, gas harvesting, drone harvesting, among other things. You could also use the "Rorqual only can hold mining barges/exhumers" for your bridging check instead of cov ops.

There is a lot of potential here. There is so much you could do with these ships. Be creative. But for CCP to do something like this it has to follow the specialization vs. generalization.

T2 mining barges are pretty cheap when you consider usage over time - 250m/ 1 year is relatively nothing because you never use them and insurance for T2's is a waste. Sure they can get ganked but I don't consider that because T2's if used in their most isk-efficient form, never die.

I can buy all the ships I need and it will cost me less then the T3 and I'll never have to buy them again.

I'm not looking to make them OP, just a smidge more then the T2 so that people have an economical reason to buy them. Additionally they are tailored to how people like to play and facilitate doing so easily with maybe a few twists in doing so.