Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Potential Ship Names: Navigator, Gravity, Gravitas (keeping up with a 'V' theme). Ideas needed.

General Concept: The next tier above the Venture. An ORE vessel capable of fitting a full complement of gas cloud harvesters as befitting a capsuleer that's trained to GCH V and wants to take advantage of the bonus. Meant primarily for lowsec and nullsec travel, possibly for wormholes, where the needed resources are found. Still an industrial yellow color, may have a large red splash or warning symbol on the hull to caution other pilots about the amount of potential explosive products it's carrying.

Below is a very generalized list of fitting and capabilities. It's not complete in terms of structure/armor/shield/resistances. It would have to be calibrated for whether it was an incremental improvement from the Venture (T1, like a barge) or an entire level of capability, like the Exhumers (T2).

Set-Up

Cargo Capacity: 150 m3 / 300 m3 (T1/T2)
Drone Capacity: 25m3
Drone Bandwidth: 25 Mbit/sec.
Ore/Gas Hold Capacity: 10,000 m3 / 20,000 m3 (T1/T2)

ORE Industrial Bonus: 5% bonus to mining output, 5% reduction to gas cloud harvesting duration per level.

+2 to warp core strength.

Role Bonus: 100% bonus to gas harvesting yield.

High Slots: 5-6. Either enough to fit an entire set of harvesters at Gas Cloud Harvesting V along with a utility high slot (prototype cloak, probe launcher, etc.) with 6, or sacrificing one potential harvester slot for the benefit of another module with 5.

Medium Slots: 2 maximum. Space to allow for a propulsion mod, but not enough to build a significant tank. The trade-off for a ship that can clear multiple gas sites is that it's fragile. Higher risk, but higher reward.

Low Slots: 2. Enough for a mining upgrade (if used for mining ore for some reason), CPU/capacitor/etc. modules, or even a little expanded cargo.

In order to keep there being an imbalance where this vessel could fit five Strip Miners, either the ship should innately use them with less efficiency (opposite to how the Skiff etc. use their one high slot with more efficiency) or be unable to use Strip Miners entirely, only able to fit up the standard Mining Lasers.

Skill Requirements

T1:
Mining Frigate III
Spaceship Command I
Industry V
ORE Industrial VI
Mining IV
Gas Harvesting I

T2:
Mining Frigate V
Spaceship Command IV
Industry V
ORE Industrial V
Mining IV
Gas Harvesting IV

This general arrangement of skills follows how the more unique ORE ships (Venture, Orca, Rorqual, Noctis) have their own odd little tree to climb in terms of training. It wouldn't use the traditional barge/exhumer track, but provides some of the base skills to go into the current Industrial Command and Capital Industrial ships.

Obviously there needs to be some refining of the details, but that's where the rest of the forum comes in. A lot of people may not see the use for another ship just for gas cloud harvesting, but I believe it's an aspect of mining (along with other in-game activities such as booster making and related production) that I think should receive more attention from EVE as a whole.

There are certainly balancing issues to consider, as well as game-wide changes that could be made to the amount and types of gas available in EVE.

Every person can get gas right now if they pick up a Venture and a marginally priced skillbook. Mining IV can be gotten almost day one. However, there's a fairly stilted incentive for new players to start harvesting gas because they don't have the skills to pinpoint it down or to survive in hostile systems.

More competition also means more ships to shoot at (and be blown up), thus maintaining some balance in the equation. Some players will be good at moving their fragile gas barge wormhole-hopping or dashing through six 0.1 systems, others will get insta-locked and die, just like with the Venture, and have to put more isk into the economy.