Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First off, Is this needed? No, it's not, but it is still good to think about IMO
secondly, I am trying to open a discussion because this is a problem I cant seem to solve due to my own bias as a miner.

So here is something i have been wondering about for a while, how would CCP expand the resource gathering ship trees in EVE? Because, as far as I know, CCP is not adding new Industrial content to the game, I would like this to be based on current mechanics and not this "Oh let this thing be good at mining wormholes for tech 4 components".

So the logical progression would be a Battleship {Large} style ship. but what would it do? We don't want it to make exhumers - who were recently "re-balanced" (IE, useless hulk) - useless. But that being said, with an industrial cruiser designed for hold, tank, and yield specifically, what does that leave left as a niche?

The only thing i could think of would be a battleship with some turrets slots and a yield bonus. Drop a Rorqual in and have it refit from mining lasers to guns maybe?

But what would make people want to use the hulk or the mackinaw or the skiff more than or equal to this?
Drop the tank of it?
Would the warp speed changes be enough?
Have the Yield be lower?

Do we try something a little strange and somehow give the ship the ability to harvest moon goo in some sort of deployed mode?

Honestly I cant find a good enough concept, which actually saddens me. PVP and PVE get all this love but industry is stuck behind not knowing what to do. NPCs get all this isk making love but the miners who, granted its pretty laid back, sit there for hours making much less. Many people make the argument "you just sit there and don't do anything," well don't people do that with ratting? Oh look, this onslaught of NPCs cant ever break my passive recharge on my shields.

Now don't get me wrong, I believe in risk vs reward and mining is an underwhelming part of the game. But to me, it seems like the slight extra risk of losing a tengu in a 8/10 because it was being nueted* (this happened to a corpmate of mine, the noob lost an active tanked tengu in either a 6 or 8/10) far far under-weighs the reward.

So I open this question to everyone: What can you come up with, that would put some kind of useful battleship class industrial ship for resource gathering into the game and be balanced with current existing Mining Frigs and Barges(Cruisers)?

Also, ORE is already a "Pirate Faction" per say.

* just for kicks, Google chrome wanted me to change this to "nutted", funny spell check.

no they are not...

anyhoo on the the gravy.

mining hulls current:

3 T1 spec barges
3 T2 spec barges
1 industrial command ship
1 capital industrial command ship
1 token mining frigate.

0 haulers.

i would like to see:

at least 3 haulers.
1 with Vlarge ore hold 10-15k more than tier 1 racial hull
1 with Vlarge mineral hold 10-15K more than tier 1 racial hull
1 with smaller ore hold but with +2 warp core strength

a second frigate.
larger ore hold and better tank no warp core bonus

2 T2 frigates. (no warp core strength, but immune to non targeted interdiction)
one for gass harvesting and cloakable
one for ore harvesting and cloakable

2 freighters. (both have +2 warp core strength) (have smaller normal holds than racial varents but able to move exceptionaly large amounts or ore minerals in dedicated hulls)
1 for normal logistics (has fitting options)
1 jump freighter (has fitting options)

new destroyer hull, designed for fleet defence. (YES AN ORE COMBAT HULL)
uses hybrid/drones shield tanked (Vfast with small sig radius high DPS potential)

new cruiser hull designed for fleet remote logistics. (YES A T1 ORE LOGI)
gets bonus to shield rep amount and can increase a ships resistances using a new module. "remote adaptive shielding enhancer"
gets large drone bay for defence high personal resistances.


OH AND A COMPLETE REWORK OF THE MINING MECHANIC !!!!!!!

the afor mentioned remote adaptive shileding enhancer:
takes the operators resistance profile and adds that to the target at a 50% diminished rate while lowering the operators resistances by 25% across the board.

culd also have resistance specific variants. as well as armour and hull orientated mods also
2 min cycle time reduces speed of operators hull by 75% while active.

You know they can limit modules per ship right? So imagine....
BS sized hull
EHP around the Abaddon/Rokh
Slots similar to most BS
But....
2 MLU limit. 3 Strip Miner limit.
So, it's not going to mine more than an exhumer, about the same as a retriever.
But it has far more tank and can fit moderate firepower.
Meaning that you could use these for WH & Null mining if people don't want to spend time in combat ships babysitting you vs the NPC's.
Without loosing significant yield.

so a Battleship sized miner which swallows entire asteroids (given they are small enough to do so) and the ability to "process" these roids within their hold at a given rate?

the chances of this ever happening are low but it does sound amazing. i'd personally hope it end up something like:

below average shield with average resists (5000)
average armor with low resists (6500)
very large hull for buffer tank (15-20K) or maybe more

an exceedingly slow speed/agility close to that of freighters/carriers

(by lack of a better name)
mining platform bonus: +10% asteroid processing speed, -13,32% cycle time of strip mining per level
and maybe the ability to deploy 1 extra drone per level


role bonus:
- +200% scan
- 95% reduction in stripminer/miner/asteroid tractor cpu and power requirements
- able to use a specialized asteroid tractor beam(*2) to swallow(or scoop) asteroids with less than X(*1) M3
of minerals and process them in their hull at 5000M3 per 3 minutes (base)
- able to use asteroid cutting tool which breaks up larger asteroids into smaller pieces
- able to use mining links


highslots would be tricky, since you cant just give it 8, my suggestion is 5, with only 2 being usable for strip miners
4 mid slots
5 low slots

75Mbit drone bandwidth
150M3 drone bay

350M3 cargo hold
20.000M3 ore hold
hull hold able to store X(*1)M3 of asteroids


*1: not entirely sure what would be a fitting amount
*2: asteroid tractor beam can be compared to capital tractor but with a quarter of its range at 1000M/S speed
*3: cutting tool would have cycle time depending on the size of the asteroid, the giant ones would be 5-10 minutes

edit: do note i have no idea how to balance ships, so this might just be god awful or ridiculously OP

ON-TOPIC:

i do agree there need to be more ORE ships, without breaking the game. This would best be done with more specialized ship which dont really become a "step up" from what we currently have but rather another option along what we currently have.

for instance a miner/hauler which is able to turn the ores into minerals in space.

Problems with this are:

- if MAX yield goes up, price per unit will go down. People will largely make the same isk/hour.

- the industrial SKILL TREE isn't deep and wide enough to stop everyone and their dog immediately adopting the any new ship (if your a miner what else do you train?)

- it immediately obsoletes barges and exhumers in the same way that the current exhumers (largely, but not totally) obsolete their T1 counterparts

- it doesn't add anything to the game - Its the same mechanic/strategy. You are immediately faced with the same feeling of discontent - 'Yeah, but what now?'

I'm all for mining as a profession getting more love and more ships but just "better yield" is pointless. Yield is an abstract and relative number.

SK