Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The rorqual is in a bad place. We all know that. Even CCP knows that, although they say it won't receive any love in the next expansion due to having too much content already. The problems with the rorqual are as follows:

• They are too expensive to deploy in a belt. The risk vs reward is simply too broken for a rorqual to be deployed in a belt in 0.0 or lowsec. It can't even enter hisec, so that doesn't happen either.


• Half the bonuses on the ship (capital shield booster range, drone hitpoints and damage, survey scanner range, cargo scanner range) are useless because the ship is never deployed to a belt or grav site.


• The bonus to mining foreman links requires the industrial core to be online, which means it's not cost effective.


• It's unique ability to compress ores is about to be rendered non-unique by the introduction of the POS-borne ore compression array in the Summer 2014 expansion. This will see the end of the only reason most people use Rorquals.

I may have missed some stuff, but those are the main points. The question is how do we even begin to fix this mess? I propose that we don't try to fix it. The rorqual, in it's current role, is flat-lining and frankly beyond our help at this point. I would like to suggest an entirely new role for the ship....

Rorqual - ORE Moon Mining Ship

ORE have specialised ships for ore mining, ice mining and gas harvesting. It stands to reason that they should have one for moon mining too doesn't it?

I am aware that the only mechanic for moon mining currently involves the POS system, and I am not suggesting tinkering with it at all. I suggest adding a new mechanic specifically for this ship.

The inspiration for this idea comes from a video game called Dead Space. I won't give away the plot, but the game heavily features a "planet cracker" class spaceship which mines un-inhabited worlds by using tractor beams to pull large chunks of them into orbit. I figured it was a good fit with moon mining in Eve and hey, the rorqual even looks kinda like the Ishimura...

I won't invent any details here, but here's the general idea:

• A POS mines moon materials slowly, but is very sturdy and even has a reinforced mode.
• A Rorqual would mine moon material very quickly, but would be very vulnerable while doing it.

This might not even be possible to implement. If it was possible, would it be a good idea?

While I wholeheartedly support the idea of a moon mining ship I think something more along the size and cost of a noctis (say a reborn primae) would make a far better platform. You basically explain in the first part of your post why using the rorqual this way wouldn't work, far to big and expensive to risk, especially given that the market you're talking about impacting is among the most jealously guarded in EVE.

I feel very strongly that there should always be an active play method to compete with any passive method in a game like EVE. It rewards real participation and give smaller alliances/corps/groups a chance to compete in even a limited fashion with the massive coalitions who dominate the passive formats.

T2 = Low/Null
T3 = WH


Unless of course you want to allow Null/Low to get access to T3 without entering w-space.

You should try actually living in nullsec before you repeat bullshit you've heard on the forums. You sound like a fox news anchor.

And you're talking about re-purposing an entire capital ship to benefit the null sec alliances. Sure, other smaller groups might be able to make use but it doesn't take a Dev to realize that turning the Rorqual into a moon mining ship would just be a major buff to the null sec alliances and I see no reason to turn an entire ship into an ISK Mint for 1 class of players.

Danika, I'm sure you are very wise in the ways of the forum.

Edit: Why not reduce the mass, possibly make it semi-modular ( T 2.5), and let it be a ninja mining FOB for wormholers?

Someone put forth that idea in another thread, it did not go well and I agree that it would be a bad idea. Having a Rorqual would just take all the effort out of mining, instead of needing to put together a mining fleet, haulers, boosts, and storage, you would only need to provide security for a Rorqual or 2 while they stripped an entire belt.

Well, something like that could work, IF it destroyed more resources than it obtained.

e.g. 1 hulk / mineral type takes an hour to strip a belt (say 4-6 hulks).. you get all of the ore.

1x rorq smartbomb thingy = takes several cycles (total 10 minutes?) and destroys 50% of the ore in the process.

edit -- and in case you can't tell ... I'm just making up numbers for the smartbomb thing.



As for the Industrial Core -- it's not a "bad" thing per se -- it's just that the dynamics of using it have become bad (also, we players like to "exploit" anything we can for an advantage ... BPOs in station -> POS Research ... OGB from in a POS ... 37 alts that have never done anything with their main so they can spy...)

Haha but they are fair and balanced

But think of the amount of energy required to send a beam all the way to the moon's surface. It fits better with a capital-sized reactor.

How is a ship at risk in space passive isk?
Unless I've missed something here this places a ship potentially in a siege like immobility in space where people can shoot it. Also as a Capital class ship you won't get 10,000 on a single moon sucking it up. Though you could limit to a set number per grid also. Say one or three or something.
Make it also not work on grid if a POS tower is anchored and you also now encourage Null Sec to actually leave Moons empty which allow for quick snatch & grabs for staging points without POS bashing since they can use Rorquals to suck moon goo 'actively' much cheaper than a POS would for the same time and amount.

I can see this idea working very well.
Could also provide a test for a 'hotspot' minigame mechanic where they get a new minigame per cycle and can follow the hotspots during the cycle to maximise yield, or wander afk and let it suck where ever it was when they left. (Small window, not giant window so they can still watch all the other things, and even fight while updating their beam location periodically.)
This would then give a test for adaptation onto mining in general if it worked well.