Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Actually, if the primary purpose of a Black-ops is direct combat, the ship itself is handicapped compared to other ships with the same purpose. It's weaker, slower and more fragile than a raven. It's got superior jamming abilities but using them means reducing your offense and/or EHP further. Basically by using a blops over alternatives which are actually designed for direct engagement you are affecting your fighting ability.
And note how your complaints about the hulk tend to mirror the reality of the widow. It can be used outside of it's role as a Covert fleet support vessel, but it's not the best use of a pilot in a line fighting or solo role. Much like the hulk can be used in conjunction with can mining or frequent drops, but isn't really the best use for it. In both cases there are better tools for the job of the soloist. That's not a bad thing.

Go back up through my previous posts, and you'll see that I'm not advocating for a solo hulk, but rather a more specialized one. I'm completely in agreement with making them rely upon others for getting the results of their mining out of the belts, because moving stuff (ore) from point A to point B is another ship's job (hauler, orca, freighter). My problem is that other ships (except the Noctis, but that's a special snowflake) can take everything they need to perform their core function with them, and stay out in the field doing their thing for extended periods of time. Because of the gimped up cargo bay, cov/hulk pilots can't. They'll either burn through the crystals they have and go back to change (which takes them out of the field, letting the mack catch up), or they'll just sit where they are and accept reduced yield by having mismatched crystals (which negates the whole point of calling them yield kings).

Not really that effective (still looking @ highsec and passive tank only). With the right skillset, even a (current) Retriever can stand some time of NPCs pounding on its shields.
Also, for myself I'd also like to see the Mackinaw remain the same tankwise. It just feels a bit ... weird that this part of "give those ship only advantages in their own role" appears to be left out in this case.

You're almost on my page, but not quite... the hulk's core function is to be the absolute best at extracting ore, but right now it can't do that without outside help. Whatever gains it has on paper are lost because while it's busy going back to base for a crystal swap, the other ships stay in the field. The only time this isn't a concern is when attacking "The Spod." That sucker's so big it can eat multiple crystals and still just shrug you off like a mosquito. But regardless, I just don't see more than a handful of hulks huddling around a central ship. Not only do you have to deal with "Who's crystal is this, no, that's yours, this is mine, but i swear i let you borrow five hemo last week," but with the inty changes coming down the pipe, doing so is just asking for trouble. Buffing yield would be nice, but it still doesn't really address the issue of crystals.

I may be wrong in my napkin math, but isn't this proposal unifying the Mack and Skiff yields already?

Interesting proposal, though I'd question the difficulty implementing it. I don't think we have a single mechanic modifying boosts from the recipient of those boosts. Also this means that it's not incentivizing fleet work, but boosting, which misses the point.

No, I get that, I'm just saying that looking at the numbers half of the suggestion has already been met unless I'm not doing something right.

The guy doing the hauling can drop crystals in a can when he picks up whatever you mined already if you don't want the orca to sit there.

EDIT : As for the lasck of more than 4 type of ore in HS, then just make high sec always spawn all type of high sec ore in thier belts so the fleet ship require support in all security space. The ship is meant to be supported anyway.

When it comes to number one ore miner in highsec, it was never not the Hulk. Especially with training time required to use every t2 crystal, all the possible scenarios you had for refitting, such as getting lucky with scan probes and find a grav site. In my mind, flying a Hulk meant you are not a afk mining. That was years ago.

Now pvp players with a few gank ships to defeat your barge/exhumer tank (Hulk has the worst tank per isk) seem to think highsec players that mine are somehow their new content or more valuable targets.

CCP can fix the problem by changing mining anoms back to grav sites, giving players new content (so they are not bored to tears), move ore to sites that prevent macro/bot, and making it painfully obvious to everyone when a player is afk mining or using macro/bot or doing anything afk. That also means remove PI, moon mining, and afk ratting; the tax system is also broken.

Until then, I remain a fully-trained Hulk pilot that refuses to mine under these conditions. Extortion from The Order (James315) or similar groups just means I will stay docked and won't play the game. I have never and will never use macro/bot/whatever, have reported suspected users of that stuff, and still feel CCP broke mining for 1 and 2.

The yield needs to be enough to pay for a replacement Hulk in an hour or two, but currently mining enough to pay for a replacement exhumer takes way too long for the risk involved. Most of the replies will either say fly a procurer/skiff/other mining vessel or pay for protection or leave the game if you do not like it. Why have a hulk if you can not fly it? With changes to mining profit/yield, there is almost nothing to do except not play game.

The covetor/hulk is designed as a fleet ship. They are intended to be flown in a mining fleet, presumably with Orca/multi-Orca support. It's not unreasonable that a ship intended for use in a group would have to rely on someone else in a group to do things like carrying around spare crystals.