Science & Industry

Only thing is if this is your main I can see that the system you're currently in and surrounding systems have industrial indices of zero (one has an index at 1). So I don't think all that much mining is going on in that area at all. That's why I called BS on it. If you're outside drop range, which you probably are given that all of null is blue dohnut except Providence, you could probably put your Rorqual into a belt, bubble the gate or the warp-in to your anom, make sure any WHs that appear are closed with your alts and mine away. You absolutely don't need any invulnerability for your Rorqual.

It's different where I am. We get regular visitors, roaming gangs, hot-droppers (both kinds, Blops and Titan bridged), you name it. Our index is at IV or V most of the time too, and that attracts reds. So the key issue isn't "how much can I mine" it's "how quickly can I get safe". Putting your target in a belt for all to see, invulnerable or not, isn't that is it. It's "here's a target, here's when it'll no longer be invulnerable. Please organise your blops and come back later".

What can I say? There's something you're not understand here I think.

The assertion that i likely do not own or fly a Rorqual is anything but a valid point.

I completely disagree that "the CCP guys are not industry experts." More likely, the majority of industrialists in Eve are not industry experts.

I do not expect everyone to agree with me, nor do I want them to, as various inputs may inspire CCP to implement a better idea than mine. Victoria's middleschoolish rant "nobody likes your idea" is certainly untrue, and absolutely an invalid point. Victoria's yammer about me not owning or flying a Rorq is certainly not a valid point. I've disagreed with every idea Victoria had, from making it a capital mining barge to splitting it into different ships to just deleting it. I gave him no particular grief about it. I did not insinuate that he did could not possibly own or fly a Rorqual on account of his suggestions of what to me are obviously ridiculous ideas. Basically he attacked me personally because he was offended by my criticism of the Eve player base, which I feel is pressing CCP to cave into contradictory desires that will have no positive effect, essentially because most Eve players are stupid. No valid points were made in that attack.

I have no frustration that not everyone agrees with my idea. My frustrated post centered around all the CCP bashing that invaded this thread on the day of the Crius release and I (rightly) bashed the player base in retort. Beyond that I can't say I have evinced much frustration.

Concerning the substantive portions of your post, which essentially concur with what I am saying: You agree with me that I am not talking about my own situation, I am talking about yours, and you seem to agree with me that you need some form of invulnerability be it operating from a POS or otherwise). You don't seem to comprehended that this invulnerability can be worked in such a way to not only allow the Rorqual to stay in the belt as long as it wants and to leave the belt when it wants, and to provide some measure of functionality while under duress. Really the issue here should be centering around how much interdiction we should we be willing to tolerate. In my Google docs explanation of my idea I talk about good risk reward parity between miners and PvPers should be how much should the presence of threats affect the mining fleet activity and that the mining fleet should be prepared to lose some number of barges if they aren't smart, and possibly the Rorq in a rare random screw up. The 'how quickly can I get safe' question first of all allows too much interdiction, and second, doesn't apply if you are always safe, which is the point of the whole invulnerability idea.

Concerning your non-substantial comments, I am a manufacturer, not a miner. I do mine regularly, but I manufacture in such quantities that I could never hope to personally mine the needed minerals. I have contacts that provide minerals and am adept at using the markets. For me, if I am going to spend billions freightering huge modules around the universe it's going to be station upgrades, not mining upgrades. Also, I am new to my area, and am still upgrading. But at this point I am really only concerned about my strategic level, not my industry level. Don't know why I am getting into this on a public forum other than to illustrate that no amount of locator agent and show info is going to tell you enough about my operation to call BS on me. And no, this is not my main.

what you describe only works in hi-sec during ganking situations. any procurer mining in null when reds or neuts come in is going to die quickly. maybe a little slower with their larger tank, but they're not going to fend off their attackers by themselves. their ability to fit even a respectable PVP tank won't have the slightest effect on those looking for *gud fights* in low or null sec.

Not to mention, the skiff is already a fine PvP ship. Battleship tank and battlecruiser DPS. When paired with a functioning Rorqual and a few of its brothers, it can compose a fearsome enough of a PvP force to deter quite a bit. But yes, like you say, a mining expedition is basically always going to be out-escalated enough to be vulnerable. The Skiff was JUST updated with an extra low slot for a Damage Control and given extra drone damage. The Skiff is right where it needs to be. And no amount of additional beefing will change the fundamental situation of mining fleets.

Ive been around since 03. There are a lot of uses for the rorqual if they do it right. The Orca is fine, but the Orca is unable to jump and move ships and resources around. The rorqual right now can function as a mini jump freighter and also hauls smashed ore quite well. I am pretty unhappy with CCP removing the smashing feature of the rorqual as I have used it for quite some time.

The fixes to the rorqual are pretty easy and straightforward, it just needs some small boosts. CCP wants to see more rorqual on the KM and right now an alliance will outright ban you for taking one to a field. Lets come to a compromise then with a few ideas already proposed and a new one.

A: Allow it to generate a stealth field for the belt that conceals the ships much like a covert cloak that cloaks the entire fleet. PvPer still get the thrill of the hunt and the entire fleet has a chance to escape. I still see PVP annilating rorquals, but hey its an idea..

B: Make the rorqual immune to EW, primarily warp scramblers. You can still get hotdropped by titans and supers, but at least have a chance in hell of running.

C: Along with immune to EW, allow the rorqual to boost the fleet as usual. If sieged, allow it to AOE mine, or something similar. I am also a fan of the capital strip miners. Also allow it to boosts the damage of drone say 5 percent per level to a total of 20. A fleet of skiffs now becomes something pretty dangerous for small ships to try to come play with. Give it the ability if we use it with capital strip miners to automatically smash it, or give it the ability to automatically smash any ore that is put into the ore hold as long as the min amount is meant. As we can see, there are a lot of uses for a mobile unit.

Last of all, what the hell is taking away our ability to smash ore right now ? Fix that, as until you come up with a good idea I still use this feature even with POS smashers around.

Very Respectfully,

Amazingly a poster on here accused me of not owning or flying a Rorq because he didn't like my idea for rebalancing, yet people like you show up who can't possibly be industrialists of any sort because they suggest the Rorq has no use. The Rorq as it is, even without updates, is the centerpiece of my Indy operation. Sure, I use mine as a booster a few times a week, but truly, if I were to have to supply myself with a JF I would go broke. The Rorq costs less than half the fuel to fly, and hauls more compressed ore (the only form of materials that can be moved in bulk.

I'm interested in the Rorq being updated because I see lowsec mining in a sad state, but frankly it's plenty valuable to me as is. Your assertion that the Rorq has no use 2 days after Crius made compressed ore the foundation of nullsec industry is the Zenith of foolishness.

concept for rorqual - very quick before work.

I think the real issue is how to make the rorqual work without making it a PVP ship of choice or ratter... something it was not in concept designed to be. With that in mind I propose something a little out of the box that makes it the industrial ship for new regions of exploration or usable just in null, low, or frankly HS.

The rorq could be a hybrid between the new deployable structures and a ship. A sort of movable POS that gives CCP a chance to work with development of pos of the future and the future construction of star gates. After all what ships would you send through a one way star gate so that the other side might be built?

Concept: the rorqual as a ship would fit modular, but the modulars (at least the highs) would be unique to it. You could have the mining mod that allows some sort of capital mining apparatus to get those ores you will need to build with in your brave new world. You could have a command modular that would have some slots for command boosting. You could have a "POS" shield modular that would allow you to put up a shield (more on mechanics latter). There could be a manufacturing modular so you could build deployables for your operation. mids and lows could support the same ship modules are be given all new industrial command ship modulars.

Command ship modular:
1. POS shield. would put a shield bubble around the ship once the ship was anchored that would have to be fueled with some fuel block of choice. It could be reinforced with stront during combat just like current mechanics. However, the more damage it takes the more stront is used resulting in no "set" timer. 100 titans firing on it would deplete the stront at an alarming rate verses a frig pricking it. It could be refueled with stront so the attacker has no idea how long the shield will last, while the defender has an indicator or how fast his stront is being consumed providing a nice set of circumstances whereby attackers have to "siege" the ship and have to keep up fire, but the defender can roughly calculate how long he has.

2. Manufacturing arrays: you should be able to add one or more of these and when the ship is deployed use them to manufacture the necessary items to begin the process of creating what mankind will need on the other side of the gate you just went through until such time as your side of the gate can construct the other side. Until gates can be built this gives the rorqual the ability to serve as a deployable manufacturing hub.


3. compression array, refining array, polymer reaction array, Moon harvesting array, any thing that requires a POS today could be done with the correct array mounted on your rorqual. You move to that moon, set up, mine, process and move on. Again things that could become used in the pos of the future as deployables themselves.

4. Mooring point modular replace fleet hanger: ability to attach X ships to the hull and jump them with the rorq either piloted or not (leads to getting rid of the whole jump clone mess) These would be visible when you looked at the rorq.


The idea here is to give the players something they can use currently and give CCP something they can begin experimenting with for the deployable POS of the future as well as the start of the ship that may very well be the critical component of a fleet to be the first ever through a player controlled star gate.

Now having run out of time before work I will go. Feel free to continue to flesh out, I hope the vision is communicate

Just to point out - the Rorq has a hidden bonus that, with the Crius refining changes, gives it sort of a fresh lease on life in its current, otherwise stale state of limbo

Specifically, for especially for 0.0'ers, this hidden bonus is in jump fuel costs. As you know, jump fuel consumption has been upped by 50% across the board. Also with Crius, the best place to refine is a L3 upgraded Minmatar outpost, which many 0.0 miners or 0.0 builders' highsec ore buyers can have access to. You're probably going to buy a lot of your compressed ore around highsec and will need to get it to an upgraded Minmatar Outpost to get the best refine.

So let's put that into context, using compressed Ice for example;

A typical hauler-fit Rorq, with 3x Expanded Cargohold IIs and 3x T1 Capital/Large Cargohold Optimization rigs has a maximum usable space of 406,090 m3 (126,090 for cargo, 250,000 for the ore hold, and 30,000 for the fleet hangar.) This equals a hauling capacity of 40,609 blocks of compressed ice.

Let's now contrast this with an Anshar (using an Anshar here because, like the Rorq, it uses Oxy topes as its jump drive juice.)

An Anshar at max skill and capacity has a cargo size of 356,240 m3, or 35,624 blocks of compressed ice. So if you're a miner or someone who buys compressed ore and hauls it to 0.0 for refining in a Minmatar outpost, you'll get more hauling capacity (13% more) out of the Rorq than an Anshar for those purposes. But it gets better - for the same jump distance, the Rorq eats a whopping 47% fewer Oxytopes than the Anshar.

So in the end, you can haul 13% more ore for almost 50% the cost in jump fuel. An example 8.24ly jump with JFC 4 (being realistic, most people train this to 4 only) consumes 4,943 isotopes. An Anshar doing the same jump, also with JFC 4, consumes 9,195. If you're part of an alliance capital building program and are hauling minerals (and as of Crius, you should be hauling compressed ore) - the choice is clear.

Of course, restrictions apply to the Rorq in that they can't jump gates or go to Highsec, but you can use a JF for that last hop at minimal additional expense.

As for future roles for a rebalanced Rorq? I don't think it has any place in the belts. As a person who makes his ISK cracking open the loot-laden bellies of capital ships, I don't think there's much that could entice a Rorq out of a POS shield and into a belt without some massive, convoluted, and incredibly unique mechanics changes to go with it. However, I also don't buy into the statements that wee miners need an invulnerable ship with things like ECM-like distortion fields or "impervious mode" a la a reinforced POS. I see it purely as a utility ship; one that supplements a fleet rather than the centerpiece of it regardless of its "command ship" stature, and should be vulnerable at any stage of operation like any other ship in the game.

I think the Rorq would be better off with its Mining Link bonus intact, however it should expand its hauling abilities to further complement its utility -

1) Perhaps as a mobile refinery which, combined with the pilot's skills and implants, can potentially refine at or near a T3 Minmatar Outpost's potential.

2) Another thought is that it compresses ore, but into a new type - eg, a "highly compressed" variant that is a smaller package than current plain compressed ore. Maybe doing the compression is based on the Capital Industrial Ships skill, where the chance of compressing ore into this "highly compressed" variant is increased with each level trained, otherwise you get the plain compressed version.

The rub with either of those is it needs to activate Industrial Siege to do all this, but it cannot do this inside a POS forcefield due to ~insert RP related reasons related to it snorting fire plumes in close proximity to delicate POS towers~ and this siege mode gives a Maurauders-like boost to active tanking mods, resists, and EWAR immunity, and lasts 2.5 - 3 minutes instead of the current 5.

EWAR immunity is a reasonable defense from Black Ops drops, and not intended to be a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

Also, HICs aren't especially fast, so they are unlikely to be tagging-along in a FAH gang.