Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Rather than doing a full rework of the ship as a whole, here is one suggestion on how to make the Rorqual viable in the role it was originally intended for.

Capital Industrial Ships bonuses (per skill level):
5% reduction in fuel consumption for Industrial Core
10% bonus to Mining Foreman Links effectiveness when using Industrial Core
50% bonus to Capital Remote Shield Booster range
10% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage

Role Bonus:
900% bonus to Survey Scanner range
200% bonus to Cargo Scanners range
• Can fit Industrial Core
• Can fit Clone Vat Bay
• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
90% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue

Industrial Reconfiguration bonuses (per skill level) Only while sieged:
25% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage

Role Bonus while Sieged:
-100% Speed
100% Shield Boost/Armor Rep Amount
-50% Shield booster/armor repairer cycle time
Can't receive remote support
Immunity to EWAR
Can only siege within 150km of an asteroid object type (or the beacon of an asteroid belt/anom when you warp to one)

Additional Change:
Increase build cost to be closer to a Jump Freighter (perhaps roughly 4 bil instead of just over 2bil).


The primary question with this change- is the game engine currently able to detect if a Rorq is within 100km of an asteroid object in order to properly restrict Sieging at a belt.

These changes would have multiple effects. First, this makes the Rorqual a viable choice for actually putting in a belt and being able to siege. The siege bonuses are significant enough that it can hold off a small roaming gang, but would be largely ineffective against a larger fleet. Because of the siege cycle, roaming gangs don't even need to tackle it to be able to set up a kill, although they probably should have a bubble handy.

Rorquals would be much, much harder to kill in a belt, which is what the ship really needs to be able to function as a mobile base for mining (clone vat bay/ship maintenence bay/etc). That said, it is restricted to sieging at a belt, so these additional bonuses can not be used outside of an asteroid belt or anomaly.

While this makes a Rorqual much more difficult to kill, it also requires the a Rorqual always be at a belt in order to provide the significant mining bonus, meaning that if miners don't want to take the risk, then they'd have to use an orca for boosts and lose mining potential. If they do want the increase in output, then they'd be stuck sieging a Rorqual at a belt- but because it is a more formidable force while sieged, this would be less risk than it is currently.

I expect the initial response to this being frustration from both the PVP side and from the miner side, but this is a change that would greatly benefit both parties. The exact percentages can in fact use a little tweaking, but the intent here is clear- make the Rorqual a mobile base of operations for industrial types, meanwhile providing consistent targets for roaming gangs of decent firepower to be able to take out.

As a note- there is no additional need for the Rorqual to provide any additional mining output bonuses. The ability for the booster to also be the hauler and compressor saves a lot of time and saves one account (or enables you to use an extra miner).

Again, the Rorqual doesn't need to be vastly reworked in order to make it an effective ship; I'd rather some "simple" changes like this be made and focus development effort on continuing to come up with new ships as in Rhea. This is, of course, if the above changes are capable within the current game system :)

Edit: removed 10ly max jump range. It is not needed with this setup.

Indy core just needs to die. I don't think we need to attach more things to it.

The problem with the Rorqual is that you basically can't undock it or use it outside a POS, unless you want to watch 2 billion ISK go up in smoke to the first gang that lands on grid. That may be true of any capital, but other caps are meant to be used in fleets where they have the support necessary to give them a reasonable chance of survival. When your fleet consist of a Rorqual and a bunch of mining ships, you're just so much expensive scrap metal waiting to happen.

Now, if the Rorqual had an invulnerability timer, where you get it down to 50% shields and it goes invulnerable/immobile...that would be interesting.

When CCP figures out how to fix off-grid boosting, that along would be a big step towards getting Rorqs out of POS shields.
IMO the Rorq should be able to Indy-up anywhere, battle-Rorqs, just like you have battle-Hulks and bait-ventures. The downside would be that it would be less effective than a combat-oriented ship while allowing the versatility that we love in Eve. When you start locking ships to certain locations (or locking half of a ship type out of 25 new WHs), you limit options and things become less Eve-like.
My vision for a Rorq would be a mobile version of the NPC "asteroid mining base", it would have the ability to crunch, and store ores, refit ships, hold small defense ships, and act as a "mothership" by defending the mining fleet against raiders (not a dedicated fleet but small gang).
Overall, I like that you added combat power to it but I don't like the idea of tying Rorqs solely to belts.

I would expand my thoughts, but I have another class

I've always thought that it would be an interesting thing for the Rorqual to have POS shields when it transforms, including the restriction about targeting things while inside them. This theoretically means that the Rorqual has a useful place at a belt but no mining can be done while protected by one.

The Rorqual, Supercarriers, and the Titans should really be moveable, destructible stations.

They should take 30-60-120 minutes to deploy or undeploy. They have a cool deploying animation. You can deploy them anywhere in space (except inside POS shields). They cannot be deployed closer than 100km from another station, POS, gate, etc. Once deployed, they are governed by similar mechanics as a POS or station in terms of timers, defenses, etc. They have very large cargoholds, ship bays, etc. when deployed. People can dock and clone jump to them in deployed mode. The bays get smaller when they go back into mobile mode and excess cargo gets jettisoned. In mobile mode, all docked pilots get ejected.

They give appropriate leadership bonuses to all alliance members in system in deployed mode (depending on fit). They can use the appropriate weapons for local defense in that mode. Thus, an Avatar station could help protect itself with a Doomsday and capital guns.

Unlike permanent stations, they do not automatically appear on the overview- they must be scanned down.

oh baby, i would like to see that, but ehp of this stuff should be very low kinda. max 2 mil exp

The idea is not to make the Rorq a combat ship.

The idea is to make the Rorqual perform more like a base of operations, as the ship was originally intended. The "Combat Bonuses" are only available while sieged, for balance, and are strong enough to protect a mining fleet against a small roaming gang.

Any decent sized roaming fleet should be able to take out one sieged Rorqual. However, small gangs passing through will no longer be able to pick off mining fleets at their whim, provided you have Rorqual support.

The ore imbalance in null anoms makes it so mining is one of the worst incomes in the game- thus, having "defense fleets" for mining ops truly does not happen except in rare circumstances.

No longer should the rorqual sit behind POS shields- both being stuck there and being able to provide huge bonuses in complete safety. Rorquals should be out in the belts and sieged to provide their full bonus and protection.

Only being able to siege at a belt would be a very arbitrary mechanic, slightly less so if it was tied into direct manipulation of an asteroid i.e. goes into a deployed mode for 5 minutes where is gobbles up an asteroid in one go and where its tanking ability is bonused.

The only way your really going to see even half way towards people considering using them ongrid like that is if they had ewar immunity similar to super capitals (and then they wouldn't really want to use a siege mode that tied them down).





Not really as they won't be worth the risk, you can't force people into doing things like that.

Please fix this ship so I can stop annoyingly posting about it all the time.