Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You remember the Primae ? The runty cousin of the much better Noctis ? The one that was meant to be used for Planetary Interaction but is so poor at it that I suspect it rarely ever leaves a hangar anymore.

I've recently set up a whack of Epithals to do PI with. At Gallente Industrial V they will hold 67k m3 of PI materials (of any kind). Far superior to the measly 1k m3 of the Primae. With rigs and cargo expanders the Epithal can carry an additional 2,210.5 m3 in it's cargo hold, enough for 2 Command Centers and a bit of loot/salvage/spare mods perhaps.

Meanwhile the Primae can carry a whopping 2 Command Centers. WoW !

Considering that (as far as EVE mechanics are concerned) the Primae has more mass than an Epithal (15,000kgs to just 12,800 for the Epithal) and a larger volume (20,000 m3 larger) you'd expect more from the Primae. It has slightly larger shields, armour and capacitor and a slightly higher maximum velocity, none of which would make up for the 66,000 m3 difference in capacity for PI materials.
(Not to mention that the Epithal also has 2 H/4 M/4 L slots and 3 rig slots while the Primae has 4 low slots and NO rig slots at all !)

What I suggest is - repurpose the Epithal to carry ice instead of PI. A 67,000 m3 ice hold would be almost 2 full Mac loads or just over 4 Skiff loads). That could be a useful "in betweener" for those who need more hauling than a regular industrial can provide, but can't fly an Orca. As it doesn't have a Fleet hangar it would require jet can transfers which should make a certain EVE element happy as well.

Change the Primae's Command Center hold to 6k (as you can have a maximum of 6 colonies at a time any ways why not be able to carry 6 CCs at a time).
Change the PI hold to a base of 45,000 m3 and give it a bonus of 10% per level of Ore Industrial skill (add the Ore Industrial skill to the requirements for the Primae).
Keep the 4 low slots but add 3 rig slots. (Possibly add 1 mid slot, and maybe 1 high slot or a small drone bay ?)

I would even go as far as to suggest that the Primae could be given either the ability to use a covert cloak, or a +2 bonus to ship warp core strength to make it more useful in low and null sec environment.

Primae
4 L/ 1M (+1)/1H (+1) (no turret/launcher slots)
3 Rig slots (+3)
6,000 m3 Command Center hold (+4,000 m3)
45,000 m3 Planetary Commodities hold (+ 44,000 m3)

Ship Characteristics:
Ore Industrial bonuses (per skill level):
10% bonus to ship planetary commodity hold capacity
5% bonus to ship agility
Role Bonus:
(Can fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device + Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds) or
(+2 bonus to ship warp core strength)

90% reduction to effective distance travelled for jump fatigue.

Considering that the whole purpose of the Primae in the first place was as a PI ship, this would actually make it effective in that role while the Epithal would still have a useful specialized purpose as an ice hauler that would keep it in play.

The Primae never really had a role, a normal T1 hauler even before tiericide was better than it.

Limited edition...essentially that means it was never meant to nor required to be useful, even if other limited edition ships are.

This is like saying the Apotheosis needs to be redesigned because the Leopard makes it worthless or that the DED Diplo shuttle makes no sense because it is overshadowed by the Interbus Shuttle's extra cargo space.

I kinda wonder if he bought a bunch and want a return on investement...

... neither is that jump fatigue powder crap. They are not meant to be they are just a limited edition ship, a trophy for collectors

Please spare us the limited edition line when CCP has proven they have no problem removing the limited edition status if items in the game. Remember the promise on release of the Gecko that every active account wiil get X and that is all there will ever be.

Given that I agree with the OP, CCP does need to re-purpose the Primae and make them available again.
My idea would be to make them a specialized ship with bonuses tied to the process of locating and setting up colonies instead of trying to make them compete with the Epithal for the hauling role.

Maybe enhance the range and scan resolution of PI, like the Planetology skills do?

I find it sad that the Noctis' sexier brother is utterly useless...