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Break your yield down into m³ per second, not per cycle, then compare again.

Poor.

Hulk and Mack:

Cant use the slots they have due to not enough CPU, they require a mod/rig/implants to actually fit. Tank is fairly poor not becaue of the base stats but because of the lack of slots, CPU and powergrid.

Covetor and retriever:

1 mid and 3 lows does not a good ship make. Zero fitting room on them simply due to the lack of slots let alone, this makes then fodder to anything.

skiff and procuror:

Overtanked for their class (battleship base tank on a cruiser sized hull) means they effectively invalidate the other 4 barges.

All together this barge change is making all the same mistake that last two made. We need a radical rethink.


Skiff and proc should get their base hp brought back down to normal levels, keep the combat bonus to drones, get a few more slots and fitting room to open up options and allow for a decent combat fit. They are now perfect mining escorts/defence boats for both fleet work and solo.

Retriever and mackinaw both need a good deal more slots and CPU/PG so they can actually have options when fitting them. CCP need to get creative here so I would say go radical. Give them two utility highs and a small bonus to remote shield boosters. Alter the cap to compensate. Again, they need the ability to actually fit a decent setup, 1 mid and 3 lows are next to useless.

Covetor and Hulk should be the go to strip miners, they also need more fitting slots and CPU/PG to actually fit things.

I would also alter the cargo expanders to also impact the ore hold and reduce the hold on barges to compensate. All barges would be able to hold at least two cycles as a base with the option of improving that if they so wish.

T1 barges need fitting slots and CPU/PG on par with cruisers with similar potential defenses.

T2 need to have fitting slots and cpu/pg somewhere between force recons and heavy assault ships with similar potential defenses.

One of the oldest complaints about mining is how boring it is so lets inject some fun into it. Lets have mining fleets that can defend themselves rather than have miners forever relegated to prey and victims. Lets have miners able to support eachother and fend off a small gang that attacks them, let mining have actual skill involved ranther than everyone picking the skiff because it have a big base tank and mining AFK all day. Give miners content.

Ok

Fit a tank to the covetor.



The skiff already has combat stats, it has a bonus to drone HP and damage for crying out loud.

Let me put it like this, right now if you have a mixed mining fleet out and a small gang manage to catch and bubble it one thing will happen. It dies, horribly. Hulks and macks first followed by the skiffs simply because the skiffs have a much larger tank to chew through.

Under my plan you have hulks as the big rock muchers, macks providing logi support and skiffs providing the firepower and tackle. Suddenly that same mining fleet has a fighting chance of not just surviving but actually killing the attackers. The other main advantage is that your protection is mining with you, nobody is going to have a dedicated fleet of combat ships sitting in the belt with you doing nothing.

So which sounds better to you. Being nothing but a victim unable to fight back or being able to do something to protect yourselves?

procurer now has definietly room for a cyno!


mining barge and powergrid/cpu issues - use implants otherwise dont use these ships
but i will not rip off my mid-grade virtue set just for getting better fit for skiff/mackinaw actually mackinaw is not that bad just fit reactor control unit and cp so u have some space for mid slot combinations .

some people will try to use faction/deadspace modules to reduce cpu / powergrid usage to raise ship strenght , evryone would be happy to kill 2.5b fit mackinaw , why not?

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new players and you -- mining barge.
when someone dont train eoungh core skills and just go straight for exhumers will have heavy cpu/powergrid issues so yes train your core skills before trying to fly anything bigger than shuttle

to be honest this change is AWESOME SO +1 ! but there is needed tweak to not cause anymore misunderstandings , in this case add +50 cpu and +25 powergrid on mining barges and exhumers or grant them module fitting cpu/powergrid need reduction by atleast 10% for powergrid need and 15% for cpu need of modules, this will give some way for us to fit our mining barges

retriever -both fleet and solo highsec safe zones, island systems sush malpara finid iderion serad zimse hanan dakba shumam etc.

hulk -and covetor - mining ship for fleet and transports to take ore from miners and defense fleet

procurer - mostly lowsec or wormhole mining ship solo or fleet
mackinaw is solo miner in safe zones but fleet is advised both defense and ore taking platform sush orca/deep space transport

I wonder if it will be possible to have the unit count or m3 count in the overview for miners?

This is something we have been asking for, for a very long time, so instead of another window to look at we can just have an extra tab on our overview and please for the love that all goes boom and for the rust that we trust - make sure that it is fleet wide updated with survey scanners of other players in fleet on grid.

New Video on the numbers on the mining barges if you are unaware of the change amount


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPtQm2kbEYo

I spy can miners. . . /drool

I also checked the skiffs ice mining capabileties.

On TQ with 1 ice harvester, 3 T2 ice harvesting upgrades and a ice harvester accelerator rig and with no orca boost I mine 1 ice every 40.3 secounds.

On SISI with the same upgrades and 2 ice harvesters each harvester instead mines 80.6 secounds, so not really any diffrence exept to the fact that on the last cycle you can only keep 1 of the 2 ice cause the ore hold is 15k m3 and not 16k m3 so I guess in total its a slight decrease in ice collection.

This is with max ice harvesting and mining barge/exhumer skills.

Video on Exhumer yield and cycle times on Singularity

https://youtu.be/cMwQFtxCFHk

The whole Tank, Hold, Yield approach doesn't work. This is the third attempt at this and the general response is "still broken". Barges need a completely different approach to make them all useful hence my idea above which actually gives each barge a useful role to play in a fleet while making all of them able to go solo with various qualities. Battleship level tanks on these things is not what I am after and not what these ships need. What they need is to rebuilt them from the ground up to be more like every other ship out there. Have trade offs, do I fir for more ore bay or more yield, do I fit a prop mod more or more tank, active or buffer tank, cap stable or go with cap boosters and so on.