Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently if you have a rorqual 99% of people will either be using it as a jump freighter or they will boosting in a pos or on a citadel. Obviously this is changing in November. I am going to outline the current problems as well as the problems that will arise in November, as well as a way to fix them.

Problems:
1. The industrial core does not allow you to move for 5 minutes after it's activated. You can't warp, dock or move anywhere. This is the single biggest problem as it's basically required to be used by rorquals to maximise boosting, if this alone was removed the rorqual would be in belts the majority of the time to support mining fleets.

2. There is no actual isk income for a rorqual pilot. Essentially if you have a Rorqual and you want to be part of a mining fleet and have an income, you either multibox an alt and mine or you beg for donations. Multiboxing is not fun.

3. Mining drones have been announced for the November changes. However mining drones are cute, but flawed. The second rats or hostile players come to the grid you will be forced to pull them in and stop mining and launch combat drones. You may as well make a battle Rorqual and go rat in combat atoms, you will certainly make more isk. Not only this but you will be forced to be right on top of whatever asteroid you are mining or the drones will literally be moving back and forth from the asteroid the whole time. (Oh god i see it now, new siege cycle begins, 2 seconds later asteroid depletes and no new asteroids within 50km, this will be hilarious)

4. Rorquals are expensive, they cost more than carriers but are no where near as lucrative to own compared to a carrier.

5. High slots are going to be very clogged up, you can't have 3 links, capital strip miners(read how to fix them), a tractor beam and remote reps all at once. The low slots are also horrible and you can't really fit anything that's useful.

6. The hangar bays are horrible. The fleet hangar will be near completely filled with 1 mack load or 2 skiff loads. The entire rorqual will be filled within a few minutes to a small fleet of 10 miners. The ship maintenance bay is nearly completely useless unless you're moving regions and have a few assembled industrial/mining ships you need to move (you seriously can't even put shuttles in there). The drone bay is is 300 m3, this is a capital ship that has cargo bays in it's hull design, yet it can only fit 3 flights of heavies. I'm assuming the new mining drones will be equal to heavies as well. so you fit 1 mining drone flight, 2 flights heavies/sentries: "wait you mean to tell me rats kill drones?" /neut enters system "well rorqual it was nice knowing you"

7. The new defensive super weapon sounds like the punch line to a bad joke. This will not save people who do not have a standby combat fleet, this is almost all miners, why bother? The second it goes up, the attacking fleet will gather its players, maybe call in a few capitals, assign points to each ship or call in a bubble. The second it drops everyone that was in the shield will not be allowed to warp and will die anyway. "Defensive" = "Slow painful unescapable death"

8. Compression isn't really needed anymore every citadel or pos can have it, those cost less than the rorqual. This isn't a big problem and could honestly be kept or removed. Maybe i'm biased because i actually enjoy the added complexity of having someone haul the ore back and forth from the station.

How to fix them:
1. Remove industrial core from rorqual. It's an ancient relic that is no longer required.

2. Allow 2 capital strip miners (mining upgrades do not effect these, they can also mine ice and ore). These would cover 4/5 of the rorquals m3/s.

3. Mining drones have the option to jet can, each drone should be able to hold enough ore for 3-4 minutes. The containers can only be pulled by capital tractor beam and have decent hp so they don't get popped instantly. Mining drones cost around the same as T1 fighters (4mil) (Can mine ice and ore but equal to 1/5 of the total m3/s).

4. Total m3/s equal to 3-4 maxed hulks with links, on par with isk per hour that a carrier gets from ratting. (Max mining rorqual = maxed ratting carrier, sounds logical right?)

5. Allow 8 high slots, allow 4 low slots, mid slots unchanged.

6. Change fleet hangar to 100K, change ore hangar to 400K, increase drone bay to allow for 10 new mining drones, 15 heavies/sentries, and a decent mix of smaller drones. Allow all ship types to be stored in the ship maintenance bay. Add a low slot or subsystem that allows the ship maintenance bay to be transformed into a mineral hold, ore hold or ice products hold, with the same m3 it is now. This could be extended to the Bowhead as well to make that ship actually worthwhile having. However on the Bowhead it should be 2mil m3 not 1mil m3.

7. Do not add some defensive super weapon that will be forever broken. This is more likely to get you killed than to save you.

8. Remove compression or keep it. Really either would be okay as long as industrial core is not required and is still removed. If it is kept and the ship maintenance bay is changed to allow ore/minerals the ore bay can remain unchanged.

Example high slot layout: 3 * Mining Link, 1 * Capital Tractor Beam, 2 * Capital Strip Miner, 2 Spare High Slots for Neuts/Reps

Result:
A Capital Mining Ship
A ship people will actually be excited to use.
A ship that will actually be fun to use.
Tractor support for mining fleets.
Defence from rats and small roaming gangs (Reps and combat drones).
Storage support that can sustain a sizeable mining fleet.
Respectable isk return for a capital ship.
This also makes the rorqual the mining jump freighter. (Have you ever tried to move 1million m3 of heavy water or titanium in null sec?)

Sincerely, a real null sec industrialist who actually owns a Rorqual and runs a mining fleet.

well no he is right if you train for rorq no one is going to pay you beacuse if x trys to charge y will just log on his alt and do it for free

but this is not an issue plenty of roles in the game have no isk value but still provide enough value for ppl to fill them. the rorq is no different

Capital mining with just bigger mining lasers is an unoriginal idea. It's lame, and it's boring.

I mine too. It's a good thing to have running on the side while waiting in a fleet.

Doesn't mean that I'm not interested in a change to the mechanics of mining. Ideally, I'd like to see the current, lazy, system of mining preserved alongside something more active.