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As a miner I am extremely disapointed with your decision to force miners to siege their rorquals in a belt just to maintain the same yield we currently enjoy. If you insist on going thru with these changes, could you please consider shortening the Industrial Core cycle time (and reducing the fuel cost to match) to something similar to the bastion cycle times? 5 minutes is an eternity to be stuck helplessly in a siege cycle when hostiles come roaming. Otherwise I don't see alot of miners outside of large nulsec power blocs being able to effective deploy and defend their rorquals.

first off ore mining is not AFK. I do agree OGBs for mining are totally AFK in a majority of the situations hiding out in a POS or a deep safe. But with boosts the actual mining ships are working pretty hard to manage crystals and roid targets and drones etc. especially if they are multiboxing.

However, the whole crux of the argument is that mining is the absolute basis for EVERYTHING in eve. Nothing gets done without mining. Making mining harder or more annoying is just going to make everything else in eve more expensive. We should be going the other way. Making mining easier will make everything else cheaper. Remember when BCs were like 25million isk and fully fit for under 40 mil. I rat/mine/mission that up in an hour or two and then go get blown up in some fun PVP. It was easy to afford the losses and Im reasonably decent at PVP. But, not with everything a lot more expensive people who are part time PVPers get into it a lot loss since it costs so much and the total carebears have almost no incentive to try it out.

Also Rorquals in belts is idiotic at best unless these mining fighters have a ridiculous yield so that you can afford to buy new Rorquals every few days. A ceptor can dscan down the belt or anom in less time than the cycle of the indy core and your already tackled and then dead shortly afterwards. So the new rorqual changes better be damn good or rorquals will be only used for clones and as poor mans JFs. And no the new freeze everyone in place will not save you, but it may let more bad guys get in on the killmail

Hi Fozzie, I like that boosts now affect your own ship even if you're not a member of a fleet, that's a nice touch and a decent boost to battlecruisers.

Any plans on adding something for the solo players out there? I didn't always use links, but they were definitely a nice thing to have when your opponents out escalated you and that's kind of going away with these changes. Solo play has become much more challenging over the years (not that I'm opposed to a challenge) and the pendulum has really swung into the favor of the blob with the changes to recons, hics, and carriers. It'd be nice to see implants, modules, or ships more geared towards solo pvp, and keep the paradigm at least a little bit removed from alt ECM, logi, etc.

I am sure goons will manage to have defense fleets up. worked for your ratting carriers too.

This points to the fact that a Capital Mining Ship has to do something more than compress and boost and mine a bit. They have to be worth bringing which is what most miners want.

I would say that the appropriate design direction for the Rorqual is to start with the idea that we could make it like the analog between ratting in an Ishtar and ratting in a Thanatos.

So when you deploy your Thanatos, you make sure you do it in a relatively well-protected space. You bubble up the gates that form the entrances to your constellation, you rat in the back of the constellation (the system that takes the most jumps to reach), and you post scouts in the entry systems.

That, at least, is how most smart carrier ratters seem to operate.

You operate the Rorqual in a similar way... The issue is that CCP wants you to SIEGE the Rorqual which is not something you do with an exposed solo capital ship in null which is where the disconnect is.

Typically, the ships that Siege in Null are Ratting Marauders which are not preferred, but you see the occasional Vargur... Most Ratting Marauders are used to do 10/10s--forcing you to probe down the ship and jump acceleration gates to reach it, giving it time to unsiege and safe up.

I think that miners are correct in their misgivings about belt sieging. Perhaps if CCP added Deadspace or Scanned Mining Anomalies that you had to probe down or pick up Journal coordinates by killing rats, this type of activity would be viable, but I totally agree that sieging in a belt in null is kinda reckless.

Of course, people do it with Marauders... Not many, but some do rat in warpable anomalies in Marauders.

I agree with a Goon...what is EVE coming to

Hi Fozzie, these look absolutely amazing, I have one caveat however.

Please consider replacing the Evasive Manuever effect, it is still by far the most powerful link and exceeds a powerlevel of all the other warfare links by being significantly stronger than the HG implant counterpart. HG Halos+Strong X-Instinct is roughly the same as Evasive Maneuevering, and it causes so many problems with missile balance, it is much more difficult to balance missile systems like Heavy Missiles while Evasive Maneuevering is in the game, every Tech I cruiser while webbed gets damage mitigation from HMLs when hit by EM, often reducing damage by 32.34%. This makes it difficult to balance because you either have to account for insane damage mitigation (EM requires roughly 48% more tracking on a ship to hit it at the same effectiveness as the same ship shooting an unlinked ship) and it is an entirely passive.

I know some players feel that this is essential for dealing with bombs in nullsec, but bomb explosion radius could just be increased to compensate.

Things that I think would be good alternatives
Agility: You removed the 15% passive agility and unlike other old passive effects they haven't been compensated into a new link or rolled in. An agility boosting link would be useful for damage mitigation, kiting and oversized AB stuff. (Higher agility means you can create higher angular velocities through sharper turning circles) Brawlers would also like this as it helps slingshot targets. This is a much more 'active' feeling damage mitigation tool. Agility is useful in other areas too for pinging or travelling.
MWD/AB cap reduction: lower cap usage on prop modules helps a lot of doctrine fits that want to always MWD, helps kiters sustain, helps brawlers with lower cap costs on MWD/AB feeding into tank instead.

Does anyone know what the final (max) stats for these will be?

I hate to be the one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I am still very much against having to use the industrial core for boosting. I would have even been willing to suffer a few nerfs in other areas for it, but the absolute risk of having such an exspensive ship locked in place for potentially hours is not very balanced for the reward when compared to the other two options.

My prediction is that after a few weeks of misguided (or uninformed) belt boosting and losses, we won't actually see the rorqual in belts more often. Short of individuals who can recoup the cost of a fully fitted and insured rorqual in a relatively short period of time (i.e. Hardcore multiboxers), it will see less use for anyone who doesn't meet that criteria. If the lockdown was simply removed, I can practically gauruntee that the rorqual will be in belts much more often than with that penalty. I've caught a few rorquals (and a freighter or two) and typically it never goes well for the owner. The defense fleets either weren't quick enough, never arrived due to our overwhelming force, or I was in a gimmick-hyperspatial-fit machariel and 15 procurers on grid kindly informed me that I had the wrong ship. Nothing out of the ordinary here in the scheme of things, but having a seige mode makes it even worse than any other tackled capital (not to mention the other dead barges).

A little note on my own usage of the rorqual:
I'm not a fan of needing multiple accounts, especially for mundane tasks that are only needed for brief moments. Thus, I have pretty much settled on my 4 accounts and make the best of them. I could probably run more, but I honestly don't feel like subbing more accounts (if my machine could even handle it), or working for PLEX every month (rather spend it on pvp ships). That aside, I use 3 skiffs in the belt, and a rorqual boosting from the POS. Before I begin my sessions, I warp the rorqual to the anoms, run a survey scan, and bookmark areas of decent concentration of valuable ores. I warp back in at range and drop the can, warp the skiffs to the belt, Rorq to the POS/Citadel, and start mining. Every half hour or so, I turn off the Indy core and warp to the belt to collect my work. Warp back to the POS, compress, and begin boosting again. Since I use skiffs, I rarely care about rats, however with the new capital rats, sometimes I need to send in daddy rorqual to rescue them from doom (and yes I can tank it just fine). My entire setup involves using the rorqual and its unique features and bonuses in the belt, with the major exception of boosting. That of course, takes up the majority of the time, but is only a single peice of the benefits of using a Rorq. And I have been diligent and careful enough to keep the same rorqual that I bought in 2013(?), and I've even used it dangerously in home defense and as bait when I'm really bored (autopilot across the region). Now to my point.

I'll gave you credit Fozzie, back when barges were being tiericded, you made the argument that having a defense fleet on constant standby was neither fun or interesting gameplay. I really do hope you see the connection here between having rapid defense and protecting another individuals personal income. It works well when the group is threatened (POSes, Sov, Structures), but it's an entirely different mindset when it comes to someone's ratting or mining. I hope we can understand that reality (and the fact that it's unlikely to change), and work to build mechanics that work with and around that, rather than simply frustrating everyone not involved in the loss. Team effort and work are definitely necessary, but things like mining don't typically compensate anyone (in terms of fun per hour or isk), which is unfortunately an issue with the mining design as a whole.

I'll hold my final opinion until I see the rorqual changes themselves, but I'm not holding much confidence right now.

I'm also somewhat worried about self-boosting on boosters and the upcoming changes to those ships. I'm worried that they will be balanced on the assumption that the links are fitted, and will be nerfed in tandem, thus making the module an almost required module to use the ship effectively.

btw I have just noticed one thing [speaking of miners and new system]

they say that all skills and implants that was providing passive boosts will be reworked to buff the command burst and will no longer provide fleetwide passive bonuses.

what about mining foreman 2% per skill level bonus to the mining yield?

what about mining foreman mindlink replacign that bonus with 15% yield bonus?

according to a blog it seems they will both now bosot strenght of the mining foreman bursts, but there is nothing to compensate for the lost yield.....

or did I missed something?

Why is that a bad thing? Smaller groups get Porpoise and Orcas. Larger groups field *capital* boosters. This idea that the smallest mining group should have the best boosts because the current state of the game allows everyone to have zero risk boosts is silly. It is exactly the scenario being fixed by this change. Your boost capabilities scale with your size or your risk level.