Science & Industry

I agree they will be used less often. Even if the changes are "ideal" and rorqs are viable to use in belts, some players will still stop using rorqs. Some rorqs have always just been AFK in a POS all day long for larger mining groups to use. Some rorq pilots don't have any semblance of skills necessary to fly one where it may come under fire. Some people will just be afraid of losing one.

But I'd like to hope that for the people who do use rorqs wisely, they will be better off than they are now with it sitting behind a POS shield. Consider a solo miner with like 4-8 accounts. He probably has a rorq, 3-6 pilots in skiffs, and 0-1 pilots acting as a hauler. Suddenly his rorq: is in a belt providing boosts that are relatively better than what the average miner in null has since not everyone uses rorqs anymore, is in a belt getting its own yield of maybe 50m/hr with new super mining drones, is providing on-the-spot compression so that no hauler (or no warping in and out of the belt) is necessary anymore, is providing RR support so that hulks are a more attractive option instead of skiffs.

Sure, that rorq WILL die eventually. But after insurance, especially in a quiet area of null (which there are a lot of) or in an alliance where a fleet will happily form for some content that might save the rorq sometimes, it won't take very many hours of operation for that rorq to more than pay for itself. Anything after that point is gravy, more isk made than if the pilot had been using a BC or orca for boosts and not lost his booster... but missed out on the advantages the rorq has.

Recently on the o7 Show, CCP Fozzie confirmed the removal of off-grid boosts and that this change would apply to mining boots. This means that you will have to siege your rorqual in the mining anomaly for 5 minutes to provide boosts superior to those from an orca. CCPs logic is that the rorquals tank will be increased and it will be provided with the ability to make other miners in its vicinity invulnerable for a short period of time, in order to receive support via a cyno, etc.

This may not be a problem for large, condensed nulsec alliances, such as goonswarm, test, darkness Co2, CVA, etc. However, for nulsec entities who cannot flashform enough people to fight a 50-100 man gila / proteus fleet from a wormhole (particularly thera), it is practically suicide to siege your rorqual, because eventually it will get tackled, and if they can keep it tackled it will die.

The underlying issue here is wormhole power projection. Groups like VOLTA have the ability to tackle something, (such as a rorqual sieged in the belt) and hold it there with a sabre long enough for them to mobilize a large fleet from a thera wormhole a few jumps away (or in system).

Even if you have scouts a few jumps away from where your corp is mining there is no way you are going to be able to red cycle siege and get your rorqual safe before the Thera boys tackle you. At that point you are dead and might as well self destruct your rorqual if you don't have a large amount of support ready to jump to your cyno.

However for instance, lets say your corp has 2 FAX and 10 carriers that can support your tackled rorqual. What will likely happen is VOLTA will keep your group of capitals tackled and then call in support from freinds (yes PL has jump clones and sleipnir's in thera, and likes to kill capitals).

Once again the issue here is wormhole power projection and why it is not viable to siege your rorqual or attempt to support it when it gets tackled by large wormhole entities.

A few potential changes that would make rorqual boosting viable would be:

1. Reduce the duration of the industrial core to 1 minute.
2. Remove the industrial core and add a flat bonus to the rorqual.
3. Make it so that unsieged rorqual boosts are better than orca boosts.
4. Allow mining boosts ( not combat boosts ) to be passed from off-grid.
5. Give an additional yield bonus to miners in the vicinity of the rorqual.

Well I think we've been given a pretty substantive answer to the question "why would I seige my Rorqual in a belt/anom?":

"Because you'll make 360m/hr mining spodumain"

Well about 6 or 7 hours but yeah. And every ship it bonuses meanwhile decreases the payback time.

Oh wait this is the industry section.
Buy Rorqual, Mine 4 hours, plex your account. Mine another 80 hours, buy yourself a Supercarrier.

That'll cover the cost of the entire hull, but the real replacement cost is less - Rorqs insure, yes? Just eyeballing it with zkill estimates, the cheapest rorq I see right now is 2 billion, platinum insurance is 665m, with a payout of 2215m.

Of course, fittings will add to that, though just looking at some lost ones, they're certainly not dramatically expensive to fit, normally. Total losses look to run in the 2500M to 3000M range. Excavator cost remains an unknown (to me, anyway).

Mineral costs in a Thukker are about 1.8.