Ships & Modules

better get the T2 orca; it has a built-in spa and brothel.

I don't think we need a different Orca in this game at all. The famous industrial command ship known as the Orca was created as a high-sec alternative to its big brother, the Rorqual, which is restricted to low-sec due to its powerful features of not only compressing ore on the spot and providing massive mining boosts, but also providing combat support in the event of an attack. For god's sake, the Rorqual can take down a battleship.

The Orca can also serve a combat role as well as it has a balanced CPU/PG along with a fair arrangement of available high/mid/low slots. Pirates have also used it to assist in ganks.

The Orca and Rorqual are the only two ships throughout New Eden that are capable of handling 3 active gang-assist modules at once compared to the other fleet * command ships that can only handle 1 such module at a time. The only downside is that bonuses from these ships do not go toward combat-related gang-assist modules such as Siege Warfare-Link modules, but are still effective in combat even without such bonuses.

So, no. No changes needed for the Orca and no new variants needed. The Orca alone already filled that role for high-sec dwellers.

EDIT:

* Thank you, Tippa for pointing this out.

The fact there are so many people flying around with Orca's, not running mining ops at all (and I don't mean the people hiding their cargo for suicide gankers), signifies the fact there is a opening for CCP to add a new ship. One that doesn't require a ton on mining-related skills.

A smaller, cheaper ship with better handling and a hangar the size of two cruisers and some change, but no corp hangar, would be perfect for supporting exploration and small roaming gangs. Enough offense to deal with some tacklers, enough tank to hold while backup arrives.

Edit: CCP really needs to making hangars drop their phat lewt when destroyed.