Ships & Modules

I think hulks should have the same tank as other medium T2 ships. I also think high sec income needs a nerf. These two things should happen at the same time.

If I remember correctly, Invul fields used to be a lot more effective in the early days of EVE. That was also before the stacking penalty was introduced. Invul-scorps where flying around at that time like freakin' Paladins in space.

I´m very surprised by the ignorance some miners show when it comes to this never ending Hulks/Suicideganking threadnaughts.

Even after the very well laid out, highly detailed and factual argumentations provided by Petrus, Arazel and FTDiomedes people seem still to refuse to see the real point of all this discussions.
There is no absolute safety in EVE. If sbdy want´s to play a game that gives him that feature it has to be different game. If ships in EVE would be tweaked in this manner the whole point of EVE would have been gone.

No matter how expensive or training intensive your ship is, it´s killable. And it needs to be killable, thats the whole point of the game.
When mining in Hisec is so dangerous as some depict it to be, then the miners have to adapt. Fit a tank to make the kill expensive and the problem is solved.
The provided fits have more than 22k EHP. Impossible to suicide for the flyby-ganker for the lulz. Just out of curiosity i put together some fits in eft and saw, that with fitting faction stuff it´s easy to even get to more than 33k EHP without further "gimping" (-6.7% yield is no gimping!!) the fit. So what??
Miners are willing to invest hundrets of millions of ISK in rare MLU´s or implants but want to tell me that a similar amout of ISK investet in survival would be a waste? Wrong world...

I regularly fly Haulers, Blockade Runners and Deep Space Transports. I have to consider all the above mentions topics when I prepare for a trip in one of these ships. My Blockade Runner can NOT be fitted for max. cargo capacity. At the first low-/ nosec-Gate with only half decent campers I would be dead. It´s fit for agility, sneakyness and warpspeed. All factors only enhancing my survival rate, not income per run. It´s optimized for income on the long run by getting not caught.
The same is true for Deep Space Transports. It´s no problem to put some billions of worth into one of these. But if I want to do that, I have to asure it will be a really expensive kill for the gankers. Or maybe they get killed by Concord, then the lulz is on my side. Fit tank, not Cargo expanders, and I will live and be sucessful.

Not the Hulk has to reworked, it´s the attitude of it´s pilots that has to change!

Immortis Vexx,

I see your point. But as far as I see one has to give up the Cargo-capacity on a Hulk to tank it or a combination of Cargo and 1 MLU. I would not say it´s sacrificing to give up 6,7% yield. It sounds like a fair tradeoff to me.
The Cargocapacity is only a problem insofar, as one would have to warp more often to a station to dump the ore. But no matter if done more often or not, this solution is allways gimping your total yield per hour. Solomining without dedicated Hauler is allways suboptimal and gimps the endresult much more than any change in the fitting one could ever make.

The point of the alignment time is absolutely valid, here I´m with you. A closer look from the Defs could very well make some sense.

Concerning the Rigs in a Blockade Runner I only see 3 possible Rigs in total, all others are nonsens. These 3 are the Polycarbon Engine Housing, the Low Friction Nozzle Joints and above mentioned Hyperspatial Velocity optimizer. I personally prefer Engine Housing & Velocity Optimizer. This way I only lose 0,1 second alignment time but get a ship that warps almost as fast as an unrigged Interceptor. In my opinion a very nice and powerful combination.

regards
Lubo

Edit: Concerning the faction-module Idiot;)
iirc the only way to tank a Hulk for 0.0 BS-spawns was using 3 faction tanking mods (that might have changed, but the times I was active in the mining bisiness are long gone). If the 0.0 geeks think that is a feasible fit then it´s up to the miners to decide wich route they want to choose. Nobody says it´s needed, I just said it´s possible.

I mine, I have several Hulks, I have been ganked on multiple occasions... I've come back to a lot of CONCORD and a dessie wreak on occasions...

It is like everything a compromise, in 1.0-0.7 my Hulk is fitted for yield, in 0.5 its fitted for tank... and in Low/Null I mine in a BS...

And something that has saved my ass multiple times:

TURN ON your Invul fields/DCU's... they do squat if they aren't cycling...

why should a hulk or any ORE ship


be more like a battle ship


now i could see some thing like this but that nether tanks nor mines well it just can kinda do both.

The miner and the tank are good comperisons if you read it up, as the miners are hard to upgrade and the tank is not. Its all in the design.

Then perhaps you should stop. *******. trolling.

Doing It Right™

Frigates (and other PvP ships) are made to venture into combat situations, and every time you run into one there is a very good chance you will die. That means that a combat ship is a sunk cost at the point of buying it. Very seldom will a Hawk get you a positive return on your investment, and it's even less often that a Sleipnir (ship comparable in price to a Hulk) will do the same. It's a sunk cost. You throw 300 mil ISK on the ship knowing that you will lose it probably sooner than you expected, at which point you will need a new one. The tank on a combat ship is meant to give it some chance to survive with absolutely overwhelming numbers all determined to kill it, in an environment where CONCORD or other safeguards don't exist.

With industrial ships, freighters, and miners (and even mission-running or ratting/exploration ships) it's different. It's an investment that will pay off over time. They have less tank, and in the case of ratting/exploration ships, sometimes less damage, but they trade this for the ability to make money and cover their own cost.

As they're subpar for "PvP" ships, they tend to come under fire from ub3r1337 hisec PvPers. However, unless you were dumb and got aggressed to them somehow (or are disregarding a wardec), they can only shoot you for a few seconds, compared to in actual PvP where fights can last for minutes, or even much longer with warping games. When protected by CONCORD you do not need as huge a tank as an equivalent-sized PvP ship.

Something else that ub3r1337 hisec PvPers do is go for the weakest target. If they warp to an asteroid belt and see two Hulks, one with an invulnerability field effect around it, and one without the effect... who do you think they are going to gank? Standard ganking setups aren't going to be set up for overkill. Overkill wastes money, which gankers do not earn while ganking. So, what happens if a ganking setup shoots the former Hulk, that has an above-average tank? It fails, and the ganker loses his ship for nothing. What if the ganker comes back with a bigger ship, or friends? That's when situational awareness comes in, and sitting at your computer ready to warp actually helps.

Pro tip: good anomaly/belt ratters don't put drones out of their Dominix and go AFK. There is no way to have enough tank to "get help" or "strike back" or other such carebear delusions, since the enemy can always have more gank. You are only really safe if you stay aligned, stay at your keyboard, watch directional scan or local, and actively keep your ship safe. Why should mining be any easier or different?

Is it a bit silly that a big heavy ship like the Hulk doesn't have much better defenses than an assault frigate? Yeah, seems counterintuitive.

Is it bad for game balance? No, the Hulk is not a combat ship and should not be able to tank as well as one.

Had my example been anything bigger than a frigate I would 100% agree with you. Should hulks be able to tank anything? No, that's nonsense. Should a frigate be able to out tank a hulk? No, that is also nonsense. I shouldn't lose 33% of the effectiveness of my ship's primary function to match the tanking power of a frigate. I do not give a damn what that frigate is made for, it should not be able to withstand the same punishment that a much larger ship could handle.

To take this to different terms, lets look at an X-Wing Vs. a Corellian corvette. The Corellian corvette is one of the more flexible ships but considered to be a "capital" which I don't agree with. Anyway.. The Corvette is 150m long according to wookiepedia (giggle). This is far smaller than the hulk (which is ~500m long); point is, hulk is bigger and thus more room for stuffs. I seem to remember that a Corellian corvette was putting up with blaster fire from a star destroyer (while they couldn't sustain shields vs a star destroyer, they took a number of hits).

With the logic that you presented, basically you are telling me that an X-wing (which is a highly specialized warship) should be able to take as much damage as one of those? No. The idea of that is crazy. It's not a question of "survivability" its that one *MAYBE* two blaster shots from a SD would melt an x-wing (if it could actually hit it).

Yes, I understand that a hulk is a mining boat. If you read back in this forum I was arguing AGAINST buffing of hulks for this very reason. What caused me to change my mind is that it was brought to my attention that you could out tank a hulk with a very basic T1 hauling ship. After that I started looking at what other ships could out tank it. I have now added frigates to that list. All I am trying to say here is that something doesn't add up right.

Vexx

Edit: It's funny that I am even arguing this, I don't fly hulks hehe. If I mine (and I mine quite a bit). I do it in covetors. A rifter can pop one in .8 but I can build and fit 14 covetors for the cost of 1 hulk and I mine 12% less ore than a hulk.