Ships & Modules

The Orca's ship hanger can only carry unpackaged ships off memory, I don't fly it but if you take a look at the stats it might be able to fit a few battleships in there, if so it wont be many. In terms of carrying trit once again take a look at the cargo bays on that ship. As for hauling large cargo this ship doesn't excel in that a freighter does, but what this does do is give you an unscanable corp hanger that also doesn't drop anything in it so it's "safe" to haul expensive things in there in comparison to other ships. Which is why you see a lot of them.

Orca pilot here.

Off the shelf, the Orca has a 50k m3 ore bay that can hold rocks and ice (but not refined minerals such as trit), a scannable 30k m3 cargo hold that benefits from the ship skill and cargo expanders/rigs, a 40k m3 corporate hangar that can hold anything including fit and rigged frigates, and a 400k m3 ship maintenance bay.

The maintenance bay holds assembled ships only, and can hold any combination of ships up to the max - this excludes battleships but covers everything from shuttles to battlecruisers and industrials. Two hulks or some combination of frigates, a Noctis, a cruiser, etc. Packaged ships in the maintenance bay can hold ammunition and charges, so a "cheap" way to expand your baseline cargo capacity is to toss in a rigged Iteron full of ammo.

Cargo expanders and rigs effect the Cargo Bay only - they don't expand the other bays. Though fit and rigged for cargo you can get the Cargo Bay up to a fairly impressive size. Even without the expanders the sum total cargo space is greater than a t1 or t2 industrial, especially if you take advantage of the ore bay or the aforementioned ammo-in-hold-of-ship-in-maintenance-bay trick.

The real utility of the ship is in mining operations and in rigged/fitted sub-battleship hauling - it doesn't compare to a freighter for raw m3, but it gives you a flexibility - and tank - that you can't get with a freighter or other industrial hauler.

I absolutely love the ship and would have quit EVE many months ago if I hadn't skilled into it - for carebear activities the ability to haul a Noctis, interceptor, assault frigate (in the corp hangar) and T3 or HAC really cuts down on overall travel time and enables a nomadic "bring everything with you" play style that's reasonably gank resistant if you fly smart.

Oh, and it can fit gang links - something industrials and freighters can't do.

I only use orca for hauling even though I need to make 3 trips sometimes.

the reason is that freighter is about 4 times slower in warp which means you'll complete 2 hauls in orca faster than one haul in a freighter.

plus it's scan resistant and has more EHP (about 220k if you use cargo rigs, can go a bit higher otherwise) than freighter.

basically you only haul cheap throw away stuff with freighter since those are getting ganked all the time, unlike orca. and even if they fix the scanning issue, double EHP allows you to carry double worth of stuff while remaining uninteresting suicide gank target.