Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This came to me while sitting in a belt and thinking about the up coming mining enhancements.

A hauling drone, some big, maybe 50m3 in basic size that would when launched and order take up to 1000m3 from your ship to the nearest friendly station and dump in your hangar. It would drop said loot if it gets popped, and mostly have little if any tank.

Considering a mining drone II to with a skilled pilot can carry up to 20x times it own weight the 1000m3 is reasonable, and it won't return if your in a pocket, maybe just stuff itself into your hangar too. It would have a few menu options like, haul ore, haul loot, and if you were really lazy maybe a fetch ammo option for grabbing some ammo that will work in your highs at random from your hangar.

For people who like to mine, this would be an awesome thing since getting a hauler is constantly proving the be biggest pain in the thruster of a miners life, and as for trying to haul it yourself, have you seen the time to align and warp a barge, much less a hauling ship? Even if it only travels at 1 AU its still the best thing since beam rogue drones into a gankers pod!

No reason to make penalty too harsh, since botters already enjoy hauling drones, and they're not penalized...

As you said it already exists on larger drones, its just never been re-purposed for non-combat uses.



I stated this, the ratio of base size to actually carry weight is actually less than a pilot with drone interfacing 5, mining drone 5 using a single tech 2 mining drone.



Again, you could shoot it and loot it. Mining drones for example are horribly slow for a light drone, and this is hardly a light drone at 50m3. I would assume that it would fly like an auto pilot giving people time to pop it. As for not getting concorded for aggression. Concord is only high sec and it seems pointless to make an exclusion for a drone if CCP is already going to boost the barge cargo room sizes to reduce jet canning.



By haulers if you mean players, people were either begging their fellow corp members or getting alts to haul as it is. Due to lack of overall trust and potential to be setup for a gank no one who has mined for a long time highers other players to haul. They would just be begging to make their thin skinned barges or slightly thicker skinned hulks a target. To add to miners frustration the job or hauling is even more boring than mining so few people want to do that when they could be running missions, or mining themselves.

If you mean ships, most haulers are better suited to shipping and trade than can hauling. They hold to little, and they lack the basic defenses to take out rats unless your in a t2. With the exception of the itty 5 and the orca which few newer miners have the skills or isk for.


No reason to make penalty too harsh, since botters already enjoy hauling drones, and they're not penalized..

As someone who actually does mine, the botters do hurt everyone else who mines, if the side affect of such a drone is putting real miners on a better footing to people who bot mine and have the computer auto-unload for them then i'm not complaining.

This idea is already out there.

I looked at your post, but your idea is for something a lot more complicated than a single purpose drone with a dedicated task.

I would expect it would reutn to you, like any other drone unless you were behind a gate, or had left the system, or docked, or lost your ship.