EVE General Discussion

Hello,

I have been playing this game for three years and have felt I never needed to make a post until now.

I have always disagreed with the gankers and griefer posts about ship kills. I disagreed that a moderately armed destroyer could easily take out my T2 mining barge in seconds. Now after this new update I feel it might be time to speak up.

The new mining ship game "balance" has just recently gone into effect. Many people I know have been talking about this "Nerf" they call it for weeks.

I want to explain what I have discovered.
I often fly a Mack and mine ice. The double bonus was removed and an ore hold was added. I will soon have to remove my 9 Million Isk cargo rigs from two of my ships as they are absolutely useless now. I can add shield rigs to it to make it better. As I was working through things I found something very unbalanced.

My T2 double harvester Mack is hard to fit stuff on, I need to buy really expensive things to fit what seems to be low CPU to get everything I want to fit. When i am done it has EHP around 20,000 and a mining time without fleet bonuses of 196.95.

On the other hand I also have a T1 Procurer. This thing must have been delivered from the GODS. There is so much CPU that I dont need to spend any money at all to pimp this thing out. I use basic trash items from Jita and this T1 ship has a whooping 55,195 EHP and I can mine ice nearly as fast as a T2 Mack that has double the ice harvesters on it. If I put two T2 ice harvestor upgrades I am mining one block of ice every 90 seconds with no fleet bonuses. It is LESS than half the ship the Mack is and is twice as nice.

Is that balance? I bought a Blue Print for this thing as they are going to become gold when others find out.
Should a pint sized T1 out perform a Medium sized T2 ship?

Please let me know if you are noticing the same unbalanced effect of this update, and if you are going to make changes.
I have begun to use this ship as a jita hauler as it will take a serious fleet to gank it.

Thanks

Great post, would read again.

How many blocks do you get in 90s in the Mack?

I don't think you understand what the trade offs are, or what CCP did to the barge and exhumers. The Skiff is the exhumer version of the Proc, there are no tiers now. If a bigger tank and smaller hold are better for your playstyle then use the Proc or Skiff. If you prefer a smaller tank but a larger hold for longer solo mining in relative safety, then use the Ret or Mack.

If you want to mine in a fleet and have someone hauling, and are trying to mine more, faster, use the Cov. or Hulk.



Get it?

She said her mack fit was 2 blocks every 196.95. Yet 1 per 90 in the pro.
So she got more ice and more tank with just a smaller cargo bay.
The main question is how much did she try to tank the mack as to get over 20k ehp you need to use up the lows which would have let it mine better than the pro and skiff.
but the extra 16 seconds she saved, she filled up more than twice as fast with smaller cargo leading to more trips if not sitting around a orca leading to more wasted time overall.



Pro's cargo is 12k ore.

The T2 Mack mines 2 units of ice in 196 seconds. The T1 Procurer mines 2 units of ice (two cycles) in 180 seconds.
Why can a T1 single harvester ship out mine a T2 dual harvester ship. (and sport more than 2x the amount of shields)

That is my point. I am perfectly happy to switch to my T1 harvester that will be nearly impossible to gank in high sec and is cheap as heck to buy; BUT IS IT GAME BALANCE? Why would anyone buy the Mackinaw now?

And what is allowing you to reduce your cycle time?

And how many harvesters are you comparing? The proc only has the slots to fit one, the Mack can fit two.
Are you saying that a single harvester on a Proc outmines 2 on a Mack?

Did she put a second harvester on the Mack is a better question.


I'm still really confused how she managed to get a Proc to have more then half the harvester duration on a ship that has one fewer low slots, one fewer high slots, and only one extra Rig slot.

The Mack has two harvesters and 2 Mining upgrades.

The Procurer has one harvester and 2 mining upgrades. It also has the ice rig and 2 shield extender rigs. The Mack at this time still has the Cargo rigs on it. I know if I put the ice mining rig on it will start to our mine the Procurer by seconds and the shield will increase between 20k and 30 k. (I am cheap and cringe at the thought of losing 9 Million ISK on rigs; if the Devs view this as unbalance might consider making another change I dont want to destroy them yet. I can park it technically and use my GOD-LIKE T1 barge.)

BUT it is STILL a T2 Mining barge being schooled by a half sized T1 Mining barge.

AFK miners will buy the Mackinaw.
Cyno alts will buy the Skiff.

You were NEVER supposed to fly that ship in THAT role.

Think about the Badgers man.

Badgers need love too.