Ships & Modules

So after seeing the new changes. Some of them are really great but a few things I'm rather confused on. I thought the over goal was to make mining ships a bit hard to gang while giving each ship a role within the mining fleet. Doing some numbers crunching from old to new left me with even more questions. Everything I will be listing will be without implants, fleet boost, and mining drones.


A naked Hulk with my current skill set Ehp in game 8,566, meanwhile the old was 9,139. So a net loss of 573 ehp.
I won't even bother going into the Mackinaws boost to its tank, well all know it went up a lot.

Hulks new bonuses Old hulk
Mining Barge skill bonus per level: Mining Barge skill bonus per level:
3% bonus to Strip Miner yield 3% bonus to Strip Miner yield
5% bonus to all shield resistances 7.5% bonus to all shield resistances

Exhumer skill bonus per level: Exhumer skill bonus per level:
3% bonus to Strip Miner yield 3% bonus to Strip Miner yield
4% reduction in Ice Harvester duration 3% reduction in Ice Harvester duration

So we get a 5% faster cycle time on ice than the old Hulk which is 18.75 or 19 seconds roughly. Not to bad I guess but here's where all my questions to happen.

The following fits will be listed as to pull the max amount of ore m3 with T! crystals.
Mackinaw with 3 T2 laser upgrades T2 lasers and T1 crystals pull 1,864.39 m3 per a laser cycle or 3728.786 m3 with both lasers.


Hulk with the 2 T2 lasers upgrades T2 lasers and T1 crystals pull 1,436.23 m3 per a laser cycle or 4308.699 m3 with all 3 lasers.

That's a 20.6% bonus to the hulk. But now lets do the factoring in that each pilot will have to do. Max ore on the Hulk is 8.5k
while the Mackinaw is 35k. The Hulk will fill its 1.97 cycles requiring you to empty it pretty much after 5 minutes. Mean while the Mackinaw takes 9.3 so every 27 minutes you will have to jet or unload to Orca. This doesn't factor in time swapping targets. Which the Hulk will need a lot more attention. Then factor in the risk factors. Hulk can pull around 14k EHP before going shiny fit. While the Mackinaw from what I've been told is easily reaching 40k+ EHP.

I guess what I'm getting at is 20.6% more ore really worth the massive amount of micro management and risk factors the Hulk will need over the Mackinaw?

I haven't even begun to check ice but currently I've been told its about 15% more ice per an hour as a Hulk than the Mackinaw. Was this CCP plan to begin with? To bring the Hulk to be more easily gank than before, driving the risk factor of the Hulk up higher and the micro management up that high?

I'm not sure what sort of tank you're trying to claim is worse now than before the patch. While the effectiveness of Damage Controls on hulks was reduced in the patch the fact of the matter is that hulks still have approximately 18% more EHP without them than they did prior to the patch. In point of fact prior to 1.2 a naked hulk had 9,217 EHP while post-1.2 it has 10,890 EHP. With most of that EHP coming from the increased shield HP any competent shield tank setup now should have signficantly, at least as a percentage, more EHP than it did pre-1.2.

I'm not really sure how you're coming up with the idea that the hulk is more easily ganked now than it was pre-1.2 because so far as I can tell that's not the case.

As for the rest of your post, CCP in their "Infinite Wisdom" decided that the procurer/skiff line is to be defense-oriented mining, the retriever/mackinaw line is to be solo/afk/hauler-oriented mining, and that the covetor/hulk line is to be micro-managing for maximum yield with the most risk mining.

If you want less risk and micromanagement than the hulk fly a skiff. It's also easier to fit one and cheaper on crystals thanks to having only one laser.

Edit: Oh, and on a side note. That 15% more ice/hour for the hulk over the mackinaw might have been wishful thinking. If you throw tank to the wind the mackinaw can get cycle time down to 157 seconds compared to the hulk's 219. This amounts to approximately 12.7388535m3/second for the mackinaw versus 13.6986301/s for the hulk or, roughly, a 7.5% increase.

Sounds to me like all your problems would be solved by flying a skiff. Less prone to cruisers taking it out than the hulk, less micro-management than the hulk, they're currently still (barely) cheaper than hulks, and you'll spend less money on crystals for the same number of cycles of usage while getting equal yield compared to the mackinaw. Well, equal yield unless you fit all three lows with mining upgrades.