Science & Industry

Roger that.

Yea Boo hoo. When the drone amps came out I had to break some pricey sentry damage rigs to optimize my fits too. Stuff happens.

Wow. Really? This ruins my solo experience quite a bit. I barely have time to play and when I do I just mine with my Hulk and now my cargo space is raped to nothing. Fantastic. Thanks CCP.

Hulks still have a niche; its just you that hasn't found it.

Last time I flew a mining ship was in 07 or so.

I think I can fly up to a covetor but can't uses exhumers.... Or maybe I can. At the moment can't login to check. I have and fly an orca though. But I doubt the skills would be the same for exhumers.

Anyhow... did they only change exhumers? Or are barges different too? Is it worth dusting off my covetor?

No not less yield more yield much more yield, reason is i kine to a pos so my hulks had cargo expanders etc... My macks with there 35k m3 ore holds allow me to fit 3 mining laser upgrades so much more yield infact i am mining 25-30 mill more per hour with 2 macks boosted by a fully maxed out orca stationed in pos.

Oh he mad

QFT

If you were solo mining in a Hulk without a dedicated hauler or an Orca nearby, you were wasting your Hulk's yield on trips back to station. (In Eve as in RL, time is money. Time you spend running back to station to offload is time you're not spending in the belt burning up roids, hence less ISK in your pocket.) If you were running a cargo-maxed Hulk, you sacrificed MLU's in your lows, which meant that you were sacrificing up to 10% of your per-cycle yield...essentially for nothing, because simply having a hauler nearby and jetcanning your ore is not only more efficient and faster, it also allows you do ditch the cargo expanders and fit MLU's in your lows (or armor tank of some kind). And instead of spending a ridiculous amount of money on cargo rigs, you can get armor/shield rigs instead and keep your Hulk properly tanked.

The new Ret/Mack may finally make jetcanning less efficient than storing the ore onboard in some scenarios.

People crying about "losing" their high-cost cargo rigs need to remember two things: 1) it's only a loss if you sell or re-rig your Hulk; and 2) the rigs still expand your (smaller) cargo bay.

Also, I wish all the whiners would actually read the patch notes -- a Mack will produce damned near the same yield your Hulk did prior to the patch, have nearly as big a tank, and a ginormous ore hold (35K m3) that puts even your old cargo-maxed Hulk to shame. The only downside is that you can't carry three different sets of every mining crystal in creation, but doing this was FAIL even before the patch. Your Orca or hauler should be carrying spare crystals out to you. 1 spare set on board for your high-value types works just fine. (And you can anchor some secure containers around the belt and warehouse more crystals if you're afraid you'll run low while there's no support ship around.)

For hisec mining, the Mack is an omg pimpmobile mining platform -- it may actually be overpowered for its role because it'll make AFK mining and botting even more prevalent now. And it'll do this for about 2/3 of what it used to cost to get a properly-fitted Hulk. I'm actually seeing places where I'd use a Retriever rather than a Mack -- at 10% of the cost of a Mack, a Ret is in the same ballpark in terms of ore capacity and yield, and it'd be perfect for higher-risk ops where you don't want to lose your expensive Mack (such as during Hulkageddon). The Hulk still has a place in fleets -- in fact, if you were jetcan mining before, your playstyle won't change at all. The Hulk is still the king of yield; it's just not the end-all be-all mining vessel it used to be. Which is a good thing, not a bad thing.

People moaning about the "nerf" to the Hulk don't understand the concpet of "opportunity cost" very well. The longer I'm in the belt running my lasers on roids, the higher my ISK/hr. Better yield from my lasers won't help if I'm running back and forth to the station every five minutes. And giving my Hulk a paper tank because I want to max my cargo is FAIL when some ganker comes along and blows up my expensive ship because I couldn't be bothered to tank it properly -- all that extra cargo space I sacrificed my tank to get now just cost me a 300M ISK ship. More tank, less gank, kids. You're never safe in EVE, even in hisec.

One more thing about tank: you can tank up a Mack to be almost as strong as an untanked Skiff, with a way bigger ore-hold. I'm glad that the Procurer/Skiff hull finally has some larger purpose in the game, but I still think that even low and nullsec players will opt for a tanked Mack rather than a Skiff except in places like WH space and contested systems in null.

Macks have never sold for 80mil...

They were 140mil a year ago, had a little stop at 160mil and were 200mil right before the patch.

I'd know becaucse I build 6 a day.

Wrong, go do some math before touting unfounded stupid opnions like that. Maxed out hulk and mack with maxed out boosts sitll puts the hulk 19.5% ahead yeild wise than the mack. Jetcan mine its faster and more profitable than docking up every time you fill up like a pubbie scrub. Dont like getting canflipped? Move to nullsec no canflippers out there.