Assembly Hall

This has been posted before somewhere, I'm sure, but I thought it would be right to bring this topic back.

Yes, it's about gas cloud harvesting. An area of mining that, at the beggining, its only point was to produce those risky boosters. Now, it's needed for T3 ships manufacturing, which makes it more desirable (the gases extracted for this use are very worthy). We have our modules and skills, but nothing else. Many people wants more love to it so I'll collect the ideas here.

I vote for a dedicated ship for this task, along with new modules such as gas strip extractors, mining upgrades, rigs, etc. and other uses for the gas. I know it has been voted for, even CCP (I've heard about converting the Procurer to this role), but I think it hasn't to be forgotten. Personally, as a miner-explorer, I'd love to do it in an industrial way, and still having to find it.

About its locations, I think they're OK: a rare ore type hidden for explorers to find. If only it was a it more expensive in the markets... I only think that the gas clouds themselves, although they're variated and beautiful, are a bit small and repetitive. Could they be more randomized, in shape and size, since it's gas? Asteroids have a randomized size and shape, so why not gas clouds too?

I've been thinking about the following:

-> The ship: as Jack Karrigan said, a dedicated industrial ship for this should come from ORE. Folowing they line of naming their ships after fish, it could be called 'Lamprey' (because it vacuums xD) and have the following:
- 6 High Slots: used for the max of 5 extractors and 1 probe launcher. This means 5 turret slots that could be normal slots if there were 'Strip Gas Extractors' or such that wouldn't be turrets, so this ship wouldn't be nerfed with weapons and battle ships could still fit the usual extractors. The probe launcher could be removed, but this ship totally relies on exploring for its role.
- 3 Medium Slots or such, for scanners and such.
- 2-4 Low Slots, for cargohold expanders and mining upgrades.
As many ORE ships have a tech 1 and a tech 2 variants, this ship could have both too, being the tech 2 one made for un-safe places as Exhumers are.
As an industrial ship, it should have a good cargohold (in the thousands of m3 line), and a decent drone bay, since this ship will probably be in dangerous places more than Exhumers.
Moreover, it would be made for lowsec and wormholes, so it could get a +2 bonus to warp strengh like the Skiff.
So, this ship would need the 'ORE Industrial' skill to be flown. It could have skill bonuses to gas compressing, or CPU use of gas harvesters, or such.
Visually, this ship could be like any other ORE ship (industrial looking) but could have one or two big cylindrical containers that could be slowly spinning, or spherical ones. Take inspiration from real-life gas carrier sea-ships? Maybe a vertical looking?

-> The skills: the Gas Harvesting skill allows to use one aditional harvester per level, which is an original way of making this mining's mechanic different from the other ones. Mining asteroids works by increasing the yield and ice mining by decresing the harvesters cycles; gas harvesting could work by reducing the base volume of each gas unit. This is because gas can be compressed, while rock and ice can't. This could be an original way of increasing the quantity of extracted ore, untouching the yield or the cycle, and could determine mining upgrades and rigs. Each level of 'Gas Compressing' could reduce the base volume of each gas unit by 5-10-20%.

-> The upgrades and rigs: basing on the previous idea of compressing the gas for lesser volume, there could be 'Gas Compressors' or such that decrease the base volume by 15% or such, or decrease the CPU needs for gas extractors.


If you have more ideas to post, or if you like this (or not), please post here/vote so this won't be forgotten.

EDIT: added some old topics about this, containing interesting ideas.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=671837

http://eve-search.com/thread/1432524/page/1

EDIT 2: improved looking and added ideas.

Makes a certain ship from Star Trek come to mind, it was Atlas class or something, eitehr way, it's front end was a GIANT shield and glass (or whatever technobabble they used instead of glass) bubble with the bridge in the center of the bubble.

basically its role was to fly into nebulaes and other anomalies and siphon the amterial into the bubble where the bridge scanners could analyze it and determine tis composition.

perhaps a similar design for an EVE gas-mining ship? honestly i would think a bubble-like container visible on the outside of the ship WOULD make sense because were talking about gases insetad of ores.

Double post, my fault.

I like the premise but I think that a cycle time bonus would be fine without going into compression. Also, why does it need protection from deadly gas clouds? Do k-space gas clouds explode? Fullerites don't. Or are you referring to mercoxit, which if mined has a chance of releasing a cloud of toxic gas (although I believe that mercoxit itself is not a gas).

Yes, you're wrong. Fullerite clouds are non-damaging. Now, there's the damaging cloud you can find at Isolated Core Deposits, and I'm not sure on the mercoxit ones... but the regular wormhole gas clouds are just big, bright shiny fluffy pillows of wormhole love.

Hmm... could this be the birth of the "Jumping Jack Flash" class of ships?

Eh... rereading your post, did you get the "did" and "didn't" mixed up?

Perhaps instead of "Compressing" gas (which may get complex-- this means you now have 5 different sub-types for each skill level, each with a different volume), perhaps the new ship can have a dedicated gas hold, whose capacity can increase by, say, 20% per skill level. This lets those cool rotating tanks come into play, too!

Supported; gas harvesting, as is, involves sitting in a cloud for hours dropping stuff into a can, so anything that'd reduce the time involved would be great.

+1 to dedicated ORE gas mining ships ... T1 & T2 versions please .... it's dumb that there are no "industrial strength" ships or modules for gas harvesting.

Oh, and the ships should look like maids with vacuum cleaners in their handle just like in SpaceBalls ... :)