Ships & Modules

*whimper* I knew I should have picked another Dev name. Yitterbalm That's Ytterbium! Like, the chemical element! Augh, my eyes are burning, the pain, the agony! I'm melting! MELTING RAWWAAARGGR!

But yes the industrials need to go through the tiericide purifying fires. When and how is still quite undecided at that point, even if we are already considering a few options to get them revamped.

My pet name for you is Yifferbum.

Coming to a furpile near you!

The obvious solution is to create 7 entirely new t1 industrials with accompanying models to bring the total up to 5 per race to fit the gallente model.

Crack the whip on your art designer underlings!

ISTR the reason why industrials have gobs of CPU capacity is because it was originally envisioned that they could be fitted with some sort of industry-related module which would allow them to do certain stuff in space (I don't know what these module(s) would have done... refining ore maybe? reprocessing modules? Compressing Large Group of Homeless?) ... and this is how Industrials originally came to be called Industrials and not something more apropos to their present-day task of hauling.

You think that this original idea might be revisited whenever the indys' tiericide turn comes around?

Frankly, I think the way it is is fairly fine, every race has something going for it. Amarr have the fastest training for a decent T1 and good T2s, Minmatar have the best level 4 T1 hauler and 2 high slots on Prowler, gallente have the largest T1, caldari rock the largest freighter and so on. You can decide for any of those based on your own needs and preferences.

Three basic industrials for each race should be more than sufficient. Honestly, these ships should just be stepping stones for new pilots or cheap(easy to replace) -- much as mining barges are for miners (any serious miner eventually moves up to an exhumer, unless he needs to minimize potential losses due to being in a dangerous space).

The Transports should be the main hauling ships of eve....viator/blockade runners with covops cloak already sort of are outside of highsec. Deep Space Transports should have a larger cargo, certainly more than an itty 5.

Then we simply have four specialty ships:
orca -- should be best hauler for ore/minerals, providing a base of operations in belts and other location for small fleets, and used for little else.
freighter -- biggest cargo and slowest ship period.
j/f -- for hauling to low/null/wormholes and fueling POS's and transporting corporate goods. Needs to agile, super tanked, and have some warp stabs. Super expensive.
new mini freighter -- not sure of exact role, but should have a 125K m3 cargo hold and be priced around 400M for the hull -- needs to serve the needs of small corps who don't need an orca/freighter and who probably will never be able to afford a j/f.

Does this mean a role change or not? Will they still be a "warpable (but balanced!) jet cans" or will they actually receive real industrial functionality?

Step 1. Define the problem, i.e. what do people need?

IMO, three hulls:
* one for bulk hauling - High cargospace.
* one for "at the keyboard" hauling, i.e. can fit a cloak, and has high agility. Medium cargospace.
* one for tanky hauling, but, unless it tanks like a procurer, there's not much point. Low cargospace.

IMO, things we don't need:
* hyper-specialized cargo bays, i.e. ore bay or PI bay.
* lots of low/medium slots. It's an industrial ship, not a mini-T3.
* cross ship-class industrials, e.g. destroyer class "smuggler" hauler, or a battleship class bulk hauler.

That's absolutely not true. Training to 4 takes much less time than training to 5.

PS: CCP Ytterbium, I loved your name before all this fuss :)

Actually, they all hold less. Assuming minimum skill required to fly the ship, tech 1 cargo rigs, and tech 2 cargo expanders:
Iteron Mk V: 38,433m3 - 100%
Impel: 36,219m3 - 94.2%
Occator: 35,509m3 - 92.4%
Bustard: 30,635m3 - 79.7%
Mastodon: 29,243m3 - 76.1%
Mammoth: 27,129m3 - 70.6%
Bestower: 20,256m3 - 52.7%
Badger Mk II: 19,031m3 - 49.5%

But what I think is more important here is that you can't just buy a DST wherever you happen to be. They're decent for hauling a lot of stuff over a long period of time in one area, but the neat thing about tech 1 industrials is that you can just buy one really quick just about anywhere. Also, the Iteron Mk V is undisputably better for hauling sheer volume than the others because it aligns like a tech 1 industrial, whereas DSTs take about 50% longer to align. In many circumstances, that extra align time could add 15% or more to your travel time. Once you consider that, the Mammoth effectively has more like 32k m3 space in terms of how its hauling capacity compares with the DSTs.