Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Loving most of the dieas that are thrown around here! Since CCP presented the Orca, I always thought there should be more ships in this, and other indy classes.

Modular ships and dedicated ore haulers would be nice... I'd also add factory ships (ore compression) and medical cruisers (mobile clone vat bay).

Well, I'm really new in business. ;)

Last time I found the cargohold rigs. So I think a dedicated mineral transport ship is'nt needed. But my Industrial (medium skilled) does'nt reach the transport capacity like a "Retriever". But with a "Retriever" I cannot load minerals in ore bay.

I also like the idea of a small, assisting ore-cargo ship.

Gas mining could be a thing for "Syndicate" as same as small blockade runners with scan shielded cargo bay for smuggling. Not only ORE may have fine ideas. :D
Transporting also could be a thing for InterBus and so on.

So ORE could release an ore-cargo ship with midsized cargo bays, while InterBus releases a ship for midsized common cargo.
Several skills could be needed. Standing to InterBus may be needed to purchase and so on.
An InterBus Industrial skill might be bundled with a racial Industrial skill on a higher level. Also I could think about an InterBus "Transport Ship" (instead of "Industrial") skill. Newbies won't need midsized cargos early in the game theoretically.
But now we have the "Venture" what provides a huge ore cargo bay compared to the "classic" mining frigates before "Retribution". So more cargo will be generated in a smaller amount of time...

At the moment I'd like to have about 50k to 75k m3 especially for minerals transport, because I have to spend a lot of time for moving the results of daily imports to the destination markets. But this is the dream of a freelancer. There might be other possibilities to solve such a problem without the need of further ship developement in this case.
I'd like to see a bigger transport ship, what's no capital ship.
As a freelancer I 'll have no need of freighters within the first year of playing the game.

Sorry for Off-Topic.

Summary:
- Modular ore-cargo-ships: yes
- Space Tugger container ships with specialized containers: yes
- Midsized cargo ships: yes
- more usage of the ORE-skills (or "non-racial ship command" skills): absolutely yes

Nice, exactly my train of thought.

That would give small mining gangs the tools to do more on their own without the need for a POS, NPC station or Porqual.. factory fleets, yea!

Well, these "mobile factories" should not have the capabilities and efficiency of POS before skills. But of course the rebalancing have to be done before.

OK, back to topic. I suport these ideas anyway. Modular haulers might be as interesting as tug boats with specialized cargo containers. Maybe not both items would be needed.
A modular barge it's an amazing inspiration whether they would be Industrials/Superbarges or Sub-Capitals.

I still have no idea about gas harvesters. I cannot know whether they are useful or not. But often I read about. So I just believe, they may be worthy to talk about.
For me its the same with wormhole issues. I don't know enough to have an own opinion about.

ORE Capital Industrial:
Needs:
- Mining Frigate IV
- ORE Industrial IV
- ORE Capital Industrial I
- Spaceship Command V

So this would be equal to racial freighters also in skill time.
An ORE freighter may have an ore bay of up to 1-2 millions of m³.

Specialized or modular capitals may be a tech2 option with a need of more skills.
In this view an Orca becomes a more Industrial than Capital Industrial touch and the great Rorqal could become one of the Tech2 Capital Industrial ships.
Tech1-ships could be:
- Compressing facility
- Refining facility
- VAT-bay facility
- ...
Dividing a Rorqal to its facilities. So you can have a "HiSec Rorqal" using several ships.


ORE Industrial:
Needs:
- Mining Frigate IV
- ORE Industrial I
- Spaceship Command III

If an Mackinaw has an ore bay of 35.000m³, a high-skill hauler should carry a lot more but not the amount of capital ships like jump freighters. Therefore the low slots an rigs may be hardly limmited in order to limit cargo extensions beside the skills.
- ORE hauler Mark I (ORE Industrial II): 22.000m³ ore bay and 2.500m³ cargo bay (ore bay rises 5% per Skill level up to 27.500m³ = Retriever)
- ORE hauler Mark II (ORE Industrial III: 30.000m³ ore bay (base + 3x5% skill = 34.500m³ ~ Mackinaw) and 3.750m³ cargo bay
- ORE hauler Mark III (ORE Industrial V: 50.000m³ ore bay (base + 5x5% skill = 62.500m³) and 7.500m³ cargo bay (no rigs)
Of curse you can carry ore also in Cargo bay. So far the full amount of ore cargo could be 70.000m³ for the Mark III with a skill time of about 40 days.

ORE hauler may have disadvantages like small capacitor, lower power and CPU as racial haulers and or missing rig-slots.

The balancing has not passed the Orca yet. The huge ore bays in Mining Barges an Exhumers should cause a much bigger ore bay of Orca and/or allow new ORE haulers.

Tech2 needs equal skills more, like racial transport ships too. Tech2 transport ships could be modular and/or more industrial touched. Specialized to wormhole transports, settling and so on.

One of the specialized ships is Noctis. This might be correct listed as a low level ORE Industrial ship.

If there are special needs for "Planetary Interaction", "Wormhole Services" and so on, the industrial ships may become more sense for that.

---

The ORE Capital Industrial Command Ship skill may be deleted and part of ORE Capital Industrial Ship skill. So an ORCA might be usable earlier in Game as a transport ship only. Mining Foreman and Mining Director will be kept to add the Industrial Command (mind link modules) options later.
What's the meaning:
Orca becomes available to fly earlier with a less amount of skill time.
To use the full advantage of using an Orca you must have the same skills as now and therefore several days more skill time.

Modular ships or refittable bays may be a Tech2-option.

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ORE/Mining Frigate:
Needs:
- Spaceship Command I
- Mining Frigate I

-> Venture

Mining Frigate V will be needed for Tech2 Mining Frigate.

These ship(s) may become more specialized in gas or ice harvesting, gets a slightly bigger ore bay, a reduced damage of mining crystals and a bit more healthpoints.


----------------- The following part might be off-topic. Please do not read below this line... :) -----------------

Intaki Syndicate Frigate:
Needs:
- Intaki Syndicate Frigate I
- Spaceship Command I

Intaki Syndicate frigates a light and fast frigates with a slightly advanced cargo. They have a speed bonus while cloaked with tech1 cloaking devices (but cannot warp cloaked).
These frigates are optimized for smuggling and have "hardened cargo bays" what have resistencies against cargo scanning. The cargo bay can be saved by password like secure containers.

Tech2 frigates need skill level V and allow to warp cloaked with covops cloaking module.

Power and CPU are not optimized for weapons and shields.

Syndicate frigates could be entry level mini haulers for the first days of trading in New Eden.


Intaki Syndicate Industrial:
Needs:
- Intaki Syndicate frigate IV
- Spaceship Command III
- Intaki Syndicate Industrial I

Syndicate haulers are immune against low level cargo scanners, but have a lower amount of cargo capacity as racial industrial ships.

Tech2 haulers (Intaki Syndicate Industrial V + Intaki Syndicate Transport Ship I) are hardened haulers for high value goods. They could replace the racial blockade runner.


InterBus Industrial:
Needs:
- Racial Frigate IV
- Spaceship Command V
- InterBus Industrial I

InterBus haulers may perform as low-level freighters or tug boats. Containers can be docked and released.
Using hulls what have cruiser like healthpoints hey have no slots but internal cargo capacities between 15.000m³ (level 1) and 100.000m³ (level 5).
Dependent of skill level "adapting" or the InterBus Industrial skill, they can use 1 additional pair of cargo containers (780m³ [Large Secure Container] to 3.900m³ [Giant Secure Container] each).
So you can collect containers in space, if you or your corp has anchored them there.
The

Containers are adapted outside. There they are at the mercy of pirates.
Also ninja space tug might be possible. A space tug should have a low amount of weapons and defense.
A Micro-Freighter may not.
I have no ideas for InterBus frigates or capitals and also not for Tech2 ones. I'd not need them, but the training multiplier could be higher than for typical Industrial skills. For instance 8x instead of 4x.


Instead of own product lines there could also be faction models for special features as higher cargo amount or unscannable cargos, etc. So Intaki Syndicate are Gallente and may use Iteron-type ships. Interbus specials were handed out in past. They almost used Gallente designs with corp colors. So they may have also Iteron type haulers.

I've the feeling to have to comment my "Orca idea" above:

I divide Orca to 3 of its core functions:
1. Large Hauler (Skill training time equal to freighter)
2. Mining Assistance (Skill training adds advanced mining skills)
3. Command ship (skill training adds special leadership and mindlink skills.)

This means:
(1)
You need less time to enter an Orca as a small freighter or large hauler.
Mining Frigate IV, ORE Industrial V, ORE Capital Industrial I
The Capital Industrial skill may rise cargo capacities.
This feature would not activate the role bonusses.

(2)
You need additional time to give mining boosts, using an Orca. Advanced mining skills are needed to understand the job and assist third party players.
The skill Capital Industrial Command Ship could be deleted, if other skills or skill levels would be added as necessary instead.
Astrogeology 5, Mining 5, Leadership 2, Mining Foreman 1, "Ressource Harvester Advanced"-certificate, Exhumer I, etc.
This feature activates several role bonusses.

(3)
You need the Mining Director 1 to add assistance link hardware. So this last step is only a few days away.

---
You may need additional skills like compressing, vat bay processing, ore processing "all IV" and ORE Capital Industrial IV and Advanced Spaceship Command V to enter a Rorqal. All secondary and tertiary skills may be kept.

In alternation to several special industrial ships the skill could allow modules to fit in a capital industrial chassis.

---
The Orca ore cargo bay may be doubled to about 100.000m³. This could be expanded by Mining Barge skill. But Mining Barge would not longer needed to enter an Orca.
The common cargo bay may be rised to about 70.000m³. This could be expanded by ORE Capital Industrial skill.
The corp hangar and ship hangar size might be correct yet or could be less.

Why dont you just suggest a highsecable Mini carrier rather then and industrial ship? For fleet logistics and pvp, that would make more sense.

CCP already mentioned global skill path changes. Futurally the skill path includes following:
Military Path: - Racial Frigate IV -> Racial Destroyer IV -> Racial Cruiser IV -> Racial Battlecruiser IV -> Racial Battleship... and so on. Skill paths are marked to be re-worked.
The Frigate IV skill will be needed to start another path as Industrial for instance.

The Noctis is truely an industrial or civilean ship, what matches an Industrial skill path. Maybe further skills would be needed to enter a Noctis. A light and fast ore hauler should be one of the early enterable chassis.
An "Industrial" skill should mean really industrial content. Industry needs ships. If you only take transport ships instead, the skill could have another name. :)

In this case I like the thread about suggesting a re-working haulers/freighters. The thread suggest to divide racial tech1 haulers to different "jobs" like fast/small transports, medium/secure transports, slow/bulk transports. This could be applied to the ORE Industrial ships in the same way.

In example:
Industrial I - ORE Fasttrans: 1x Retriever max. ore cargo = 27.500m³ (basicly) - common cargo <=2.000m³ - no slots (maybe builtin small tractor beam), Drone capacity 25m³/15Mbps
Industrial II - ORE Deadspace Chopper: ~18.000m³ (basicly) but midslots/lowslots for tanking, higher base HP - common cargo: <=2.000m³, drone capacity 25m³/25Mbps.
Industrial III - ORE bulk hauler: 2x Mackinaw = 70.000m³ (finally) - common cargo <=5.000m³, no hislots, less mid-/lowslots, no rigs, no drones

(Capital Industrial I) Freighter I - ORE HiSec-/Fast-Freighter: 200.000m³ ore cargo, no common cargo (or Orca as freighter available) - no slots, no rigs
(Capital Industrial III) Freighter II - ORE Bulk-Freighter: 1.000.000m³ ore cargo, slightly slower than racial freighters, no slots, no rigs.

But of curse there are a lot nice suggestions for more specialized or more universalized ships in "ORE Industrial" skillpath.
Looking at the Venture brings up the idea for tug-boats instantly. ;) I think there are a lot of possibilities to fill the quite empty pathes AND bring up usable and reasonable ships to New Eden.

If there came faction models, it would be ok too. Of curse. We don't need more ship family trees, what are nearly identical in usage.

This all only makes sense, if you can deliver optimized chassis for specialized transport jobs. In all other cases a faction model would be enough.
I'm not familar enough with EVE fiction. So it might be, that InterBus or Syndicate are not really able to produce ships on their own.

My told things only were examples for what I mean to reach finally. And yes, this is slightly off-topic.

I still think ORE INDUSTRIAL should lead to a jump-freighter analog that can only carry ore. Lots of ore.

Give it 2 highs. a probing bonus and/or a POS module bay and you've got yourself a WH-hauler.