Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I like this a lot. It could help to bring back the kind of piracy that CCP wanted EVE to have but were never able to put in it.

It wouldn't give the industrials any special roles. They would just be doing the same thing other ships can do, only slightly better. Wormhole collapsing isn't a role because any ship can do it.

I know exactly what adding onboard mass to ships would do to gameplay. The majority of people wouldn't notice any change, but industrial and freighter pilots would soon learn that the mass of your cargo affects your align time. Hauler pilots would be able to make faster trips when carrying small loads, and would be slowed down when carrying a lot. The biggest effect of this is that people would no longer choose not to make a trip just because they didn't fill their cargohold yet. It would increase the efficiency and realism in EVE significantly, and offer yet another way that pirates can take advantage of unprepared people who don't belong in lowsec.

With a cargo extender 2 in a 35k hold would give u a 44625 m3 hold... 27.5%

The size of a jump freighter?

I'd rather just see a big boost to the ORCA cargo hold to fill this need. Since it can no longer be used as a unscanable hauler, compensate it by giving it a much larger cargo bay. This would equally benift those using it for mining fleets as it could hold more ore.

To the OP. Your general idea is close to what I believe we will get. With the exception of combat modules, and +1 warp strength on a T1, I just can't see that happening.

I expect we will get 3 indys for each race. Not sure what they will do about the extra 2 gal inddy's but really the itty 2 and 4 are rarely used.

I would say we will get one with a cargo buff, one with a tank buff, and one with a speed buff for each race. Current T1 indys have 5000-10000 ehp when cargo fit. I could see the tanked version getting 20-30,000 but that's about it. it is a T1 indy after all. other two will probably still be in the 5-10k ehp range.

I just hope they keep at least one blockade runner with two high slots. currently only the prowler has 2 high slot, but is is nice for scanning moons as it can fit a cov-ops cloak and a probe launcher, with plenty of extra probes in the cargo bay. This is a needed tool. In fact I think all T2 blockade runners should have two high slots.

What would you say would be a good price range for a mini-freighter, then? It should clearly be cheaper than an Orca, but ~300-400m might make it too affordable already?

Thing is, Orca and Rorqual are supposed to be mining support ships, but they're often used as a mini freighter / super transport or mobile bases, because there's no intermediate ships. In my opinion, we could split industrial as follows:

Tech 1:
1. Small fast transport with high speed, low cargo space in 5k m3 region (sort of industrial frigate)
2. versatile transport with moderate speed, cargo space in 40k m3 region and the ability to use cynos
3. combat transport with moderate speed, maximum cargo space in 20k m3 region (mostly lower, as it would be tanked), decent health and the ability to field cruiser-like dps

Tech 2:
1. Blockade Runner (same as now, except potentially with 2 highs on all of them)
2. Deep Space Transport changed into a mini Freighter (slighly better aligning as Orca, no ore hold, hangar, fewer slots, but around 200k m3 max cargo and considerably lower cost

3. Freighter (same as now)
4. Jump Freighter (same as now)

This way, Orca would retain its flexibility, the current top end T1 transports would remain where they are, but we'd get a few dedicated ships and an intermediate step between T1 and Freighters that doesn't require you to become a mining director :)

The problem with that suggestion is how fast the ship is available and how much it costs. A mini freighter would need to be priced somewhere around 400-500 million isk, which is more than any other T1 ship that I'm aware of. Furthermore, it would need a separate skill that would push its training time to around 8 days (same as battleships), lest it would be an equivalent of giving a 1 day old character the ability to pilot battleships/mining barges. There has to be some sense of progression, from light industrials to medium sized ones to large ones.

Perhaps it would make more sense to split the ships into different sizes, same as combat ships or mining barges are, similar to this (only primary skills are listed, spaceship command / advanced spaceship command would be added as needed, of course; it would take 30 minutes to train basic industrial, 8 days for light freighter and about a month for freighter. T2s would be sidegrades to their corresponding size.

Racial Industrial skill I (basic industrials T1)
Racial Industrial skill V -> Racial Transport skill I (industrials T2)
Racial Industrial skill III -> Racial Freighter skill I (light freighters T1)
Racial Industrial skill III -> Racial Freighter skill III -> Capital Freighter I (freighter T1)
Racial Industrial skill III -> Racial Freighter skill III -> Capital Freighter IV -> Jump Freighter I (freighter T2)

I like the ideas of having Industrials that fill specific roles. Here is a quick list of ideas I just brainstormed through:

1.) Mining Support - Large Ore Hold, Very Small General Hold, Lot's of high slots and tractor beam bonuses.
2.) Combat Supply - Ship Maintenance Array, Allow Ship Fitting, Ammo and Charges hold, High Defense
3.) PI Support - Large PI Hold, Very Small General Hold
4.) Small Fast Supply - Small Hold, fast and agile
5.) Convoy Defense - Medium Hold - Guns and such
6.) Ship Transport - Large Ship Hold (just hold assembled ships, not a maintenance array). Very Small General Hold.
7.) Combat Drop Ship. Has room for one ship. Can fly into battle and allow one player to switch his ship with the one in hold. Good abilities to get out of combat after drop is made.
8.) Supply Ship - Large Ammo and Charges hold, long range reverse tractor beam to send ammo and supplies to fleet mates. Or maybe some sort of supply beam that works like a logistics beam but moves items from ship to ship.
9.) Cargo Smuggler - Contrband Hold, Reduced chance of customs detection


Anyway just some ideas to throw around :-)