Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've had this idea for a while now and it comes to me every time I see my orca or a freighter.

Has anyone thought of or designed in the "design a ship contest" and such of making a Capital mining ship? Now i'm not talking about the Rorqual my idea is of a stand alone captial class mining ship.

The way i always pictured it would be a freighter sized mining ship with up to 8 Strip miners or 3-4 of a new type of capital strip miner on it filling all the high slots. Since it is a solo mining all-in-one ship it does not for example need or can use orca support since it's ore hold is over 550k m3 with a small cargo hold for crystals. With a 175 m3 drone bay.

When i first had this idea, freighters could do nothing in space like pick up cans or drop them and the ship was limited to those factors needing a station or POS to unload since even an orca could not carry 1/5 of the total ore it can hold.

It would need very high skills in industry to pilot even more so than the Rorqual. It wouldn't have big bonues to yield but does to range capable of over 35 km laser range. It would have between 4-8 high slots 2-3 mids and 1-2 lows with 2 rigs slots. As a skill for the ship the "per level" skill would increase range per level but also allow the use of 1 additional mining drone per level up to a maximum of 10. Other drones types are limited to the maximum of 5. The base defenses are better than an orca but less than a normal freighter with most of the HP in structure.

It's not a ship that can use an industrial core but like a cap ship be cyno jump ready. And here's the kicker (it's a big one), high sec capable.

My idea for the lore or description would be an antiquated ORE freighter design converted to a mining ship to meet the demands of large scale operations in deep space where labor was in short supply.

The ship is quite large built vertically almost like a revelation or an obelisk. 1.6km in length and 2.4km in height but narrow in width with turrets at the top and bottom. I picture the ship reddish in color for 2 reasons: 1. my favorite fictional mining ship this is the Red Dwarf from the show of the same name, 2. with the orca a submarine blue and the exhumers in mostly brown (for some reason?) the Rorqual is rather dull looking in terms of color schemes.


So that's about it. I hope you folks at CCP don't think it's a ship just to throw a monkey wrench into the ore market. I think it's a cool idea and a ship i would love to fly if it existed. If anyone with drawing or design skills is willing to make a blueprint of sorts or picture of my idea i would really love to see that.


p.s I remember this caldari battleship design someone made called the Horus i was an immense flying wing. Now that is a ship i would love to see in EVE too.

I think this is a great idea!

All sarcasm aside, whilst I would personally love a capital mining ship I don't think it's a good idea overall.

-1

Yeah, I've seen this claim quite a lot and I simply don't understand it. Which T1 and T2 ships aren't used?

problem is that a lot of miners just want to be left alone (or bot) so they're in Retrievers or Mackinaws.

Compound the fact that a not-so-tanky retreiver can mine as much as (or a bit more than) a tanked Mackinaw, and well... you see where this is going.

Think bigger, make it swallow asteroids whole.

If they did a capital mining ship along these lines, I'd want to see it needing a siege type module in order to get max mining ability (with it being on par with a hulk out of siege).

Along the same lines that a dread is deadly in siege, but a sitting duck, and out of siege, no better DPS wise then a battleship.

Give it enough mids (about 5) for a reasonable shield tank that's boosted while in siege mode, and make it need to be slightly dependent on the Rorqual (aka, it's ore bay is along the lines of a hulk, just barely more than one full max pull per cycle)

I agree with the needing to be more skill intensive than a rorqual, but that's easily doable.

I disagree with pretty much everything you said. The current state of barges is great because it gives choices about how much risk miners want to take on. Most miners want to use retrievers and macks? That's fine, but when I do high sec mining I roll out in skiffs. Having options is good, and that's what the current line up of ships offers. Just because people don't pick the brick tank procurer or skiff as much doesn't mean that they're a failure. I would say that the real problem is that the retriever and mack are just a little OP because they have the largest hold and are second best at everything else.

The previous system of mining barges was crap. For the tech 1's once you can fly the next ship there's no reason to return to a previous one, and the tech II's were all niche ships with little fitting flexibility. The barges/exhumers update was great for all miners.

/the old mining frigates outmined the old procurer at all level 5's

I personally have a set of each mining barge for my 3 accounts in null sec. Hulks are for when there is no campers are someone's there to kill rats for you. Generally you just jetcan and haul for yourself. Macks are for being lazy and poor-man hauling. Skiffs are for tanking and killing the rats while you're afk. Procurers are for mining when your system is being camped - Low cost, minimal loss without total stop to mining. Rets are for hauling for your procurers. And covetors are high yield for low SP miners, a good cheap ship for fleet mining for anywhere.

New mining barges are great. Ret and Mack are most used because of afk ability.