Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I might have missed something, did you say that there was a new type of ship for this? if not, maybe make it an ore mining ship only mod that takes a mid slot to allow the use of the jump bridge.

I like the addition of a covert ops mining vessel better. New ships! Prepare the create a ship contest!

I would take the Rorqual in a different direction, as my preference. I even have a thread on this:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=242879&find=unread

That said, you do have a good alternative idea here. It might fit in really well with the thread idea I linked too.

(I see the Rorqual's current use hitting a major obstacle if they ever put in the shield removal change at POS they implied, so either or both of these ideas could keep it being used more often)

I agree that the Rorqual is more niche than it should be.

Making the Rorqual the Titan of Industry is not a bad idea in itself. It's a catchy description too.
But if the ability to jump never made the Rorqual practical or popular to use on grid. It needs to deploy for either compression or boosting with the bonus.

Adding bridging to this ship, and you still have a ship that still wants effective protection before risking a 3 to 4 billion ISK investment.

I do not believe the ability to bridge will find great demand getting into systems where a friendly POS exists, and I don't see the Rorqual operating without the equivalent to shields from a POS.

i conceed that point.
name 1 station or ship that does ore compression other than the rorqual? that in itself justifies it being in every system in game, not just low/null.

having it in deploy mode to do anything is kind of crazy if you ask me. it means that only in SERIOUS ops will you ever find a rorqual in field. unless they change seriously, the rorqual will be a pos ore compressor. not many pilots (except those as crazy as myself) will have them in the field. they will be strategically located and have bubbles around them in some way to help against warp in's.

i think the idea of bridging/ninja mining into enemies territory is kewl as hell. go steal all their ark/bist. and jump back. they wont kow what hit em. go from system to system.

i will go reread the shield thing. maybe it just didnt set right or it could use a tweak. but i LOVE the idea of forward projecting mining vessels for pve style pvp...take all of their mins once a week or so...=)

now we are starting to talk about a couple different things.

BLOPS uselessness and rorqual buffs.

i love BLOPS. when you know there are fleet battles going to take place, get yer BLOPS ready for some bombing runs.
they have a niche. that shouldnt be infringed. extremely lethal, yes but the best way to counter that lethality is the sheer boredom of waiting for a kill.

now, if we have a bridging rorqual (shielding or not), thats a diff can-o-worms. that totally increases the abilities of the
mining fleets. its kinda crappy for me to think i have to spend up too 4 bill (in fittings and stuff) for a rorqual, then rely on a 2 bill BLOPS to send my miners into the fray (roid fray?)

simply by incorperating that into the abilities of the rorqual means miners remain independant of the needs of anyone else except a cyno pilot. now, if we had a way to put cyno's on barges...just kidden..

a covert finds the roid field and lights the cyno. we all bridge over. the rorqual jumps in.
we all do the mining op. the rorqual sends the miners home and then jumps home himself. cov ops finds another field.

brave souls (like myself) would have the cov ops scouting another roid field. when this one was stripped, we would jump to another roid belt. hopefully, we can be sneaky and only take the ark/bist/merc and be off.

so, a daredevil group could theoretically pop from system to system through null reguardless of who owns it and ninja steal large quantities of good ore and then beat it.

1 well scouted trip would pay dividends...compress it, transport it via cloaky transport and BAM!
big bux...

i have no opinion about the shields, i could use the rorqual as is with the addition of bridging. if u guys wanna add a shield, even better. =)

I prefer those mining barges to fly between systems, or to utilize a Rorqual to cyno ships in. The miners can be BO's in via Covops to switch ships at the Rorqual.

Really, you aren't going to cyno in a group of exhumers to mine a system and then bridge out. The amount of ore mined in a mining op is generally to large (m3 wise) to make this viable. Not to mention, it would be expensive!

There is an undertone to my post I need to elaborate:

Roaming Industry gangs of miners simply don't have a place at the moment, and it is not because flying Orca's and Exhumers through space is slow-going and dangerous. The Rorqual truly addresses the mobility factor without needing to BO Bridge exhumers: (this is restating that above but)

It can not only carry 4-5 hulks, and cyno them instantly to a system.

It compresses 20-40 times allowing it to hold 250*20 (40)= 5 (10) million m3 of ore once compressed!

It can easily carry a POS and fuel to anchor and online a POS at the destination system!

It can utilize cloaks, to stay safe while the POS online's and anchors!

It can utilize a clone vat bay so miners can clone hop to it.

And it does all this much less expensively and more efficiently than trying to BO Bridge a bunch of exhumers through a BOPortal.

Without the Rorqual, you don't get the 20-40x compression, so you fill up your hold very quickly. A BO Capable Transport ship only holds 10k m3, and even with all macks, you'll only get 35k m3 per mack (which will fill up quick)! Your BO mining gang just doesn't make sense, because of the shear volume of ORE!!!!!

Time to state the obvious.

Gizznitt has suggested something more akin to a temporary beach head, not so much ninja mining in this context.
Not sure a Rorqual can bring enough exhumers with it to worry about filling it's holds without several hours of effort either, so it is not a perfect answer. Skills and boosting I am sure have some effect on that time needed.

Nikk has suggested something that can get in and out, and probably has storage capacity for less than an hour's worth of mining before needing to unload.

Considering the context in the story style description from the OP, this would never have been a long term operation at all, just until the threat of hostile intervention inspired a rapid bridging / jump out by the ninja fleet.
Depending on the location, they may be lucky to get a full hour at all.

If you know you will have the extra time, and you have the POS with available moon, have a Rorqual set up in system with the group. It meets them there at the work site.
If it really is a hostile area, the POS will be quickly reinforced, but that just means you knew you would lose the 80 million or however much ISK going into it.

If a hostile comes into system, they fleet returns to the POS for safety. If it's a problem, they deposit their ships into the rorqual, get back into their covops, and everyone simply leaves system. The Rorqual cyno's out from inside the POS once it's out of siege, and worse case worse they leave behind a small tower.

Really, look at your suggestion:
You want to bridge in Macks using BO portal. The Fuel use is based on the ship mass, and a Mack has 3-4x the mass of a Recon. At Max range, your looking at a 6m isk bill in isotopes EACH WAY.

A mach holds 35k m3: Fill it with the blingiest ore (Mercoxit), and you'll gross 15m isk in a trip, less 10m for the bridge fuel, and you get a measely 5m isk profit to share with the BO pilot, the cyno pilot, and yourself. And this will take a boatload more effort than spending 15minutes in a belt and shooting nullsec rats for twice the profit!

The major flaw with your idea that it doesnt make sense, profit wise, to bridge in exhumers via BO Portal, because you can't harvest enough ore in a single trip for it to be worth your while.

The Rorqual, with a big ore bay, cyno travel, and ore compression makes it already setup to do your "ninja mining" task.

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30 minutes to anchor/unanchor a pos is a wasted (unboosted) 30 minutes in the field. when you are talking null sec ninja ops, there goes 1/2 of your time. 1 hour in/out. the rorqual bridges the ships in (if u look at my first post, i suggest a reduced price since they are limited to mining only). all mine in belt. rorqual mines in belt. if u have 2 or more rorquals, you can stage them in formation 50k apart, triangle shaped of whatever and drop sentries. if anyone comes in, they are within range of your sentries and all the rorquals are within rep range of each other.

now, 1 hour in a belt with exhumers will shred any abcm ores there. the rorqual can hold it in its belly. 250k m3 ore.
remember, this is a NINJA operation. seeing 1 lone recon (for shorter timer) flying by raises SOME suspicions, but 15 flying by and folks wanna chase em.
the cyno ship gets in position and logs for 10 mins. then comes back in, checks to make sure no one is in system then bridges (this was anyone trying to follow the recon, they would loose him and go back).

cyno up, everyone in, mine mine mine. rorqual pulls into cargo. if there are a few rorquals that jump in, then u have protection. if all exhumers bring 2 sentries, then there potentially could be 20 unbonused sentries and 15 (2x) from the rorquals.

thats alot of death on small ships until the rorqual comes out of siege.
at that point, drones in, all exhumers to the rorqual for bridge home.

cyno up, bridge, all 3 rorquals home. only there for an hour or so (until discovered or until ore hold on the rorqual was full.)

im not trying to change the game dramatically, but if we only put the bridge on the rorqual, all this would be possible.
if you guys wanna put some kind of additional shield on it, thats a different story. either way, i take my rorqual into the field now.
to be fair, i was using it to rat.. =) (battle rorqual ftw) i had a rorqual and a thanny in the sanctums..=)

the pos idea is for the birds. too many people flying through space alerting too many enemies to our presence. hell, we could even leave a cyno alt in the enemies territory and only log it on when we wanna ninja. they never see us come or go.