Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well, this is already bypassing shields and armor to deal damage directly to modules.
(Using the overheat mechanic)

I am shooting at something where the exhumer has an effective but non lethal weapon to use.

The target ship can always leave, unless the exhumer locks it down.
Like my skiff could.

Then the opposing pilot may find it wise to simply eject and leave, losing an intact hull in the process before reinforcements showed up to convert hull plus pod into a kill mail.

For my variant of the T3 Mining Barge:

ORE Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration (Role Bonus: 100% reduction in Cloaking Device CPU use, 5% bonus to ore yield per level)
ORE Offensive - Drone Reconfiguration (Role Bonus: 100% increase in Drone Hold size, 10% bonus to drone damage per level, 7.5% bonus to drone hitpoints per level)
ORE Offensive - Industrial Reconfiguration (Role Bonus: 100% increase in Ore Hold size, 10% reduction in strip miner cycle time per level when deployed, -100% velocity when deployed, +100% shield boost amount bonus, 10 minute cycle time, requires 500 Heavy Water per cycle - 50 Heavy Water per level)

ORE Defensive - Adaptive Shielding (4% bonus to all shield resistances per level)
ORE Defensive - Amplification Node (10% bonus to shield booster effectiveness per level)
ORE Defensive - Supplemental Screening (10% bonus to shield hitpoints per level)

ORE Electronics - CPU Efficiency Gate (5% bonus to CPU per level)
ORE Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer (15% bonus to ship sensor strength, 5% bonus to targeting range per level)
ORE Electronics - Ore Scanning Efficiency Array (15% bonus to Ore Scanning range per level)

ORE Engineering - Augmented Capacitor Reservoir (5% bonus to capacitor capacity per level)
ORE Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix (5% bonus to capacitor recharge rate per level)
ORE Engineering - Power Core Multiplier (5% bonus to power output per level)

ORE Propulsion - Chassis Optimization (5% bonus to max velocity per level)
ORE Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier (Role Bonus: Immunity to non-targeted interdiction, 5% increased agility per level)
ORE Propulsion - Gravitational Capcitor (15% bonus to warp speed per level, 15% reduction in capacitor need initiating warp per level)

Actually, the point of this overheat is to introduce a risk element to the attacker.

They need to have a reason to worry that the Skiff could fry their modules before enough DPS could be delivered to beat the skiff.
That means it must be uncertain, and for uncertainty we need a guesstimate at 50 / 50 chance of the exhumer beating down the attacking ship.

Will the attacker assume that their thermodynamics skill will be enough to let them finish shooting the skiff before it fries them?
What if the skiff pilot also has this skill, and is more effective at baking attackers than they realized.

Trade off in skill: Otherwise matching skill and strategy sets, if one has a 5 in thermodynamics and the other has nothing in that skill set, the one with the higher skill will win unless something else intervenes.

I'd much rather see the strip miner reduce the attacker to it's component minerals. Leave a melted blob of slag floating in space - the clone's corpse encased within.

The idea does make sense, though. Why couldn't you turn the miner/harvester on an attacker? (Why can't you shoot asteroids with guns or missiles for that matter?).

However, you have to also consider crappy lock and tracking speeds. Against fast movers, it'd still be dead pretty quickly.

Any weaponry or defensive systems, I think, need to help the barge to RUN, not think they could stand and fight. Break target locks, jam tracking, cloak, warp out faster etc.

I would fly this.

Somewhere out there, Proteii, Legions, Tengus and Lokis are initiating their self destruct at the idea that they would be relegated to mining duties. Not to mention that the mining skill path is completely different than what's required to fly T3s.

I know! Maybe there should be a timer for how long you can bravely camp a gate!

/sarcasm

For the ore hold requirement, if you are talking raw ore prices then the hold would have to be mighty big. If a Mackinaw sells in Jita for 192,000,000 ISK that's -

60,000 m3 of Arknor
48,000 m3 of Bistot
48,000 m3 of Crokite

(based on current Jita buy prices for the raw ore)

If we go ice then we're looking at 446 blocks of Dark Glitter.

I am not sure if these hold sizes would make sense balance-wise as you are well into Orca territory with them and the Orca is far from something I'd like to take out of high sec too often. Big, slow to move and align. BOOM!

Now figure in that, as a T3, the price of the ship plus subsystems would be pushing triple that of the Mackinaw. Unfortunately, the calculus doesn't work.

However, stick to T1 ships and those numbers drop by a factor of nearly 20 (10,000,000 ISK for a Procurer). You almost need to look at this with the mentality of suicide gankers, except you need to get your product to market.

Go in cheap in a ship that has a decent insurance return. The big problem there, is that no available ship comes close to what is actually needed to work in low and null. Every mining ship currently available falls short on too many factors.

The counter to being "unscannable" is for the predator to warp to the various belts and use Mk I eyeballs.

Anyone wasting low slots on mining upgrades outside of high sec deserves to be a frozen corpse in space.

Warp Stabs - these make sense. Anti-warp gear is the most used gear in low and null other than weapons. The problem with mounting the modules is the effect they have on targeting. With just two, you have to be super close to the rocks and your lock time is idiotic. IMO - these are among the most unbalanced modules in the game, way underpowered compared to their counterparts, but that's a different rant.

"Unscannable" is actually just a term used, it's not ACTUALLY unscannable (anymore). Basically, it requires you to have close to max probing skills or a tribute (I'm pretty sure it's tribute) set to scan you down. CCP changed that a while back in response to unprobable mission Tengus. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I will change to Ice Yield description for sure.

I thought that would make sense, considering you were trading intynull or WCS for yield, consigning the barge to low sec or high sec. This would be the subsystem that would get you closest to the yield of an exhumer.

The idea of the WCS subsystem was to remove 1 slot for warp core strength compared to the Superstructure Reinforcement, but not nerf your range to a point you had to bump the asteroid in order to mine. Basically making it the same conscious choice between yield and WCS safety, but allowing the lock time and range associated with that tradeoff to be balanced independently of the module. Would it make more sense to give a bonus to the lock time/targeting range nerf of the module itself? Or change the subsystem altogether?
(This bit is also in response to Rayzilla's Post)

Do you think the cargohold bonus should be switched for a smaller ore hold + ammo hold?

The idea behind the offensive subsystems was that, in regular T3's, you almost always have to choose one gun type to specialize in. Like on a Legion where you choose the Lasor or Missile sub, or Proteus where you change the drone or blaster sub. I figured what you were mining would function in much the same way. The flexibility I was aiming for was in mobility, Ore hold size, etc. But maybe I only have a limited idea in the situations in which this barge would be used.

In reply to the earlier Rayzilla post (thanks enormously for the numbers, btw) I think the point there is to price this barge (with the subsystems included) in between an exhumer and a T1 mining barge. The question is, is there a middle ground between putting the Orca out of business with an enormous ore hold or making the barge as cheap as a T1 barge?

If it were price around 100-120m (the price of a viator to the low-end intended price of a navy BC) and the ore hold were set to 20km3 (less then half that of an Orca) and we were to use Rayzilla's earlier numbers to base our given profits per trip, you'd be looking at around 3/4 the price of your ship in your ore hold per trip. This would mean that, as long as you didn't die on your first or second trip, (which you shouldn't given all the advantages described) you'd be making a profit. Would this be horrendously abused? Is the balance off? I'd love to know your thoughts

Dammit, it ate my post...