Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Incase my last post was buried under the cascade of cries for mammoths, I'll ask again.

Why is the bestower the only cargo focused t1 industrial that has to sarcifice either a rigslot or a lowslot in order to tank a tornado? The iteronV and mammoth both have 5 mids allowing for just enough defense if properly fitted (single em hardner and 4 mses) with the badgermk2 getting even more tank. All without having to sacrifice any cargo capacity.

Quick math of ehp vs emp (before the haulers actual base hp is taken into question):
1 em hardner and 3 mses: ~6,300ehp
1 em hardner and 4 mses: ~8,400ehp
1em hardner and 5 mses: ~10,500ehp

A tornado does about 11,000k volley with t2 1400mm, maxed skills and a wrecking shot within optimal range, however with the extended distance you spawn from gate prevents you from always being in optimal range, as well as the fact that you will only get a wrecking shot one in a blue moon, the volley is normally between 7-9k in my expierence.

This means that the 'non tanky, cargo focused' industrials dont actually have to worry about dying assuming they put tank in their midslots and dont have to sacrifice any cargo capacity to do so. The exception to this is the bestower, which will die unless you sacrifice cargo capacity for extra tank.

I feel that to actually balance this out and give people more of a reason to use the 'tanky, quick aligning' versions of the t1 haulers, the 'cargo focused' industrials should be limited to 4midslots while the 'tanky' versions should have atleast 5. This would also allow DSTs to stay semi relavant as being able to haul more than the 'tanky' t1 haulers while being able to tank a nado volley.

Most of the people I end up killing fit nothing to their midslots anyway but I am still curious as to why the 'cargo focused' haulers have so many midslots allowing them to outclass DSTs in terms of efficiency.

*preemptively gets behind cover*

I for one always liked the hoarder model better than the mammoth. It made me said it was pretty much worthless. mammoth/mastodon are better names though...

This is as nice as when I posted it on page 5 at post #100.

your idea was good too....

Having a large number of specific holds for specific ships is a balancing nightmare. Again, we don't need five different haulers with five different specialized cargo holds put into the game. It’s enough to just have one ship. People will bring up the Primae for having a specialized PI hold, but it’s a gimmick ship given out as a freebie which no one actually uses.

Again, all we need to bypass the entire problem of “armor tanks being second rate to shield thanks to low slots lost for cargo expanders” is to move the general cargo component off of slots entirely. They did it with barges and overall the changes worked. Re-inventing the wheel is something that will not happen with CCP’s iterative stance on ship balancing, so go with what works, and keep it simple.

Do create a ‘cargo bay’ separate from a normal ship cargo hold
Don’t create 10 different bays to haul 10 different commodity items, we don’t need that complexity.

In response to Taleden's ideas about cargo expanders.

How about keeping the expansion as it is now, but making the hold specialised for a particular type of cargo depending on the expander used?

Also, how about a low slot module to convert part of the cargo bay into a drone bay for setting up Q ships? Possibly a use for all that extra CPU?

Rise,

My problem with your proposal is that it seems very limited. You've picked only two roles when there is clearly room for more.

Diversity is the spice of life after all and I'm sure it wouldn't be that much of an effort to turn a few of the haulers into slightly different models to fill the gaps. I would even be happy to wait until the art assets are in place before this ship balance pass happens.

My proposal would be that each race has 5 industrials. These would be:

1) Fast with small hold and little tank
2) fast with very small hold little tank and some kind of smuggler bonus
3) Heavy tank with moderate cargo hold but slow
4) Massive cargo hold with light tank and slow
5) specialist with moderate tank and slow

I would see it looking like this:

Amarr:

Sigil: 5% bonus to agility, +1AU's/ second max warp velocity per level (small cargo limited tank)
Sigil MkII: 5% bonus to agility, 10% reduction in chance to be caught with contraband per level (very small cargo limited tank)
Bestower: 4% armour resists 5% cargo hold (moderate cargo poor agility)
Bestower MkII: 10% cargo hold (double bonus) [Massive cargo light tank]
A New Ship: 4% armour resists, 5% Ore/Ice/Gas hold (can fit Mining Foreman Links)

Caldari:

Badger: 5% bonus to agility, +1AU's/ second max warp velocity per level (small cargo limited tank)
Badger MkII: 5% bonus to agility, 10% reduction in chance to be caught with contraband per level (very small cargo limited tank)
Badger MkIII: 4% shield resists 5% cargo hold (moderate cargo poor agility)
Badger MkIV: 10% cargo hold (double bonus) [Massive cargo light tank]
Badger MkV: 4% shield resists, 5% Ore/Ice/Gas hold (can fit Mining Foreman Links)

Gallente:

Iteron MkI: 5% bonus to agility, +1AU's/ second max warp velocity per level (small cargo limited tank)
Iteron MkII: 5% bonus to agility, 10% reduction in chance to be caught with contraband per level (very small cargo limited tank)
Iteron MkIII: 10% Structure HP, 5% cargo hold (moderate cargo poor agility)
Iteron MkIV: 7.5% armour repair amount, 5% Ore/Ice/Gas hold (can fit Mining Foreman Links)
Iteron MkV: 10% cargo hold (double bonus) [Massive cargo light tank]

Minmatar:

Wreathe: 5% bonus to agility, +1AU's/ second max warp velocity per level (small cargo limited tank)
Wreathe MkII: 5% bonus to agility, 10% reduction in chance to be caught with contraband per level (very small cargo limited tank)
Hoarder: 10% reduction in signature radius, 5% cargo hold (moderate cargo poor agility)
Hoarder MkII: 7.5% Shield Boost amount, 5% Ore/Ice/Gas hold (can fit Mining Foreman Links)
Mammoth: 10% cargo hold (double bonus) [Massive cargo light tank]

That is my industry ship dream above. Balance slots and fitting your own way but that's what I'd love to see.

After some more thinking I'm wondering whether it wouldn't make more sense to embrace the differences between the ships rather than try to get rid of them. I.e. at the moment there are about a dozen different t1 industrials - why not make each of them unique?

Thanks to the new skill requirements it only takes a few minutes to train for any t1 industrial and even a non-industrialist like myself can think of lots of different ways in which the hulls could be specialized. Obvious things like cargo bay size, agility, (warp) speed come to mind, but maybe it would make sense to do completely different things, eg. have an industrial with +1 warp core strength (basically a mini DST)? Maybe an AFK ship that warps 1km closer to the jump gate per level? A mini freighter that's dead slow to align but has a massive hull? An anti-tackle industrial for, say, low-sec PI that comes with a bonus on ECM, a small drone bay and enough high slots to fit a bunch of neuts? Maybe a hull with a bonus on sig radius when fitting a shield buffer? A mini blockade runner that can't be scanned (but also can't warp with a cloak)?

Now sure, personally I like my Industrials slow and defenseless, ideally sitting at 0 on a customs office, but it would be a shame to waste all those hulls by making them all basically the same and not knowing what to use the other hulls for.

Or of course you could focus on re-painting the Navy Comet. Just saying...

Edit: Ah, and if you really think the different racial industrial skills put some people at a disadvantage, remove them. Make all the t1 industrials use a generic "ORE Industrial" skill, similar to mining barges which all look like Gallente ships. Maybe the empires have made a treaty to standardize industrial ship controls?

If you are in a hole and want to get out, first stop digging.

Don't do the T1 industrial changes, then update Industry and mining and
then find out one of your basic components (generic small scale hauling) is now borked.

Why waste all this opportunity by making cookie cutter ships?

Your suggestion makes too much sense and would actually require small effort rather than quick number tweaks