Player Features and Ideas Discussion

:Updated to the second iteration on April 11th, thanks for the feedback so far:

Hello again industrious capsuleers.

The ORE mining ships received a massive rebalance in the Inferno expansion, which did the classes a lot of good but also had a number of flaws appear over time. Now that we're reaching the second anniversary of that change this is the perfect time to revisit them.

The Inferno changes followed the same goals as the rest of the Tiericide project. Previously Barges were a linear progression of underwhelming Procurers and Retrievers up to the Covetor and Exhumers had very narrow roles as miners of specific types of resources.
After Inferno, the Barges and Exhumers each skewed towards a different playstyle, giving players multiple viable choices depending on what attributes they personally valued.

In practice we underestimated the value that players would put in the isk/effort advantage of the Retriever and the Mackinaw, leading to a less diverse mining landscape than we would have liked.

We'll be keeping the basic role breakdown that the 2012 balance created, but adjusting the bonuses quite significantly within that framework:

The Procurer and Skiff remain the tankiest of the barges, and the Skiff gains an extra low slot (bringing its fitted yield up to the same level as the Mackinaw) as well as a new bonus to drone damage and hitpoints. Asking a dedicated PVP ship to defend a mining fleet can often lead to mind numbing boredom for the PVP pilot, so we're providing the option for players to make sacrifices in their mining ships to allow self-defense.

The Retriever and Mackinaw keep the solo and low-attention mining crown thanks to their untouched massive ore bays. They'll be getting a slight decrease to their yield to help moderate their strength, as the previous round of balancing underestimated how much players value ore hold size.

The Covetor and Hulk remain the kings of yield, at the expense of tank and ore hold capacity. Their abilities in large scale group mining will be further improved through the addition of a 5% per level bonus to mining laser and ice harvester optimal range, as well as an increase in yield.

We're also going to be switching the way that bonuses on the barges are applied, to put more emphasis on the skill bonuses and less on the role bonuses. The skill bonuses to both ore mining and ice mining will be duration based instead of yield based, providing parity between the effectiveness of the ice mining and ore mining bonuses.
Top end m3/hr is increasing by about 4% for the Covetor and about 11% for the Hulk.

We are implementing the following updates to the plan thanks to your feedback and dicusssion:

To ensure that the Covetor and Hulk can make use of their extra mining range in group situations, we are changing the Mining Laser Field Enhancement gang link to apply its range bonus to Survey Scanners in addition to its current function.

To make sure that barge pilots can make use of the many different ORE types available in belts and anomalies, we are reducing the volume of all mining crystals by 60%.

We're giving the Hulk and Covetor a bit more yield and agility, and the Hulk is getting slightly more fittings.

The scan resolution on the Retriever and Mackinaw is being reduced by 17%, and the Procurer and Skiff reduced by 33%. This is partially to provide a small lock speed advantage to the Covetor/Hulk, and partially to ensure that the Procurer and Skiff avoid becoming too powerful in combat. The scan resolution on all barges remains exceptionally good, comparable to destroyers and frigates.

The image was just confusing people, so I'm removing it.

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PROCURER

Mining Barge Bonus per level:
+5% Shield HP
-2% Strip Miner and Ice Harvester duration

Role Bonuses:
+150% Bonus to Strip Miner yield
-60% Ice Harvester duration and capacitor use
+50% Drone Damage and Hitpoints

Slot layout: 1H, 4M, 2L;
Fittings: 45 PWG, 255(+5) CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 6000 / 5000 / 5500
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 800 / 187.5s / 4.27
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 160(+70) / 1 / 10,000,000 / 13.86s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25 / 50(+25)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 30km(+7.5km) / 440(-220) / 5(+1)
Sensor strength: 10
Signature radius: 150(-50)
Ore Bay: 12000m3

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RETRIEVER

Mining Barge Bonus per level:
+5% Ore Hold capacity
-2% Strip Miner and Ice Harvester duration

Role Bonuses:
+25% Bonus to Strip Miner yield
-20% Ice Harvester duration and capacitor use

Slot layout: 2H, 1M, 3L;
Fittings: 35 PWG, 235 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 2300 / 1700 / 2000
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 250 / 187.5s / 1.33
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 80 / 0.659 / 20,000,000 / 18.26s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25 / 25
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 30km(+7.5km) / 550(-110) / 5
Sensor strength: 9
Signature radius: 250
Ore Bay: 22000m3

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COVETOR

Mining Barge Bonus per level:
+5% Strip Miner and Ice Harvester optimal range
-4% Strip Miner and Ice Harvester duration

Slot layout: 3H, 1M, 2L;
Fittings: 35 PWG, 255 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 1700 / 1300 / 1500
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 312.5 / 187.5s / 1.67
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 100(+30) /...

still no April fool, I PROMISE

Looks good.

optimal range bonus for Hulk. I am sure I suggested this like 18 months ago!!!!


Still.. These are all EXCELLENT changes

If it wasn't bad already, but who is gonna fall for my bait Procurer now... :(

The thing about large ore holds that people find appealing is that nobody can steal from your can if you store your ore internally.

LE timers should be reduced to 2 mins or even 60s to prevent the abusing of it.

Think you could confuse the crap out of players and extend the drone damage and HP bonus to include drone mining yield also?

what's a skiff cost point-wise in the alliance tournament

Fill the next tournament area with asteroids to create terrain, then allow barges and exhumers in to modify the terrain.

Quick! Someone plays differently than I do!

Burn them!