Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP Fozzie! What are you doing? What for?
I`m nullsec miner. Long range for Hulk without long range survey scanner? Really? Orca/rorqual boost give long range already. We need boost for survey scanner. Why you not work on it?
Nerf Mackinaw? Why? I use Macki(not Hulk) because it has chance to kill small NPC respawn or wait co-corp`s help without jump away. Strong NPC, neuts - my profit already small. Why do you want to make it smaller???

Actually, whether or not a module is a turret or launcher is simply a matter of integer value math on a module and the ship on which you wish to fit it. Whether or not you can fit them is based on your hull's turret or launcher attribute still being above zero.

Adding more attributes to an object is ofc dependent on the object fitting within a certain class of objects I'm sure. But we're already talking ships and modules. So adding a turret attribute to both mining modules and the hulls should be possible.

Assuming there isn't some other code at work, theoretically, it would be possible to have a module that could reduce your available turrets or missile launcher hardpoints by more than 1. Hell, I see no reason you couldn't have something that reduced both turrets and launcher hardpoints available. But that would be something special.

As a side effect, you could also put weapons on your barges/exhumers.

The ships with bonus per level +4% Armor resistances are missing.

Almost any dirt cheap T1 ship can warp from belt to station in one go, it is too much to ask for the Retriever do able to do the same?

The Hulk's role is to be a shiny piece of gank-bait. It does not sufficiently reward at-keyboard play. CCP have boosted the yield of the other two exhumers, immediately after telling us that they didn't realise that ISK/effort is the goal for miners. So they are clearly telling us that they don't value our at-keyboard effort.



As a CODE enforcer, you are well aware that Catalysts can arrive on grid well before Hulks and Orcas can align for warp. If they are aligned already, they'll be moving out of range of their targets before the mining laser cycles are completed. In order to make use of the Hulk, we'll see fleets with webifiers as a standard part of the fitting, and you'll only be able to mine in hi sec with single-corporation fleets.

Boosting the speed of the Hulk is actually a nerf, requiring more player attention in order to mine safely.

and can anybody see the results besides the orca pilot can he magical share the results
or can he tag every roid for 10+ Barges i dont think so the orca scanner bonus is useless

Not really sure where CCP Fozzie got these ideas to change the mining minigame, because I thought that the Proc/Skiff and the Ret/Mack barges were fine and relatively well balanced. The only barges that needed real help was the Covetor and the Hulk - they needed an ore bay at least the size of a Procurer and ideally a Skiff, and the Hulk needed a buff to its tank to justify its cost.

What we got instead is the following:

1. Procurer midslot nerf - basically this works out to a yield nerf with the loss of a midslot, in order to get the roughly the same EHP you have to consume two low slots (RB II + DCU II) but you only gain one additional low slot from the change and you lose a midslot. So assuming you still need a large tank to survive a gank attempt long enough for help to arrive, you will take a yield nerf to get it. For Procurer PvP bait, losing the midslot just means less fitting options, which is basically fail as well since Skiffs are generally too expensive to use as bait. Procurers also become more obvious bait since it is SOP to use cheap post-nerfed ships as bait. I don't really see the point to either of these changes.

2. Retriever/Mack yield nerf - Just why? Most solo/small gang highsec miners and newer players fly this ship for its convenience. Its not nice to just nerf their yield because it happens to be your opinoin that too many people are flying Retrievers and Macks. From my experience mining in highsec, I see plenty of procurers and skiffs because of their anti-gank advantages. The only ships I don't see often are Covetors and Hulks for the reasons listed above. But the landscape is diverse enough, and would have become more so if everything was left alone except for the above buffs to Covetors and Hulks. Along with the Procurer nerf, this works out to a mining yield nerf pretty much across the board, in practical terms. I thought the intention was to avoid a mining nerf since that was the stated intent in the Refining/Reprocessing changes? Well this change is a mining nerf since most non-botting/ISBoxing miners fly these ships, and the buffs to Skiffs, Covetors and Hulks are probably not enough to get them to switch. Don't get me wrong, miners will still make more or less the same income as before, but mineral prices will go up and ship costs will therefore go up so PvP will cost more.

3. Skiff buff - Probably will make the Skiff the best mining ship in the game, excellent yield, decent size ore bay, incredible tank and great drone DPS. This could be a rather significant nullsec mining buff since the drone HP and DPS bonuses could allow this ship to solo null belt rats, though I would have to defer to the nullbears for the final take on that. For any ore belts and anomalies that are close to a station, this is the go-to ship. Skiffs will probably also entirely displace Covetors/Hulks in corp mining fleets since the latter didn't get the buffs where they were needed and the yield bonuses aren't worth the paper thin tank. But this brings up what could be a major problem with this buff in that every botter and ISBoxer in New Eden will be buying fleets of these ships and fielding them with the usual Orca + Freighter setup and they will be almost impossible to harass by suicide gankers, at least not economically. It would take an entire gank fleet to take out a couple of Skiff botters with this change, and I don't think this is good for Eve. I've had quite good faith that mining bots were more or less policed by players via suicide ganking, and that if players decided they just didn't like botting/ISBoxing, they could take justice into their own hands if they so chose. Well post-patch, player policing may no longer be viable against this class of miners. Now, I have nothing against ISBoxing per-se (of course I hate botting, but thats a given), the problem here is that in the long run most highsec mining ganks will fall entirely on the small time miners in retrievers and macks, and that would be unfortunate to say the least.

4. Covetor/Hulk "buff" - Sigh, well it got the wrong stats buffed so it goes in the trash bin until the next balance pass.

amateur.

Pretty much this. Unless you fix the ridiculous fitting restrictions of the Hulk, hardy anybody is going to use it because of its paper thin tank. If you fit it for tank, the other exhumers are a better choice. Using expensive tank modules with better fitting stats is prohibitive as you make yourself a gank magnet even more. By moving the resists bonus to the Exhumer skill, you even made the situation worse. Hardly anybody I know has trained Exhumers to V as it's just not worth it.

Also: please have a look at the capacitor stats. Cap on some barges is already less than stellar as it is and switching from a yield to a duration bonus will make the situation much worse.

I'm not sure these changes you have proposed are necessary nor that they will succeed in your stated objective to get miners to use Retriever & Mackinaw class vessels less. Increasing the signature on the Hulk I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, will make it easier to suicide gank a Hulk ? If so this makes the Hulk an even less attractive vessel to use for mining.

Increasing the laser range is interesting. I can see why you are proposing that but I won't say.

Regarding the Hulk the best course of action would not be to increase the yield as some have suggested but to increase the shield, armor, & structure levels to the same as the Mackinaw. The Hulk can be killed by a single Catalyst atm whereas the Mackinaw can just about survive a single Catalyst attack. If both vessels can have the same EHP then you will see more use of the Hulk.

As others have logically pointed out miners will obviously look to gain the most ISK/m3 per hour. So the first iteration of the mining vessels was obviously going to bring to us to the current use of Retriever & Mackinaw. Procurers being deployed where there are sustained attacks in high sec belts. It is fairly, if not very rare, to see Hulk use outside of 'deep blue' nullsec mining areas.

I can say going by most changes since the first mining vessel iteration that I am NOT in any way surprised that you didn't realise the current ship use would occur. You probably need me working at CCP but unfortunately I'm to busy.