Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Meme?

You had not noticed that they had less hold capacity, requiring them to either jet can or use haulers more often?
Perhaps the less capable tank escaped your notice, which would suggest they expected more protection from outside sources.

I believe the details speak for themselves.

Having flown barges (and then exhumers) almost from the day they were released, I'm well aware of their strengths and limitations. I was jet-can mining out of my hulk for years, and saw absolutely nothing wrong with making my command ship alt swap out for an Iteron every other hour to come pick up the ore. That was the trade-off in the day... uber yield with barely enough cargo for two cycles, *AFTER* loading up a full compliment of crystals. Following the first so-called "balance" (which I can't remember many people asking for, but that's a different story), the original T2 specialties were replaced with uber tank, uber hold, and barely-better yield with practically no space for spare lenses. Give the hulk enough cargo (or an ammo bay) to carry a full set of crystals and an ore bay that'll barely accommodate two full cycles of mining, and I'll shut up, because it'll then be able to function as an asteroid's worst nightmare.

Forcing hulk pilots to have someone else constantly feeding them crystals is just plain dumb. When's the last time you asked a maelstrom pilot to rely on someone flying a wreath to feed them shells in the middle of a fleet fight? Oh, what's that? You haven't? Sorry for pointing out such an incredibly flawed and ASININE suggestion. Of course a battleship pilot would bring enough ammo, of multiple types, for a fleet fight. They'd be laughed out of comms (after the FC personally podded them) if they didn't. So why is CCP forcing hulk pilots to do this, when the majority of miners I know prefer to either work alone, or in groups no larger than three or four others? The last "all hands" corp mining op I remember even being called was back in 2004, when I was barely more than an ENB refugee in high sec. That's how laughable the idea is.

Maybe they do so, because Miners have make a decision: Rely only on yourself (no Hulk/Covetor) or on others (Someone that hands you the Crystals, e.g. from the Industrial Command Ship's Cargo. With CCP directly stating that their opinion about Covetor/Hulk is that they do want them to be dependant on support suggests this.

Exactly - nor should they; there should never be a time when you are immune to other players.
You have intel channels, you have local, you have any number of tools which will do far more than any 'escape' module. You have the social option of getting in touch with your local ganking menace and buying them off or joining forces. The existing mechanics already give a virtual cornucopia of options, which the player should exploit to succeed, and not rely on the ship to compensate for poor choices.

In all practicality, the current iteration, and the proposed iteration of procurer/skiff does is more than a little compensatory - how many of these things -really- go down? One for every 50 of the other classes? One of every 100? The practical immunity of them to ganks will go far to ensure mineral prices stay low.

This time, you may read Fozzie's inital post again by yourself (hint: use "crown" as a keyword). An in case your point with "no other class" is not limited to mining vessels: there's other ships that are kind of useless for solo activities. Some of them are a bit larger (around 15km), but that doesn't matter.

The mack would do just fine with the hulks base tank, the point is to not have the mack overshadow the other mining ships which is what happens right now with its tank vs the hulk. The hulk simply does not have enough going for it to be used when you can get good yield and a good tank out of the mack. The mack even pushes into the hulks main area which is fleet work.

The Mack overshadows other ships due to the fact the most desirable MINING attribute lies with it. Nerfing the tank won't bring any parity between the usage since the attributes which make it desirable as a miner will be untouched (best hold + close second in yield). The thing that keeps the Hulk down is the high maintenance playstyle it demands, and currently the Skiff offers no advantage as a miner. That is why the Mack is popular. It's not the tank, and nerfing the tank won't accomplish increasing usage of the Hulk, but may have you seeing a few more Skiffs from the paranoid, though it's arguable that the paranoid are already in Skiffs and Procurers.

I don't see a positive reason for this.

The Mack would be matched for yield by the skiff, and it's tank dropped to be equal to the hulks?

It sounds like you are trying to make people gamble about whether a hostile player or NPC is going to show up.
In many areas, the NPC's are quite effective with DPS, so the Mack would no longer be viable if those were anticipated.

Alright, let's use titans. What's the primary function of a titan? Depending on the circumstances, it's either to DD an enemy target, or to bridge friendlies someplace sorta far away. Is another person absolutely required for either of those functions to work? No. In the first case, the titan does not require someone else to bring it DD fuel every time it chooses a new victim, assist in targeting or tackling that victim, or much of anything else. In the second case, a cyno might be helpful in getting the fleet to where it wants to be, but you could just as well bridge to a POS beacon, and that doesn't require assistance. Sure, you can make the argument that opening a bridge without a subcap fleet ready to use it is stupid, but it can be done, and that shoots down the idea of "Player 2 required."


Alright, BLOPS. I fly buzzards, and they're my preferred probe/scout when I'm a fleet scout or go looking for hacking-type sites. Do I absolutely have to have someone else to perform either of those functions? No. Do I have to have someone else in order to open a covert cyno? No (though again, opening a cyno nobody's going to use would be pretty lame). Let's take a couple steps up and consider the widow. What's its primary purpose? Blowing other people to smithereens. Does it require someone else's assistance to do so? No. Sure, you could make the argument that it's gimped up without being able to BLOPS-bridge, but having to slowboat through gates does not in any way affect its fighting ability, only the odds of it successfully sneaking up on someone.

So again, tell me why the hulk should be forced to rely on outside assistance to keep its yield up. It has no tank, but that's not its job. It has no cargo, but that's not its job. Its job is to be the best at turning asteroids into ore, except having to either rely on outside assistance in ways other ships do not, or flying back and forth to a can/yurt/pos/station/whatever to reload, knocks it off that throne. A skiff is not reliant on others to protect it (at least in high sec), and you can AFK in a mac for hours, but a hulk requires babysitting. Two cycles of space, three beams to juggle, and almost no spare crystal capacity. As if mining wasn't painful enough already, why would someone willingly subject themselves to the headache when they can give up just a little bit of yield (208m3/min), have a very chill/zen/hypnotizing time instead, then make up that difference in the time spent shuttling back and forth to the crystal shop?

Lets be honest here, the only thing that can kill a miner in high sec is another player. NPCs aren't threat.