Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I actually think the mining of the rorqual should be limited to the yield of the hulk for two reasons:

1. no bonus short of something ridiculous would be enough incentive to take one of these things out over a hulk... seriously, think about the ROI.. even if you give it double the hulk bonus of an absolutely perfect hulk, it would take over 70 hours of mining prime arkonor to make that difference up.
2. There are areas of space where it is perfectly safe to deploy a rorqual in a belt like deep deklein in a cyno jammed system. Areas like these would completely unbalance the "super hulk" yield.

Instead I think the bonuses and upgrades should be focused on protection and security. Here are my thoughts on how I would change the rorqual.

Rorqual:
Capital Industrial Ships bonuses (per skill level):
20% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
5% reduction in fuel consumption for Industrial Core
5% bonus to Mining Foreman Links effectiveness when using Industrial Core
5% bonus to Mining Foreman Links effectiveness
50% bonus to Capital Remote Shield Booster range
4% bonus to all shield resistances - new

Role bonus:
Can fit Clone Vat Bay
Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
900% bonus to Survey Scanner range
200% bonus to Cargo Scanners range
Can fit Industrial Core
300% bonus to mining laser yield - new (same yield as skiff)

Slot layout: 8H(+2), 7M, 3L; 3 turrets, 0 launchers
Fittings: 305,000 PWG, 1050(+130) CPU

But the real changes come in making the industrial core more like the triage module.

Industrial Core: - new bonuses on top of what it already does.
20% targeting range bonus
+5 max locked targets
100% shield boost bonus
50% reduction in shield booster duration
100% shield transporter bonus
50% reduction in shield transporter duration
900% scan resolution bonus
25% bonus to mining laser yield - (same yield as hulk)
900% bonus to mining laser range
Immune to Ewar

Note that the new industrial core does not prevent you from launching drones, does not give you a bonus to cap transfer, and still takes heavy water to run.

This would allow the rorqual to act as a triage unit to be able to stand up to small/medium sized gangs alone, and will allow users to not "lose a hulk" in favor of a boosting ship. Of course you would still need hot drop protection, but I feel that this is a reasonable upgrade package which would boost the incentive to take the rorqual into a belt.

If a ship 10 times the cost of a hulk doesn't bring in more than a hulk, it's not going to get used. Miners will just use hulks which warp out faster these days than risk a capital ship with few extra benefits and a whole lot more risk.

Cyno jammed systems mean nothing. Blops fleets are very good at party crashing miners, and I've been in system when a rorqual was destroyed by a blops fleet (it got out of its pos shield for some reason).

So big defences are definitely important, but the yield has got to be better or its simply not worth the risk.

Fair point.

Maybe a more reasonable idea is to have the indy core cycle faster, e.g. 1min to be the same as Bastion.

*edit: and not have any massive defensive thing attached to the core

Tweak the Rorqual on just one aspect, and I believe it will gain the confidence to appear in belts.

Make it impossible to point, or otherwise lock down, even in compression mode deployment.

This would give it one saving grace, which could make all the difference.
It would, with obvious proper preparation, always be able to jump away from a fight.

There is no fear of it being held down and beaten to death, if it is impossible to hold down.

Call it the Baba Yaga role bonus, where the little hut magically vanishes when it chooses to.