EVE General Discussion

Procurer/skiff is the only barge that can fit 3 mining/ice harvester upgrades and have enough cpu/grid to fit a full tank. Mackinkaw although it has 4 mid slots has no cpu/grid spare to fit tank if you fit 3 miner upgrades. Even if you fit two upgrades and a damage control, you are left with very little cpu (40 or so) and almost no grid, with this your options for shield mods are limited to a few poor choices.

Skiff is the only barge that can run with 3 mining/harvester upgrades and still have a virtually ungankable tank.

As it stands now, skiffs are already basically ungankable, it takes a very large team of players to take one down.

Skiff has a lot more hit points than the other barges, that by itself is enough to still make it a very hard to gank ship, even if it runs with 3 miner/harvester upgrade 2's. If a player chooses to fit max yield on a Skiff, he shouldn't be able to have such an extreme tank. This could be remedied by reducing a 3x mining/harvester upgrade skiff to have around 40-50 spare cpu for fitting tank modules, the other exhumers have to deal with this situation, why shouldn't the Skiff? It will still be hard to kill.

A max yield skiff with ice harvester II and 3x ice harvester upgrade II has 170 cpu and around 50 pg for mid slot fittings.
A max yield mackinkaw with ice harvester II's and 3x ice harvester upgrade II has 50 cpu and about 20pg for mid slot fittings.

Why should the skiff have such excessive cpu for fittings? Even players who know nothing about tanking can fit for full yield and still end up with a strong tank. There's no thought to be had about "hmm, how should i use my cpu" because you have so much of it. There's no tradeoff for going for a max yield on a skiff instead of tank. There's no reason to ever use less than max yield fit on a skiff.

Base CPU of each exhumers
Mackinkaw 270
Skiff 300
Hulk 310

Ice harvester II fitting req - 66 cpu each.
Skiff only fits one - 66 cpu used (234 cpu left for mid and lot slot fittings)
Mackinkaw has to fit two - 132 cpu used (132 cpu left for mid and lot slot fittings)
Hulk must fit three - 198 cpu used (112 cpu left for mid and lot slot fittings)

This imbalance causes the skiff to have over 100 extra cpu than the mackinkaw or hulk have. Once mining/ice harvester upgrades are fitted, it's even worse, the skiff ends up with several times more cpu than the other exhumers. With max yield fit and no mids fitted, skiff 170 cpu spare, mackinkaw 50 cpu spare, hulk I do not know exactly, but it's less than 50 cpu.

It's almost like the developers forgot that the hulk and mackinkaw barges have to fit more mining lasers/ice harvesters than the skiff and just decided to give the skiff the same cpu as the other barges anyway.

I propose a reduction to the procurer/skiff cpu so it isn't so vastly overpowered in comparison to the other barges. A wisely fitted skiff will still not die to ganks. But a 3x mining/harvester upgrade skiff with poor choice in mid slot fittings should actually be ganked sometimes. The only people who lose out are those who go for max yield and ignore tank or make poor choices of mid slot and rigs. Smart players can fit full yield and will still never be ganked. Even if the skiff is reduced to have only 50 cpu spare for mid slot fittings on a max yield setup (like the mackinkaw and hulk must deal with) the skiff will still be a hard to gank ship, if those 50 cpu and rig slots are used wisely.

Don't fit three upgrades then?

Am I misunderstanding you?

Your post is missing the yield numbers. Please supply those to give your argument substance. Thanks.

I think you are kinda missing the point. In the tank, yield, cargo balance, the Skiff is suppose to the be one with the most tank at the expense of (slightly) lesser yield and a smaller cargo hold. The way it is the tankiest is by having the extra grid and slots to fit the tank modules. The Mackinaw and the Hulk excel at their own attributes but at the expense of tank, which is enforced in part by the inability to fit as many tanking modules.

If you gave the other two the ability to fit the same tank as a Skiff, what would be the point of the Skiff?

Came expecting numbers.

Leaving sorely disappointed.

My my my... these are sweet, delicious ganker tears

I hear they are very good in cakes.

As a side note, having to empty your ore hold twice as less is kind of a decent advantage. Actually so much decent that the metrics talk for themselves in terms of player usage of these ships.

Nothing beats the isk/effort for boring activities, nothing.

Here's a number: 706

This is the meters my Skiff can go per second. You may call this imbalanced, I just call it awesome.

Skiff has the same yield as mackinkaw now.

Aww, how cute! I've never seen a gankbear on the forums before.

You are obviously very upset OP. Here, have a sad smiley face:

:(


Also, you might want to discuss these topics BEFORE they go live in designated feedback threads in the 'features and ideas' section of the forum.