Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I hope this discussion has not finished as we need to fix the issues with this ship and where it sits in the industrial ship chain.

Both T2 industrial ships must be looked at from a null sec hauling option first before low sec and high sec are considered, as it is pointless having a T2 industrial ships that don't work in null sec where all the danger exists.

Blockade Runner

The BR is primarily used for transporting in null sec. It can with cargo expanders fit a little over 10k in cargo and is good for most hauling up to a packaged cruiser (10k). This ship is the day to day null sec hauler and will generally survive solo ships trying to tackle. Landing in a gate camp is really a 50/50 unless fully nano fit, which improves your chances considerably, but you may only have 3k cargo, which is the trade-off.

This ship is perfect and shouldn't be changed. The option of crashing the gate is perfect for this ship due to its agility and speed.

Deep Space Transport

The DST should never be considered as requiring a scout or fleet protection. If you have a scout of fleet you should be able to fly T1 industrials with no problem of running into a gate camp. DST's have to be the other solo transport option.

They should have:
1. Big cargo capacity;
2. Universal utility (pos structures, minerals, ammo, ships etc)
3. Slow, heavy and good tank;

This allows the ship to manage large, bulky items across large distances where the BR is incapable of handling the item size. The tank on these ships really doesn't do anything if you are tackled because if you are tackled you are dead, just like the BR.

I use this ship solely for transporting packaged ships and some unpackaged ships, as a carrier or JF is total overkill for the job. With 60k you can transport packaged ships (6x Cruiser hulls, 4x Battlecruisers, or 1x Battleship). This is perfect for the industrialist/trader, but the DST has to be a universal industrial ship and needs to be able to manage not just ships but all items.

Currently the Fleet Hanger can transport all items from ships, ammo, minerals, modules and PI materials. It seems like a pointless distinction between the cargo bay and fleet hanger when they can take the same items. This should just be merged into a single bay which can be increased with skills, rigs and modules.

Micro Jump Drive

The MJD is pointless. The cloak/mjd trick does not work. When used you look on your screen cloaked but to everyone you are sitting still, 100% uncloaked, with the MJD warp signature clearly visible. The only option for the MJD is jumping out of bubbles. But if you land at a bubble, the gate will most likely be under 100km so you cannot MJD and have to very slowly travel towards the gate and you are definitely dead by anyone within 3 jumps of your position.

With scramblers killing both the MJD and MWD the MJD becomes useful only for getting out of bubbles when no-one is around. If you are in a bubble with no-one around the MJD is pointless as you don’t mind spending 20mins slowly traveling out of the bubble.

Gate Camps

The primary danger for any transport ship is a single ship landing on the gate with you. Currently one ship will kill this ship very quickly with a scrambler. Fitting stabs means they need more points but you now only have an AB to accelerate you.

If you are in a bubble with a single ship with a scram, you are dead and any thought of crashing the gate won’t work. You won’t be moving very fast and they will just grab you on the other side, if you can make it in the first place which is very unlikely.

Organised camps with a dictor pilot (which all gate camps have) means this ship is dead. The idea this can run gate camps is ridiculous at the moment.

HOW TO IMPROVE THIS SHIP

Cargo Space

Turn the ship into a single universal transport ship which can handle all situations enabling the ship to be fit for its intended purpose. Have a single cargo hold which can take fitted ships, package ships, minerals, ammo, POS structures etc. Make the cargo hold large (100k) so that it becomes a useful ship.

Gate Camps

The BR uses stealth, ability and speed to avoid enemy ships. The DST needs to be able to run through these gate camps. If the ship uses tank to overcome the gate camps, then there are a couple of options. Keep the tank ability and bonuses to reps etc and add to these bonuses the following:

1. Bubble immunity;

Provide bubble immunity but make the ship take an extended time to get to warp, so it has to sit there tanking the damage. If incorrectly fit or if there is too much damage the ship will die. The DST should never have to travel at sub-warp speed. It should just warp point-to-point and that’s it. If it does move at sub-warp, its current speed if fine (less than 200m/s). Bubble immunity does not provide an overpowered ship as it can always be tackled if the warp stabilizers are overcome.

2. Deep Space Scan

Allow the ship to scan the other side of stargates and jump bridges to see what lies ahead. A pilot could land on grid with the stargate, lock the gate and select d-scan or activate a module which would use the stargate as a conduit to scan the destination system. A report would be produced (like d-scan) which would advise if any ships are on grid, ship type and if bubbles exist. Its scan range may be limited to 250km around the destination gate, so you can’t scan for everything in the system just around the gate area.

(continued below)

Two solo transport options are neither needed nor desirable, as one would inevitably supplant the other. The niche of "escorted, high-capacity hauler" is better.

A DST has twice the cargo of a T1 hauler. When scouting fails, the extra tank of a DST has value.

Let me guess: you fly either a Bustard or a Mastadon. I know an Impel pilot would never say such an ignorant thing.

Edit: Man the fail is strong in your post. I'm thinking that you don't fly any of these things.

Warp Interdiction nullification in exchange for taking "longer" to get into warp? So, I take it that means you want ABs and MWDs to be forbidden from the ship, because as long as they can be, it's going to take 7.5s to get to warp.

AB/MWD bonus useless? Ever have to burn back to a gate? Now, I would prefer if this was actually a resistance to being webbed, anywhere from 15-20% per level, but these boni have a point.

And yes, you do fly this thing with a scout in 0.0 and LowSec, and you laugh if a random neut or even a small gang tries to blow you up. This ship is not for running full-fledged gatecamps. If it was, it would be called something like "blockade runner" and have a cov-ops cloak.

This, but I also think it'd be a bit OP.

If people have a big issue with the bubble immunity, then make players have to overcome the warp core stabilizers (WCS) before points, scrams and webs take effect.

The resistance to webs is a good idea, where level 5 transport ships skill will provide 100% assistance/resistance and force the tackler to overcome WCS before they can take effect.

If the skill is not at level 5 then the webs will have an effect and the WCS will not need to be 100% overcome for the webs to slow or turn off the MWD/MJD.

I still think that the WCS need to protect the MJD and MWD for this ship. It may be a special attribute for this ship only. But this ship needs a special ability that doesn't get it out of jail every time but increases its chance for survival.

MJD can bring your ship out of harms way if it takes longer than 9s to put a scram at you(for example against a BC that is 25km away from you when you spawn on grid). It also can help a lot to get off a station that is bubbled or where you don't have a insta undock to get off the undock spot quick. Overall is is a fairly practical tool for hauling high value cargo in low sec and 0.0 plus gives you another way to get away from some tornado's or simply the undock of trade hub stations in high sec that can be crowded and makes alignment from there fairly hard.

The mjd claok trick doesn't work any more because it negated the effect of bubbles, however mwd + cloak does at any gate that isn't bubbled if the person that tries to catch you isn't on the ball or you get unlucky.



The idea is that you can't increase the fleet hangar by rigs and modules. It is kind of a guaranteed cargo size, what gives you more flexibility with the low slots and rigs, since you don't need to stack cargo extenders or cargo rigs. If CCP would have wanted one by they would have given DSTs 15-20k m³ and leave it to the players to stack up mods to get that up to the current amount of what DSTs can carry.



It would be next to impossible to stop a mjd,mwd, cloak fitted ship when you need 4 scrams(or 3 dead space) to shut it down in most gate camps. A blockade runner is also not 100% save, when you spawn in a bad spot close to drones, wrecks or even other ships you can't cloak and you can be very easy one volleyed off the field or de cloaked by a skilled ceptor pilot while you try to leave the bubble.



You need the bonus for the mwd+cloak trick in some fittings to archive a relay able result, it helps to move back to a gate when you are not scrammed or to pass a few km of bubble to reach your gate after coming out of warp(at least a bit, they are still bricks). It is useful when landing 1km outside of the dock range to close that last few hundred meters quick or to access different silos at a pos or the tower to refill it, loot wrecks at a gate quick or clear some cans that are spaced out in a belt.

I don't see how the DST has any purpose in a fleet. If you are in 0.0 or low-sec and need to transport valuable cargo from one place to another, you use a jump freighter to do it, because it can skip the danger of running into a gate camp completely. And in high-sec you are better off with a cloaked transport anyways. Which is also better for solo flight. And if you say that the freighter is too expensive and you want a cheap ship for cheap cargo, then any T1 hauler will be much less expensive.

The only role I see the DST fit in currently is to protect against the random, single tackler which tends to sit somewhere cloaked, waiting for pray. So if you are in 0.0/low, fly alone and need to pick up valuable cargo from places where you cannot cloak, then the DST has a fraction of a shining moment. But honestly: I never encountered any such situation, so I'd tend to say: the DST currently has no reasonable role other than to show off how much of an expensive ship you can afford for a minor task.

If you want to make the DST useful, it needs a significant bonus in addition to it's HP. Being able to tank a single attacker is a good thing, but 99% of the time pointless, especially if you have a cloaky alternative which can avoid combat entirely. Something as significant as (pick one or two):

- Ignore bubbles
- Warp-scramble immunity
- Align time like a frigate
- 100k cargo
- Dangerous weapon systems (hint: the dual gun slots on the Mastodon is a bad joke), including drones for the tacklers
- Short-range jump drive that targets gates instead of cynos (so it can be operated solo)