Science & Industry

Unless there's a reasonable reward or reasonable defensive mechanic for moving my rorqual outside of its pos, I won't be moving it. If they force the rorqual out of the pos then i'll just scrap it, and making it cost less to do the same things or even do less is a big middle finger to everyone who owns one now.

If good Rorqual changes fail to succeed.... can I petition CCP to make a ship with this?

The basic issue is that the Rorqual needs to be 2+Billion useful without going into siege mode. Otherwise it will never be used outside a POS, or extremely safe areas.

Yea, the CSM talk about all kinds of crap that's never going to happen. That's what they do.

If you want a mining booster on grid then it is not the Rorqual. Stop trying to force square pegs into round holes.

The Rorqual is fine, it sits in a POS and provides a stronger mining boost than the Orca.

Create another ship, smaller, cheaper. Battleship cost. Let it boost stronger than a Rorqual when on grid, chuck in a compression capability (with tractor beam) so it can grab containers of ore and compress it so it's doing something useful. Don't let it store much, Miasmos are perfect for moving the compressed ore away.

Heck create a T2 variant, give it cloak/covert cyno capability, weaker boost to compensate. It can wander around boosting and compressing ore with Prospects and a blockade runner...

I like the idea of introducing a smaller battlecruiser size vessel with better boosts. Having anything as big as a rorq on belt is ridiculous but i like bold ideas..


Let it boost more than a rorq and also give it the capability of 'enriching ores' in the belt whereby it has to actively use a module that has a very low chance of increasing the current ores quality based on the rocks size in proportion to current ore. This way the booster isnt just sitting there has to pay attention and can increase miners yields.

True Rorquals make vast sums of ISK indirectly but the pilot typically doesn't see it. I've never been compensated by a corp for boosting and logistically speaking it'd be very hard to charge isk / cycle in a fleet to anyone willing to pay. There will always be another willing to boost for cheaper or for free. And even if you could, how much can you squeeze out of a miner... 5k isk/cycle to open yourself up to attack. Obviously this goes above the Rorqual and more toward an Orca but the principal is the same.

To be honest I would take a Rorqual to actually mine a belt if the Rorqual could produce at least equal to what it costs to field. That's the nature of ships, use what you can afford to lose. All ships currently in game can make ISK directly and therefore prove their worth. Sure not every time you lose a ship you made enough to field a new one, but they have the capability. Even the Orca makes isk with it's ability to haul... is it the best way to make ISK no, but it's a way. Rorquals, being limited to where they can be used, the ability to haul is not enough, especially with compression being removed from them. That brings be back to my original point, I'd rather use an Orca in Null to boost with 90% effectiveness but 1/5 the price tag. So why Rorqual?

I boost for a fee, accept "miner" into fleet... warp to member.... rorqual goes boom. Thats why the logistics of charging per cycle doesn't work. And assigning protection to the rorqual just means more corp members not making any isk. This is why I say giving the Rorq the ability to mine is a much better solution than any of the OP suggestions relating to shields and giving it combat abilities and whatnot

I have been at this game since its inception pretty much. The rorqual is an interesting ship with a lot of benefits, however the changes in the Crius leads me to believe the best thing we can do with it will be as follows.

Rorqual Purposed Changes:

Non-Siege

A: Capital Strip Miners. This only makes sense and was I originally thought the rorqual would be. Take it in the belt and make it happen. While industrial mode it crushes all ore in its hold into squares.

B: Make it immune to E-WAR. Similar to Supers it can not be locked down, however it is still susceptible to hot drops as being in siege mode would still make you a squishy.

C: Add slight defense bonuses to miners in surrounding area. Honestly, its drone damage at level V is already pretty nasty and no rats or small ships in their right mind would

-Sieged -

20 percent bonus to miners shield
20 percent bonus to drone damage to all mining ships
-mining bonuses of course.
-Constantly crushes ore and puts it in squares.


Just a few ideas. Other than that it stays in a POS as far as I am concerned.

We're running all over the map here. Basically here is what we know:

1 - They intend to make the ship so that you want to use it in a belt.

2 - They intend to beef up its defense extraordinarily, and its offense at least somewhat.

3 - They want to give it not only the ability to protect itself but also to protect its mining fleet.

(The above points were stated, but of course nothing is written in stone.)

4 - They've talked about buffing the Rorqual before, a year ago and even before. They've known it needs a buff for a while, but nothing previously discussed made the cut. (read: if you're proposing something that has obviously been proposed before, say something simple like just removing the siege, if it didn't get approved then it's likely not getting approved now.)

5 - They seriously considered a POS bubble effect, and the reasons that it was not implemented were on the one hand a lack of technical ability to implement it, and on the other hand an uncertainty about the future of POS bubbles even for POSes. The possibility was NOT ruled out because it would make the Rorq OP, however.

Now in order to make us WANT to use the Rorqual in a belt they have two options. They can make its bonuses only usable in belts, or they can make its bonuses work much better if it is in a belt. I am sure the players will prefer the second option and whine if they choose the first option, but in my experience the player base will generally whine and trash CCP no matter what they do, yet the whiners will not do the logical thing for them and just stop paying for the game. They'll just whine and maintain their subscriptions year after year. So CCP can and often does do what is best for the game regardless of what the players will prefer.

There hasn't been any announcement about changing or expanding the Rorqual's role, such as making it a capital mining barge. While this isn't a bad idea for a ship to introduce to the game at some point, this really hasn't been proposed for the Rorqual other than by a subgroup of players. CCP has never responded that they'd be interested in this. Also, there hasn't been any talk of altering the Rorqual's fundamental role, such as shifting it from being primarily a deep space mining/indy base to say an ore hauler or whatever. So it's really unlikely that the Rorq will get high sec access. It may get some ore bay expansion or something as ore will be the material to move come Crius. The Rorq has long been a nice poor man's jump freighter. But in general, I just don't see it anything really major happening. Perhaps it will get some increased jump range as the effects of the post-Crius ore economy is analyzed. But basically, I predict that the Rorqual's reinvention as a mining barge just won't happen (though a capital class mining ship does sound kick ass and may someday happen), and changes to its hauling abilities will likely be incidental and in relation to other game factors besides just balancing the Rorq for its own sake.

Really they seem to want the Rorqual to basically be the same ship that it is, a big, slow, lumbering, massive, deep space operating, mining foreman/boosting vessel. They just want it to be able to do it in a belt and to work together with its fleets. They may introduce something like bridging mining fleets. They may consider changing how it operates with jump clones. But overall making it super cheap, or cloaky, or align like a venture, or a mining barge, just hasn't really been proposed by them. They have not responded positively to any of these sorts of suggestions.

Now in terms of making it pretty much the same ship that it is but be useful in protecting itself as well as its fleet pretty much means it will need to survive a variety of escalation scenarios, and this requires that it will need some sort of god mode. Just boosting HP and DPS won't do it.

Now I have posted this summary on the one hand to draw other posters' attention to what CCP has said and predict what is more likely to happen, and on another hand to pipe my own personal preference for a god mode like the ECM-smartbomb field I recommend or something else that causes similar effect, but also to alert CCP to an understanding of what we know they've said thus far and to ask them to respond with their impressions of what we are saying in these threads. That last bit is the most important.

CCP, are your thoughts about what to do with the Rorqual changing from what you've announced at fanfest and what was discussed at previous round tables about Rorqual changes? What are you guys thinking at this point? What is being looked at? Let us give you our impressions of what you are thinking of doing at an earlier stage instead of waiting until you announce the changes in a late-stage dev blog.