EVE General Discussion

They aren't talking about the same thing, but you're confusing them to mean the same. Overpowered and underpowered discussions revolve around some ships/fits making others totally redundant. A similar discussion in mining would be for example: is the hulk overpowered, since it makes other mining ships totally pointless once you have the skills to fly a hulk. You'll notice that the discussion would be about if the hulk needs a nerf or should some other ships be buffed to make them more used. It's not going to revolve around how to make the hulk perform even better and making it more overpowered, so there would be even less reason to fly anything else when mining.

I don't see why you bring bombers and interceptors in to this, since it works against your point. People don't tank bombers or interceptors, since they know they aren't supposed to tank well. They focus on taking advantage of their strong points and keep alive by avoiding taking heavy fire. If they want to tank, they use different ships, that aren't as good at doing the things bombers and interceptors are good at. There also aren't people asking interceptors and bombers to have the ability to tank ships focused on direct combat. They accept that if they get caught or make a piloting error, they will die horribly to almost any other ship in seconds.

Miners in contrast aren't willing to make the same sacrifices. They want that maximum mining yeald ship, that can also tank like a champion. They have trouble accepting the fact, that one ship shouldn't be able to do it all and that there are always sacrifices you make to achieve peak performance in another area. A 8 turret BS is a nice mining ship with a huge tank and the insurance pay is good, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be an option for miners. I could also support a branch of more tanky mining ships, that are less efficient than hulks or mackinaws, but are capable of fitting the same modules. That way you have a clear option between tank or mining efficiency and no one but yourself is to blame if you make yourself an easy gank magnet.

Massive hull increase IS the counter. It IS the middle ground.

We don't need new ships or more slots or other hard to add stuff.

CCP seriously run some tests on sisi. Boost Hull HP on all mining craft and ask people to set up gank scnerios. Do it enough and you will find that the minimum should be a Tier 3 with great gear 100M or so. To gank a hulk in hisec.

the main problem (which you don't see for some reason): is tanking mining ship completely kills its role.

Let's speak about SB. SB is a small fast frigate with ability to fit big weapon and covert cloak. You can fit some kind of tank to it with speed modules, damage control or something.
Let's say now: to complete your job (kill your target) you need 150% of your cargohold. Or you will need to dock and refuel after your attack to make next shot.
This is what you want from miners: put tank into ship and make 2 attacks instead of 1. Don't forget: hulk fills its base cargohold in 1 cycle (3 minutes). Then it needs to spend 2-5 minutes to warp out/dock/undock/warp back to belt.

BTW: it would be nice if regular pvp ship could haul only ammo for 10 shots. Just imagine how nice will be fights?

Let's speak about anti-Falcon tactics. Drones with auto aggro, ceptors and stuff. Main idea - get falcon out from grid if you can't kill it. And what is the purpose of falcon when it needs to constantly warp out/warp into grid? And what if we speak about logistics ship with the same situation?
The same is with mining barge. You loose almost all reason to mine if you spend more time to rewarp than mining.
And if you mine ICE the problem is getting even worse: you HAVE TO finish your cycle to get SOMETHING from ice. If somebody forced you to warp out 9 minutes after you started you just wasted your time (i speak about 10 minutes cycle for example).


Why advice "stay aligned" is bad.
Proper align needs your ship to move with (let's say) 70m/sec speed towards some object. Let's say your laser hits asteroid up to 20km. So how much time you have till you get out of range? You have 5 minutes. Then you need to turn towards next object and pass your asteroid again for like next 5 minutes. (Here we speak about ICE mining).
And now get your BS to nearest belt and do this for like 1 hour. Then return and talk to us how fun is it?
And you want miners (HUMANS!) to do it. Or you want bots?

This is a great idea. I would still use the Hulk, but thats only because I mine actively... and infrequently.

But it would provide an option for those who want to be less active, and make perfect sense IU as well.

Option 1: Slightly increase T1 barge tank so a Covetor can handle lowsec rat spawns (0.1-0.4) with 'standard' skills.

Option 2: Restrict mission loot. Level 1 missions should drop meta 0-1, Level 2 should drop meta 1-2, level 3 should drop meta 2-3, level 4's should drop meta 3-4 loot, and level 5's should only drop meta 4. Eliminate drops outside those ranges. Minerals should come from two places; Mining and the elusive 'transport' rat.

Option 3: Eliminate regenerating 'public' asteroid belts and increase the rate of Grav site spawns to compensate.

Option 4: Make meta 5 better than meta 4 in terms of fitting/effect (Swap stats, easier t2 fit reqs, etc). This will increase the demand for t2 products, and their base t1 requirements.

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Option 3 helps reduce 'bot' effectiveness, since grav sites ultimately despawn and have to be hunted down again. It also provides an additional layer of 'protection' for lowsec miners against killmail-happy pirates that have all but run them out.

Option 1 provides a handout to Miners to more seriously weigh the pros vs cons of operating in lowsec.

2 and 4 make mining more profitable, and fun for miners has always come down to counting the profits after a long day's work.

You're halfway there. I'm saying nerf the hulk's tank while buffing the covetor's. It should be a choice: mining barge for tank, or exhumer for yield and cargo capacity. There's no reason a hulk should be able to carry significantly more cargo than a covetor UNLESS something else were sacrificed for that cargo space. If necessary, the yield on the hulk could be increased so that it was still considered a worthwhile investment in spite of its fragile hull. It could be something as simple as changing out one mid slot in favor of a low, allowing for more cargo or mining upgrades.

If the Hulk were to suffer from CCP's infamous Nerf Bat, then let it be restricted to removing one mid slot for a low slot for an additional MLU. On top of that, it may need an additional CPU/PG upgrade to compensate for the third MLU. There is a reason miners want to fly a Hulk and that is for the maximum efficiency in yield. The tank is actually alright considering that a single Catalyst can take down a Hulk in 0.5 space so long as the Hulk is fitted with anti-tank mods like cargo expanders and/or optimizers. A naked Hulk with moderate skills has about 8,000 BEHP (less if the skills are basic and cargo mods are added).

This reminds me, the Covetor is overdue for additional slots. If it's going to be buffed for better tank, it better have more slots.

TBH, I think the barges and exhumers are *fine*. The problem is the mechanics themselves. They promote the feeling that you should be "safe" in hisec, and people then get really really risk averse.

As it stands, you have six nearly 100% "safe" sec systems (1.0 - 0.5), with the only real "risk" being suicide ganks. Then you have supercaps online in the remaining 5 security bands (0.4 - 0.0).

If hisec wasn't so "safe" (and I don't mean just suiganks), so that it was a "good idea" to have a defence fleet in 0.5 (and maybe 0.6 and 0.4 as well) for your mining ops, we wouldn't be running into so many "it's not fair that I can get ganked!!" feelings.

Here's essentially the changes that would get made:

1.0 to 0.7 stay essentially the same, though rats would be introduced in 0.9.
0.6 to 0.4 would be "lowsec light"
0.3 to 0.0 would essentially have no changes


the biggest change would be in the "lowsec light" systems. CONCORD gets removed, and replaced with the faction navies. Navies escalate in waves (i.e. they don't bring CONCORD DPS right away), and waves would spawn as if the sec status was +0.3 higher (so the 0.6 system would have the navies spawn as if CONCORD in 0.9 -- about every 10-15 sec or so).

Navy waves would be as follows:
1st -- "some" DPS. Tankable in case you need to get that last shot off on a ganker.
2nd -- higher DPS, still tankable, but they bring a few scrams ... so, yeah, you probably want to GTFO before they show (or hope you can kill off the points).
3rd -- CONCORD DPS.

Now, if you go GCC in "lowsec light", you're banned from jumping through a gate or docking (unless you get podded, then you wake up in your medclone as normal). If you run from the navy, they'll spawn where ever you land after 10-15 sec (so you'd better align fast), and can see through cloaks so you can't safe up and hide out your timer that way. They'll spawn at whatever level is appropriate -- so if you gank a ret, then bail before the navy shows, the first spawn will only be the "tankable" ones. If you're already 2 minutes into the timer, you'll only get the psuedo-CONCORD spawns.

Rules for capships, POS, etc that rely on system security won't change.

I have been rattling the bars about making ALL Ores and Ices PROBEABLE ONLY !....for ages.

This would solve at least 80% of the issues that we ALL know of.....................


BTW this thread is losing its interest as responses are WAY tl;dr

Thank YOU for the great response. Combine that with the scannable 'roids only idea..........