Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Rorqual

What does it need?

· A 'sieged' on-grid purpose.
· Greatly enhanced defensive ability (via ‘siege’)

Change summary:

· Ore mining functionality added via capital strip miners
· Removal of mining foreman and most other hull bonuses
· Removal of ore compression
· Removal of ship maintenance bay
· Reduction in cargo hold and fleet hanger capacity
· Removal of jump fatigue bonus

The Rorqual strictly becomes an ore mining dreadnaught, with the perks of greatly increased yield and localized tank at the expense of immobility and no offensive ability. This is not a solo mining ship, it will require support to use “safely”. A rough yield figure without industrial core active would be similar to a skiff / retriever, scaling up towards the output of 5 hulks with Industrial Core II. It does lose most hull bonuses along with the ship maintenance bay. Ultimately it’s no longer jump freighter junior.

Hull bonuses:

Capital Industrial Ships bonuses (per skill level):
4% bonus to all shield resistances
5% reduction in Capital Strip Miner duration

Role Bonus:
100% bonus to Mining Drone max velocity and hitpoints
• Can only fit Mining Drones
• Can fit Industrial core modules

125m³ drone bay, 125 mbit bandwidth, 200,000 m³ ore bay

Industrial Core would mimic the bonuses of the Siege module, but include a cycle time reduction bonus instead of a yield gain, along with reduced capital strip miner activation cost. The scan resolution penalty would be removed, this is not a combat ship.



The Orca

Change summary:

· Removal of mining foreman and most other hull bonuses
· Reduction in cargo hold and fleet hanger capacity
· Increased ore hold capacity
· Addition of jump drive functionality

The Orca is repurposed into an industrial focused mini-freighter with limited jump capabilities, in-line with other capitals (5LY). It retains the ship maintenance bay and ore hold, but loses mining foreman link bonuses and cargo hold capacity. The fleet hanger would function similarly to deep space transports, maxing at just over 120,000 m³. The ore hold would increase close to that of the previous Rorqual iteration, 240,000 m³ at level V. The cargo hold would be reduced to 6,000 m³, while it would be given a 10,000 m³ fuel bay. Jump fuel costs would be slightly lower compared to the old rorqual at level V.

Since this ship could be in asteroid belts and anomalies, it would also keep the ability to fit a light tank so it won’t melt to npc aggression. It comes with a 1/4/2 slot layout, an unrestricted 25 m³ drone bay and 25 mbit bandwidth . ORE has noticed how lawless space can be.

Hull bonuses:

ORE Freighter bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to fleet hanger and ore hold capacity
5% reduction in jump fuel requirements

Role Bonus:
• 90% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue



The Caperea and Cetus

What is their purpose?

· Provide mining foreman link bonuses to mining fleets
· Take command of the mining op by running tractor beams and survey scanners
· Contribute to the op itself with bonuses to mining drones
· Have enhanced resilience compared to empire faction battlecruisers

Hull summary:

· Mining foreman link bonuses (and Siege for the Cetus)
· Small ore bay
· Mining drone hp, velocity and yield bonuses
· Tractor beam range, speed and survey scanner bonuses
· Shield tank, as with most ORE ships

Two new ORE ‘battlecruiser’ class hulls are introduced (The Tech I Caperea and Tech II Cetus), with a focus on mining foreman link command modules. These ships feature mining foreman link bonuses, and for the tech II Cetus siege warfare as well. They also gain bonuses to local tank, tractor beam range and speed, survey scanner range, mining drones and come with a small ore bay. For bonus points they could utilize a variants of the Noctis model because that thing still looks awesome.

Caperea - 4H/5M/2L

Hull bonuses:

ORE Industrial bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to Shield Booster amount
3% bonus to Mining Foreman Links effectiveness

Role Bonus:
100% bonus to Mining Drone max velocity and hitpoints
250% bonus to Tractor Beam range
100% bonus to Tractor Beam velocity
500% bonus to Survey Scanner range
• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously

100 m³ drone bay, 50 mbit bandwidth. 5,000 m³ ore hold

Cetus - 7H/6M/2L

Hull bonuses:

Industrial Command Ships bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to Mining Foreman and 3% bonus to Siege Warfare Links effectiveness
4% bonus to all shield resistances

ORE Industrial bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to Shield Booster amount
10% reduction in Command Processor, Mining Foreman and Warfare Link CPU and powergrid requirement

Role Bonus:
100% bonus to Mining Drone max velocity and hitpoints
250% bonus to Tractor Beam range
100% bonus to Tractor Beam velocity
500% bonus to Survey Scanner range
• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously

125 m³ drone bay, 75 mbit bandwidth. 10,000 m³ ore hold

Summary

The exhumers are in a relatively good place, and will always have use even in the face of Rorquals in belts. Rorquals will remain expensive, be helpless without support and won’t overshadow yields as much as dreadnaughts overshadow battleships in terms of percentages. The goal is roughly 5x the yield of a Hulk when using Industrial Core II, Capital Strip Miners and 5 Heavy Mining Drone II’s.

Mining boost maximums are being increased in highsec (15% old Orca to 25% Cetus), while reduced in low,null and w-space (50% old deployed Rorqual to 25% Cetus). This would also be impacted with the ore changes that Fozzie has announced for nullsec. This hopefully means less high ends and a much more uniform distribution for actually building large scale ship industries (without having to import billions of m³ in ore). The goal is to make ore mining outside of high-sec actually worth something without having to multibox 20 accounts, and to provide progression options for industrial players.

The Orca is now what the Rorqual used to be, it’s much smaller than a jump freighter with half the range. Long range logistics will still be domain of the jump freighters, but this provides an easier and cheaper option for players of all security levels.

The Caperea and Cetus provide the last pieces in this re-factored puzzle. Heavier tanks that let them remain on-grid, bonused drones to help out the mining op with, tractor beam and survey scanner bonuses if that’s your thing. The Cetus also provides a unique bonus, offering the ability to sacrifice some mid slots to run two complete sets of gang links without resorting to the fitting mess that T3’s exhibit. These ships are easier to get into than traditional battlecruiser / command ships, utilizing skills that already exist for many players.

Compression has been removed from a ship hull completely, refactored into a unique deployable module. POS based compression arrays still exist and are instant activations, so they will continue to have a use. The MCU somewhat mimics the cargo containers from Perpetuum, jetcan expiry need not ever apply again, but there is risk in utilizing it’s benefits as ore can be stolen or destroyed. And a final reminder, the MCU compression isn’t instant.

So this is a long winded thought on how EVE mining could become more interesting and provide more on-grid content that doesn’t simply die when sneezed at and gives us more ships. Those that simply used the Rorqual to haul now have their option as well, and jump capable pilots need not invest 2.5 - 7 billion to start their endeavors. With a change as massive as this the Capital Industrial and Industrial Command Ship skillpoints should be refunded and players given the option to re-purchase / apply skill points if they wish to continue using a newly repurposed hull. The new Rorqual would have little to no use for someone that would only intend to fly the refactored Orca going forward.

Rorquals are in a terrible place right now. When the only reason to have one is for buffing miners and the entirety of its remaining feature set is irrelevant, then that's a clear indication that it's time to re-imagine, re-design and re-purpose the ship.

Even Team Five-O has said that they want to go back and re-do the Rorqual when they think of something for it to do.

The Rorqual is huge and expensive and serves no useful purpose anymore. Simply providing links is not enough. Scrap the Rorqual as it is now and turn it into something - anything - that is better.

It seems to me that the rorqual was originally conceived as an armed chaperone plus mining fleet buffing ship.

It would be great, except that it can alway be overwhelmed by an incoming DPS fleet.

The counter to an incoming fleet is to protect miners with DPS ships, but there's a problem - each DPS ship in place of a miner in the fleet causes a reduction in ISK earned.

So... how to get a DPS militia onto the field with the miners without making it a colossal waste of time?

1. rorqual only gives link bonus on grid.
2. double the rorqual's base mining link bonuses

EDIT: had a cool idea! :)
replace:
3a. mining link bonus is increased by a further 5% for *every non-mining-barge in fleet and on grid* (let's say it's a better comms network)

with:
3b. Carries up to 250 heavy mining drones which can be assigned to DPS ships who are in fleet and on grid!!!
Each heavy mining drone to have the same mining ability as a T1 mining laser. Drone's capabilities are influenced by fleet boosts and assignee's mining skills.

4. can compress ore without being forced to stand still
5. rorqual keeps its excellent drone capabilities
6. rorqual has an in-built micro-jump module that affects every fleet member on grid.
7. keeps its refitting capability
8. can fit a cyno-jamming module in a high slot (burns some fuel type) that prevents a cyno being lit *on grid*.

Now:

1. The DPS ships sitting around amongst the miners are helping to increase yield.
2. The rorqual aids the miners (and itself) in an evacuation
3. rorqual can meaningfully take part in a defence
4. it's starting to become sensible to field a fleet into a belt.



Also:
dump all off-grid boosting
same for the orca - must be on grid, but for goodness sake, give it some evasion/defensive capability.

Result:
Awesome mining fleets with teeth, fleet fights and general eve awesomeness all round.

I could go with this but if the orca gets a capital ship jump drive making it a full blown cap ship, whats to allow it into empire?
Only the jump freighter is the only capital ship with a jump drive that's allowed in empire and that's because you cant abuse the JF, where as ive seen people turn orca and rorqs into combat ships.
If the orca gets a JF it will probably be banned out of empire and then a replacement would be needed for it, for yet a another mining boost.

also people need to stop with this on grid boost stuff, even for mining it would limit the capability of having wings of miners in different belts which I have done before, just because you can track down a boost ship and kill it doesn't mean we should break and set the servers on fire trying to do on grid boost.

There is no good case for allowing a rorqual into hisec. hisec operations should not pay big (looking at you, riskless incursion fairies).



I could get on board with this - if a rorqual could be used to lead a moon mining expedition in someone else's space there'd be all kinds of fun emergent engagements as a result.

If the rorqual was required to be in space to mine a moon then again, there could be some fun play around the disruption of manufacturing and supply lines.

Very well written compared to most ship ideas posted these days. Also very nice with indepth description of changes and how it would contribute.

Rorquals are horrifically broken and have almost no place in the game.

Since the time people ask for a change about Rorqual, mining mechanic and mining gameplay, or even industry in general, I really have the feeling that even if someone came on this F&I Discussion forum with the perfect idea, making mining engaging, with perfectly balanced ships without needed a ton of work, not a single f*** would be given by CPP for the next decade.
B'cause you know, adding more imbalanced PvP ships and nullsec stuff .

I have found not less than 20 threads about possible Rorqual changes suggested for the last year. An i'm going to link them here so OP could read them if not yet done and think about what others thoughs are.

Rorqual over haul concept

additional uses for rorqual production lines. (mobile ammo annyone?)

Rorqual - new mining platform

Rorqual's future

The Battle Rorq Lament

Rorqual Fix#42

Dreadnoughts, Rorquals, and Jump Freighter high sec jumping

[How to] Fix the Rorqual. Is this a game engine restriction?l

rorqual rethink

Rorqual, Orca, Clones and Moving Capitals

Rorqual rebalance suggestion

Rorqual

RORQUAL BRIDGING

Orca & Rorqual - Balancing pass

Rorqual new roles

Possible Rorqual Rebirth

Rorqual -

What for now Rorquals

Rorqual/New ship design, a mobile refiner

NEW Resources changes = NEW RORQUAL CHANGES

Idea for rorqual rebalance


Some discussions about new mining ships -

small thought about the 2 bigger mining ships

T3 Mining Ship

Mining carrier or other drone mining ship

Suggestion for bigger mining ship

Suggestion: Mining ship migger than Exhumer

battleships size mining ships

New Mining sub-profession and Mining ship class

Minng Drones -

Mining Drone improvement idea

Hybrid Mining Drones

Mining Drone Assist

Mining Drone Love