Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Tl;dr: Proposing a freighter rebalance that encourages players to fly their ships and gives them more options to fit for speed, capacity or tank.

On a recent 20 jump trek across New Eden, I found myself thinking about how slow my freighter is and how nice it would be to boost it into warp with 1 cycle of of an MWD as I can with my Orca. I don’t see this negatively impacting game balance - you can achieve the same result now using a webbing ALT but it requires multi-boxing 2 accounts and not everyone wants to, or is able to, do this.

A Google search turned up nothing about fitting a MWD to a freighter - so, if I was DEV for a day with a mandate to rebalance freighters what would I do:

* Get rid of the speed bonus per level of freighter skill and replace with an agility bonus - same as Bowhead.

* Reduce base tank but allow players to fit a DCU. This is an active module that has to be turned on after every jump. AFK pilots will have less tank than they do now as will pilots who fit for maximum capacity.

* Provide a mid-slot and a role bonus that allows fitting a 500MN MWD with enough power to boost the ship to warp with 1 extended, 15 second cycle. Putting the mid slot online would disable one of the low slots - you have 4 slots but can only use 3 of them - the extra speed is instead of something we have now, not in addition to. For an additional drawback, making a mistake and running a second cycle should pretty much kill your capacitor and prevent warping until it recharges. Once again, this is an active module and will only benefit players who are flying their ship.

The extended cycle time should give an alert Machariel pilot a decent shot at bumping and can be adjusted as necessary to achieve balance. The first bump will be more difficult but, in my opinion, it should be. Right now the freighter pilot has no counter - other than bringing a webbing ALT on a second account or logging off.

My goal here was to give freighter pilots a good reason to fly their ships along with a more enjoyable experience when they do. The capability discussed exists now if you have the ability and desire to multibox 2 accounts (or a corp-mate with nothing better to do than web for you) but, in my opinion, that should not be required.

Comment and criticism is welcome.

You mean slash base tank right? A DC near triples a freighters tank.

And then when we fit for capacity we can be much easier to gank whether we are active or not.

Your entire post is based on the joint premises that freighters should be easy and safe to fly solo, and that fewer and fewer people are flying freighters.

You are incorrect on both points.

If fewer people were really flying freighters, they wouldn't show up on killboards as often, and you'd likely see the markets for bulk items going haywire as people struggled to make deliveries. Neither of these conditions are true.

Freighters are capital ships (albeit non-combat ones) and all capital ships are geared towards non-solo play. A webbing alt should be to a freighter pilot what a cyno alt is to a dread or carrier pilot.

-1.

No to the Damage Control. If you allow the DC, you literally remove 1 low slot from the freighters. You make it absolutely mandatory to fit that module to have some meager HP. I also do not see why freighters should be able to fit a DC if they just get back to previous HP with that thing active.

An MWD cycle is also not going to save you from a Machariel bumper. The cycle is about 8 seconds for the MWD, that is more than enough time for any Machariel to land a bump.

A resounding No to these suggestions

I have some sympathy for this idea as I also fly freighters and don't enjoy the long align and jump times. However, I don't think the solution proposed is correct for the reasons that others have stated.

I would much rather see a new hauler somewhere in between the Iteron and freighter (and no that's not an Orca ).

The model was the Bowhead - not the Orca. I don't personally own one but I've read that MWD-warp does work. The main objective was to give pilots more incentive to actually fly their ships by cutting a minute off each jump. It seemed reasonable given that the Bowhead had the capability and freighters can warp even faster if you use a webbing ALT.

I use a DST for personal hauling and it only needs 1 cycle of the AB to warp - 7.5 seconds. I suppose I'm spoiled!

If CCP wants a hauler midway between the T1 industrial and freighter they only need to give the DST a standard cargo hold instead of the fleet hanger. I assume the choice not to do that was deliberate! Orca also suffers from split holds but, given its intended role, the fleet hangar makes sense.

wow, you are in a freighter corp and you came up with a slew of sh***y ideas about freighters?

Red Frog needs to s***-can your ass.

A Gank Fleet requires 1 Bumper, 1 Bowhead and 1-3 Gank pilots. Or it requires 1 Bumper, 1 Duell Baiter and some luck. A big CFCODE gank fleet does not require a cargo/ship scanner, that is done by 1 Bumper.

Fast warp --> use a web alt
More tank --> fit Bulkheads

Make it even more easy for freighters, no way.

-1

And it will be balanced?

OP no. This is an MMO, start using friends.

Stop posting.