Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ice mining drones t1 and t2 - Must have 5 drones in order for them to harvest Ice. T2 ice drones will have a faster cycle time and move faster. The collective of 5 drones will harvest 1 piece of ice collectively.

Missiles - Recently they have taken away the penalties for t2 turret ammo such as speed reduction and increased sig radius. This would be nice to see for t2 missiles. A golem already has a very large sig radius but fitted with rage torps its sig radius goes up over 100m more making it a massive target.

Marauders - Increase their bonuses for tractors and salvagers to be equivilant with the noctis, but also like the noctis, are skill dependant. The range, speed, and cycle time are based off of your marauders skill lvl.
More on Marauders - Marauders should be given the base sensor strength of their t1 counterpart. They are currently very easily jammed by npc's in missions, and if a mission has jams, then it's typically enough to keep the marauder jammed for the duration of the mission. Giving them the sensor strength of their t1 counterpart means that they will be more capable of getting an open window in order to target and destroy the jamming npcs, but wouldn't be strong enough sensors to negate jams in pvp, and since they still have a massive sig radius, would still be quite in effective in pvp.

Mining barges and exhumers -
Barges and exhumers need a few minor tweaks in order to make barges usable as more than progression ships, and exhumers to be more specialized
Procurer - Completely unusable...Don't know that I've ever seen one out flying around.... Give it gas harvesting capability and create and new strip miner style gas harvester. Also, give it decent tanking capability in order to be used in low/null sec.
Covetor - Reduce the mining barge requirement of this ship to lvl 4. Reduce the mining capability down to 80% the effectiveness of the hulk.
Retriever - Since the covetor would be reduced to mining barge lvl 4, this ship would need more funtionality to make it usable other than progression. I suggest giving it 80% the ice harvesting capability of the mackinaw. This way this ship would have some effective use to make it usable apart from the covetor.
Skiff - This ship is pretty much designed for null sec. It needs to have a bit more functionality to make it more effective. Increase the shield resistance bonus, but since this ship is an exhumer, it should be specialized on it's primary task of deep core mining, so it's 3% better yield per level of strip miners needs to be altered to only effect deep core. Increase the cargohold capacity as a bonus because it's an exhumer.
Mackinaw - Remove or alter any mining bonuses not related to ice. T2 ships are supposed to focused on a single task. In relation to fucusing on that task, the mackinaw has the capability to belt down 3 pieces of ice and refreeze them into a symetrical block, thus making the take up less m3. 3 pieces of ice are required for this process, but it reduces the m3 they take up on the ship to the equivilant of 2 pieces of ice. This process would have a cycle time and during that process the ships velocity and warp speed are half of normal due to the energy consumption that is required.
Hulk - Again, t2 ships should be focused on a single task, so remove ice mining bonuses from this ship. However, since it is a t2 ship focused on ore mining, give it a crystal hold capable of holding 3 crystals per miner, which is 450m3. So in total each turret would have 4 available crystals including the currently fitted crystal. Now a hulk can mine 4 different ore types without having to occupy is cargohold with unstackable mining crystals, but is also a bonus relative to this ship being a focused t2 ship, like marauders having good salvage capability.

T1 Frigates and cruisers - many players have complained that t1 frigates and cruisers have become unusable with the introduction of their t2 counter parts. In order to counteract this, these t1 ships need to be revamped in order to keep them viable as part of eve. My suggestion is to take each t1 frig and cruiser and give them functionality beased on what their t2 counterpart can do.
For instance manticore vs Kestrel. the manticore is vastly superior in range and dps. In order to make the kestrel a viable option it's range buff or rockets needs to be greatly increased, and needs to have a reasonable damage buff. Doing things like this for these t1 ships would not only make them more viable for less risk averse players, but would also make these t1 ships a reasonable counter to their t2 friends in pvp, but still require a bit of player skill in order to pull it off, thus meaning the t2 ship is still the superior, but a superior pilot in the t1 ship can counter that.
If no one is willing to make this kind of changes for t1 frigs and cruisers, then perhaps frigs should become the new rookie ships and all new characters should start with frigates lvl 4 and start in a race related frigate. after, as far as frigates sit right now, they're nothing more than an advanced rookie ship. Perhaps if we allowed new players to start in frigs and be one skill away from a cruiser, then perhaps more players might actually stick around. However, if we buffed the t1 frigs themselves to be a weaker but viable version of their t2 counter part, then perhaps that alone would be enough to get more players to stick around.

Done

I agree with most of what you said but the Covetor part since it pretty much already has around 80% yeild of the hulk. However, i agree for the other mining barges and exhumers that needs to be more specialized in each of their roles, expecially for a potentially gaz harvesting Procurer. It would have to be better, though, than gaz harvesting fitted cruisers like the Exequror to make it viable to invest in one.