Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As a user who engages in the practice of mining in EVE, to the extent of running Fleets of mining vessels with Orca support, I am faced with a recurring challenge when using Covetors -- the Ore resulting from two cycles of three T2 Mining Lasers with T2 Crystals, when enhanced by the Orca and perfect Mining Links, is greater than the diminutive capacity of the Covetor's Ore Bay (a mere 7 K m3, scarcely larger than a Venture's, despite it being several times larger as a vessel).

Given this situation, unless the user carefully jettisons the contents of their Ore Bay with each cycle of their mining lasers, this invariably results in a chunk of mined Ore being lost on the second cycle (the Ore Bay being over-full), the mining lasers shutting off, etc. Not a very happy situation.

If the Ore Bay in the Covetor was increased ever-so slightly, just so as to be able to accommodate 8 Km3 of Ore, this overload would no longer occur on the second cycle. It would of course occur on the third, and the user would still need to take action before then, but this change would double the amount of time the user has between having to take an action during the mining process, as well as prevent the loss of the excess mined ore in the second cycle, over and beyond the capacity of the Ore Hold.

Yet this redesign philosophy does not jibe with the Retriever's 22 K m3 Ore Bay, nor the Venture's 5 K m3 Ore Bay.

If the goal of the changes were to force all Mining Vessel operators to grit their teeth and watch mining lasers spin, why was it not applied across the board? Why not drive new users away from EVE via sheer ennui by applying that same design philosophy to Ventures? And why leave Retrievers still able to do 10 cycles across two Strip Mining Lasers without filling their holds?

I can only conclude, given the extreme dichotomy represented by these two vessels, that the designers did not intend to make mining in Covetors such a frustratingly attentive task, and hope that if enough endorsement is given to the idea of at least allowing two cycles, they will rebalance the Covetor to accommodate it.

Actually, yes, the designers did intend to make covetors and hulks require you to pay attention. In the redesign of mining ships, they were given specific "roles" to fill.

Covetors/Hulks are focused on yield.
Retrievers/Mackinaws are focused on ore bay.
Procurers/Skiffs are focused on tank.

Ventures are entry level ships designed to allow day one newbies to still have just over crappy yield, while allowing more experienced miners to undertake some ninja mining/gas huffing.

Basically, if you want to AFK mine, get a retriever or procurer. If you want to rake in ore, use a covetor and pay attention.

Again, with emphasis, what you are asking to change is intentional.

Edit: After a quick google search, I found the relevant devblog. You can follow that link to the whole thing, but the part most relevant here is as follows.


And if you want it, here's the link for the relevant feedback thread.

Weird, I didn't see anything about unnecessary complexity in the blog. Must have missed it.

'ccp do more work so i don't have to. Its too hard and i don't want to have to adapt or compromise'

Higher skills means things get more powerful, but not necessarily easier.
- T2 modules take more cap and are harder to fit.
- The higher your armour repair skills the more cap it uses.
- The higher your rapid fire and gunnery skill the more cap your guns use.
- The higher you train armour shift hardener the more cap it uses.

So you can get more yield, but its more difficult to manage. The 'annoyance' you describe is not a problem for people mining with one or two accounts. Its just because you are trying to use more accounts than you can handle that you want this change. So no. Adapt like everyone else.

Your issue is you don't understand how different ships were designed with a different mining strategy in mind. Once you get what the goal was when giving them different stats, you will understand why some can't hold much ore and why some can or why some have much more tank.

CCP has plans to redo approach the mining ships in the game sometime this year - go look at the updates side.

What has me pissed off is this
Three frigates, 5, 10, and 15km3 ore bays
Three barges 7.5, 12 and 22(27.5)
Three exhumers 8.5, 15, and 3*

The frigates break the design function of the barges and exhumers. When CCP retools at the ships, I hope they make it harder to get barges and exhumers but make them much better than they all ready are. Frigates with a mass of 25k should not match up with ships that are 100, 150 and 200k in mass.

The Covetor should match the Procurer for Ore bay. As it is the Covetor is worst in 2 out of 3 aspects relevant to mining barges, and only very slightly ahead in the third.
Asking for it's ore bay to be slightly increased to be more even to the procurer is not unreasonable to create balance across the barges.

I don't follow your logic. So, you'd be perfectly okay if T2 modules like Armor Reppers, Guns, etc., had some added annoyance, such as not having an auto-repeat function, and you had to tap them each time you wanted them to cycle? Or some other, similar level of unnecessary, added difficulty as your skills and equipment hit their maximums?

I may be quite wrong, but your tone strikes me as someone who is not dealing with this particular challenge on a daily basis (or ever), but rather is chiming in as an armchair quarterback from an unrelated position.

When i cant fit a ship with purely t2 mods i don't whine to CCP and tell them they got the math wrong. I compromise and down grade some of my mods. I guess you dont realise how many ships out there fall shy of being able to run a full t2 set up even with max skills, and yeah it's intentional.

When higher skills makes it harder to manage the cap of a ship, i adapt the fit or i see if theres a way to manage the mods to make it work. Many are better at it than me, but i don't try to fudge them out of that advantage.

You on the other hand are complaining you cant handle multiple max yield covetors at once. Lets not lose perspective here. This isn't about covetors having an un-managable ore bay on their own, but because you're having a hard time running, what, 5-6 of them at once? Boo-freaking-hoo! God forbid you have to change one to a rettie or proc and lose some few percentiles in yield...

If you weren't trying to multi-box as many, this would be a non-issue.

Edit, i do multi box mining. Obviously i don't use as many covetors as you though.