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You need to add more cap to all the bargs and more cpu to the hulk. But now my plans for a procurer army is coming along nicely.

Interesting tweaks, but the unification of the number of strip miners does have the disadvantage of reducing gameplay variety. Hulk and Covetor pilots really enjoyed the ability to be able to focus longer on three different asteroids, instead of focusing less on two or one asteroid.

Crucially, this change does not adress the main issue, which is that mining gameplay is really, REALLY boring. Sure, this is a slight stats tweak and it would be unreasonable to expect a huge content change, but you should put a mining revamp alongside the hopefully planned PvE revamp.

I skimmed it and thought you were adding neutraliser slots to procurers and skiffs, but I contained my frothy rage and read it again

A small nerf to the Covetor and Hulk?

OLD Covetor
3 * 1.25 (20% Duration MBV) = 3.75

NEW Covetor
2 * 1.25 (New Strip Miner Boost) = 2.5
* 1.33 (25% Duration Role Bonus) = 3.325
* 1.11 (10% Duration MBV) = 3.69

A small loss of 0.06 effective miners. I know you can fit a mining upgrade to offset this though with the extra slot.

No you can't; you don't have enough CPU ('cos CCP have decided that removing a Strip Miner means less CPU, but adding a Mining Laser Upgrade doesn't mean more CPU).

These tweaks are fine, in that they are just in to compensate for the two strip miner modification.

Sometime down the road a bit, some other improvements could be useful for mining ships, some of these have already been mentioned as they're really good ideas that should happen.

* The Venture and Endurance are excellent as is, wouldn't change a thing.
* The Prospect is only useful for mining gas as it has no drones to defence against belt rats. Perhaps give it the same drone bay as the venture so it can mine in ore belts too.
* Make ORE strip miners worth the cost, they're pretty 'meh' at the moment. An extra 3% yield would be nice.
* Consider balancing the slots on barges to 7 each:
Procurer = 2/3/2 (It's already got a massive HP tank, it's a little overkill tbh).
Retriever and Covetor = 2/2/3 (Yes, add a second slot but only a tiny amount of CPU, be nice to have at least a few options here such as a small shield extender + survey scanner)

Exhumers should be better able to handle dangerous space (lowsec and w-space) better than they currently do (skiff is marginally good here). Eve is a pvp game but mining ships are just content for actual combat ships: tether yourself to an asteroid and say "I am content" on the dscan, effectively. What if exhumers in general were given more survivability to encourage their use outside of their "safe" space?

Throwin' this out there:
* Each exhumer loses a midslot but gains +1 warp core strength.
* Mack and Hulk gain +5 PG so they can fit medium extenders.
* Exhumers don't appear on d-scan (this enables the ship to mine without being obvious in-system, even when hostile combat ships are in the area - only when they warp to a site will they find the exhumer). Perhaps restrict this to the Mack and Hulk, since the skiff already gets the drone damage role bonus.

Finally, mining but not barge related. Plenty more work to be done here but attempting to make mining outside of HS more attractive:
* Remove jaspet, Hemorphite and Hedbergite ore sites from HS - why go to lowsec when you can get LS ores in HS?
* Remove the +5% and +10% asteroids from HS belts.
* Put Spodumain into 0.3 and lower space.

Peace out, spacebros

Why on earth would miners go to lowsec at all? There is literally nothing in low sec that a mining laser can get me that I cannot get with far less risk in either high sec or null.

All your changes would do is move more mining out to nullsec (which isn't a bad thing, mind you) and the market would stabilize marginally higher to compensate for the shipping costs. Mining in lowsec is not going to happen on a large scale because it's been hunted to death. It's like trying to swim in a group of sharks. Eventually, you will get a chunk taken out of your leg.

I'd actually be curious to see stats on which type of ore is mined most in what space. I'd be willing to bet that most of the "lowsec" ores actually get mined in nullsec because, frankly, it's safer.

What is the intended outcome that will come from this change?

I look on it this way:
First remember this is a MMORPG, where RP stands for role play. As a role player, I look at this statement about the Skiff: "Special loading algorithms allow for a +150% yield", and wonder, why does ORE not use those on the Hulk? That +150% bonus is just weird, a hack to do the tiericide, with a force fit explanation on the RP side.

I much prefer solutions to fixing game play that also flow naturally for the role player. Equalizing the turret count across all the barges does just that.

Also, remember that this change is mainly an artwork change. Its not a barge re-balance, or a mining change. Barges came up on the "revap artwork" schedule, so CCP is doing it.


Nicer looking barges and exhumers.