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aaaand this person doesn't know what they are talking about

as for ice harvesting yield it will be the hulk

The Hulk, Mack, Covetor, and Retriever are expensive ships that are relatively high skill yet are largely useless in high sec mining because they can be predictably and trivially ganked by a single player with 2 low skill toons in cheap catalysts. The proposed changes do not offer any obvious restoration of balance and unpredictability in the game and that's actually more important to me than any of the tweaks of specs or slots that are proposed. The Procurer and Skiff are currently the only reasonable ships to fly in the current environment.

The changes favoring using ORE mining modules will put more ISK at risk and should have some way to protect the juicy potential killmail they represent to a commensurate degree.

Suicide ganking players are now upping their game starting to routinely fly 6-8 accounts which make ganking skiffs and procs trivial. The on-grid fleet boosting function changes (which make sense for adding interest to low and null sec PVP) demand that any ship providing mining bonuses also be put at risk into this gank-friendly and gank-predictable environment. Mining is supposed to be a viable gameplay and career path in High, Low, Null and W-space.

Some folks in the threads have proposed miners fly additional accounts with Logi. The experience of the people I've flown with has found that an ineffective defense strategy and that ECM has been the only viable defense and then only if you are paying super close attention and able to lock and activate in the short window between the start of the attack and CONCORD arrival. It's viability degrades as the solo or duo miner is attacked by a swarm of suicide ships.

There are plenty of changes that could restore balance. CCP can nerf the cat and thrasher, make them more expensive to build so the economics change (isk of purchasing gank config = isk of mining config), buff the mining ships, or change their specs so there are fitting options that can counter the multiboxing gankers. CONCORD has been dealing with gankers a couple years now, why haven't they gotten better at their job -- are all our taxes just buying coffee and donuts? NPC players pay more taxes than everyone else, CONCORD could be made more responsive when they're in distress rather than 100% predictable for gankers as they are today. There could be some mechanic that allows a miner to buy or earn "VIP status" with CONCORD adding improvement or unpredictability to CONCORD response time. Right now I don't see the proposed changes offering miners a viable set of counters that allow flying each of the mining ships in the current ganking-prevalent environment in high sec. That's worth a closer look. Everything in Eve is supposed to have a counter, right?

It would be sad to have no change to the current status quo of the ganker/miner dynamic in this iteration of changing all the mining ships.

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OTHER TOPICS

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Putting mining boosters on grid adds risk, and today it's a manual process for them to get paid for their contribution. It would be nice if there was a mechanic that could automate sharing the reward of a fleet's mining efforts so we could retire some of the manual accounting and out-of-band spreadsheets this requires today. Fleets have a way to do this for missions but not for mining. Online poker lets the house take a part of each round, an optionally-on setting could enable something similar to happen for each cycle you're boosted in a fleet.

It would also be nice to have a mechanic that supported ore buys in the belt which are also common but not supported by any game mechanic (something and as simple as an equivalent of the station trade button in a new public shared "trade" hold in selected ships would do this -- say the orca and transport ships).

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MTUs are a problem in public fleets. They collect the owners and all fleet members cans, making jetcan mining not possible. The fleet boss has the unenviable job of arbitrating "you stole my can" arguments if anyone launches an MTU. It would be nice if the MTU could have a new mode that only collected the owners cans or a checkbox in the create-fleet options that optionally introduced this behavior.

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Fozzie: It would also be nice in this iteration to have improvement in gameplay for day-trippers exporting ice from shattered wormholes. I hear they were your invention (love 'em!). It would be nice to have a way to do compression in the hole (can't take a rorq, or plant a POS or Citadel) or have a ship that has more cargo capacity than a Miasmos that can fit in and out of the exit. It would be nice to have a module that could add compression to ships, or a Mobile Depot like unit that could do ice and ore compression. I trip out to unload every 12 or 15 ice (or even every 60 ice) is very inefficient at clearing the shattered belts. It would be nice if that could be made better.

Thanks for listening.

O.o you are already doing 377 dps with over 102k tank on a meh t2 fit in a skiff what more do you want O.o

I'll take more drone bandwidth, but now that you mention it, a DD Hood Ornament would be better

Zainou 'Gypsy' CPU Management EE-603
Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2
And if you don't have it to 5 yet, CPU Management

And if that isn't enough to please you, perhaps you should give up a T2 extender or Amplifier for a meta. If you're still not pleased, use the skiff or anti-ganking utility.

A few years ago the lines were quite clear. You could have:

a) Major yield with Orca boost and Freighter hauling the groups load -- aka Hulks;
b) Personal fleet with decent bays for multiboxing and probably Orca and Freighter too -- aka Skiffs;
or c) Solo miner who cowers every time a scout or destroyer enters belt, at most has an alt with an iteron 5 -- aka Mackinaws

Now the lines are so blurred, you got a Mack within 10% yield as a Hulk, yet a Hulk has what...8% of the hold of the Mack and 50% the EHP as the Skiff?

I'll buy 10 billion stocks of Mackinaws, O.R.E..make me rich!

And for the record, good old days when Osprey was the cruiser miner and people often used a badger or Iteron 1 with a T1 Miner and expanders for AFK mining to avoid can flipping before ganking became an issue that it is as of late. Having less training time for barges/exhumers and the tank the skiff has, you all should stop complaining over every little tid-bit change to them and be happy you're not earning 25m3/s with a 12k m3 hold or worse.

Finally my response to the multiboxers out there with trouble managing their cycles. I have two words for you all: structured cycles. Let me explain...a cycle time is roughly 120 seconds, and you have 4 alts. 120/4=30 seconds, it takes what... 7 seconds to alt+tab (or click) and drag ore to the Orca/Rorq? Ok, try this:

Miner 1: F1 (through F3)
You: 1.........2..........3.........4.............5................6...........30
Miner 2: F1 (through F3)
...see the pattern yet?

Now I do realize that depleted asteroids would be your next through. That's simple to fix honestly, survey scanner!

As for the fitting complaints. If you really can't figure it out:

Skiff [Anti-gank]
2x T2 Ice/Strips
1x Survey
1x T2 LSE
1x T2 Inv Field
1x
1x T2 DCU
2x MLU2/IHU2

Hulk[Fleet ops]
2x T2 Ice/Strips
1x Survey
1x T2 Inv
1x Meta 4 MSE
1x T2 DCU
2x MLU2/IHU2

If you can't fit it, try working on CORE skills, ask more experienced pilots for help, or join a teaching corp, rather than forum troll skills.

I welcome the skin changes to the mining vessels but why mess with the hardpoints and bonuses if the final stats are unchanged?

ORE modules will still not be of any use outside collectors pieces unless they can provide some bonus over T2 modules and T2 crystals.

The Skiff and the Procurer were unique in having only one turret hardpoint and IMO putting two turret hardpoints on is a tweak too far.

Looks like my happy days with Skiff mining are over! Now 2 times more crystals and twice the amount of messing with asteroids targeting with nothing in return Thu!!! I was happy with my Skiff in 2 years! Why destroy it now? I don't want second strip miner with nothing in return!!! If so many changes happens so rapidly i think maybe it's time to find another game :(

yet it is not even close to the most used...

Align time isn't an issue; like the Bowhead, the Orca can fit a 500mn Microwarpdrive, which reduces align time from a dead stop to 10 seconds. Rather, I'd LOVE to see an increase to powergrid instead, because currently I have to choose between running links or the microwarpdrive. Sure, I can turn off the links and turn on the MWD fairly easily, but it's a huge hassle, and, in the case of a gank, possibly fatal.

Also, regarding the Ore hold size, I don't want to see a buff, because buffing it will likely mean nerfing the cargohold. That cargohold is by far the MOST important part of the ship. I don't always use the Ore Hold, but I ROUTINELY use the Cargohold, Fleet Hangar AND Ship Maintenance Bay. Besides, with rigs and cargohold expanders, I can easily get this ship's cargohold to 100,000m3. If this was changed, even if they increased the Ore Hold by 50,000m3, and nerfed the Cargohold by one-half, you'd be losing tens of thousands of m3.

This is why I think the Orca should be kept as is. If there were any improvements I'd recommend, it's a larger powergrid to support the MWD, and an extra highslot, in the case a new link is added to the game. Adding much else would make it too good at its job.