Player Features and Ideas Discussion

can you explain the reliance of sig in a shattered hole?

Thanks Iain, mass of course.

I was crossing wires with the prospect's lower sig bonus.

I was thinking the same size as a miasmos/other T1 Specialised bay haulers.

sounds about right

not really with citadels there is 0 risk to moving JFs now and they have a much higher range not to mention the rorq still exists

Ore hold. 'Nuff said.

Covops Porpoise then. Strip the tank down, rip off a high slot, remove the logi bonus and one boost, and take away the drone damage, and cut down the drone mining bonus a little so it doesn't show up the frigs.

At that point it is to mining boosts what blops battleships are to a fleet fight. Glassy and generally shittier version of the non covops ships with better mobility and bridging.

Give it a big ass antennae thing on the ship model for the bridge effect. Call it the Narwhal.

I'll try to more clearly illustrate my thought process here so you see where I'm coming from with this.

The problem with a blops mining fleet and hauling is very much that a blops fleet, even a combat one, doesn't work like a normal fleet. Blops fleets are all about targets of opportunity and expanded mobility. The ability to move more efficiently to identify targets and take them down before an armed response can form.

The primary difference is that in this case the targets are very high value rocks/ice/gas relative to what the same group of players could safely mine in a more traditional fleet.

If you're talking about an addition to the game to buff blops mining (and thus make t2 expedition frigs more attractive miners) I think its actually a huge mistake to just add a hauler and call it a day. That doesn't do a whole lot to encourage blops mining. It just encourages blops hauling.

My entire point here is that if you're going to try and make blops mining fleets a thing, the fundamental gameplay OF those fleets deserves a paradigm shift. Blops mining shouldn't just amount to "its mining ops, but with cloaks and warp stabs" and attempting to simply add a hauler and call it a day is exactly the kind of thing that the game really doesn't need.

On the other hand, if you're designing a dedicated blops mining fleet ship it should be focused on blops doctrine principles of mobility and rapid target exploitation while suffering the drawbacks of being less prepared to hold its ground against an adverse response on grid.

With the most recent round of changes, even barges boast significant response power in terms of tank and drone DPS, but also suffer from very long strip miner cycles, long align times, and poor mobility which can make them inefficient at 'ninja mining'

When considering a blops fleet ship, also consider why it would be a BAD idea for a standard mining fleet, because it absolutely should be a bad idea for a standard mining fleet in the same manner as a blops battleship is a bad idea in a normal battleship gang. A blops ore hauler does more to encourage the use of cheap t1 barges than it does to encourage the use of expedition frigs because the "payout" of the ops (the ore) is all immediately redirected to a single ship, so there's no reason to use less efficient but more agile mining vessels.

The entire concept of a dedicated plops ore hauler is counter to the concept of blops mining. Expedition frigs are designed to be agile miners with extreme mobility and escape capability. They aren't designed to sit in one place and mine enough ore to necessitate a hauler in the first place, but rather to fill their holds and leave before it gets too hot.

You're focusing on giving them the ability to stay in one place better by giving them a big ore hold to carry their stuff so they can stay on grid and keep mining. What you should be focusing on is making them more efficient at their designed role of NOT staying on one place and mining the same thing for extended periods, but rather constantly being on the move to exploit only the most high value stuff and rapidly transport that said stuff directly to a safe drop at more frequent intervals. Much of said high value stuff is going to be found in hostile space on virtue of the spawn mechanics of those shiniest of shiny rocks, and thus the ability to efficiently penetrate hostile territory to search for and exploit the most valuable stuff is more important than actually sitting in hostile territory for longer amounts of time.

Adding a hauler so they can sit in one place longer doesn't create any kind of new mining paradigm. It just takes exciting ships designed for more exciting and dangerous ops and asks them to operate in the same manner as larger, more profitable, tankier, and ultimately more boring ships. it asks them to sit for longer in one place in ships specifically designed to be on the move, ready to abandon their position and simply move to another one at a moment's notice, narrowly avoiding ganks, and coming out with a smaller hold of ore, but one that is far more valuable than what the same pilot could safely get away with in a barge or exhumer.

That means a focus on operational speed and projection over ore capacity, hence I maintain that a dedicated boosting ship with cheap bridging and a minimally sized ore hold is a much better way to buff blops mining than just adding another cloaky hauler to the game.

Asking a dedicated ninja mining organization like the sort you're hoping would form to also have people train in to blops battleships just to bridge works directly in the opposite direction of what you're trying to do. It requires an element of that fleet to actively train in a direction that has nothing to do with industrial operations. Lets be frank, if you're not utilizing blops bridges, is there really any point at all in running a blops fleet? Just put t1 cloaks on literally any other ship.

Stop focusing on theoretical stats of a ship that does not exist and using "it is overpowered" as a primary criticism. That's not really the point here.

The point is that a blops hauler already exists, and it can't carry reams of ore for a good reason. That reason being that if it could it fundamentally changes the management of a blops fleet to be just a shittier exhumer fleet with no compelling reason to exist in the first place in addition to drastically cutting down on content generation and making DSTs and blockade runners functionally obsolete for the purposes of hauling ore. You know, the two existing haulers classes that already don't see enough use.

Saying a titan or blops BS is an appropriate tool for a blops mining fleet is like saying a JF is an appropriate tool for hauling its ore. Technically it does the job, but it is in no way designed to do that job, and is laughably wasteful in terms of trains and money to do so.

You're basically saying "We don't need an industrial covops bridge because we have a battleship that already does the job" while simultaneously saying "We need a new covops hauler because the existing covops hauler is bad for this specific purpose."

Do you see how those two statements contradict themselves?

If a blops BS is sufficient for bridging despite having no other utility to your mining op, why is a blockade runner not sufficient despite having very limited utility to your mining op?

Either you stick to the idea that if it exists and works it is fine, or you don't. What you want DOES in fact already exist, it just isn't designed for the things you want to do with it. This is also true of the blops BS.

You're basically saying it is okay that a member of your industrial fleet is required to shove tons of trains in to a ship with zero industrial utility simply because it is the only avaliable bridging tool. Do you not see how that's actually a bigger problem for a blops mining fleet than not having a bigger cloaky hauler?

Do you understand that "hauler" and "mining command ship" are two very different kinds of ships with different design goals? You theoretical hauler has implications far beyond blops mining fleets. An industrial-bridging boost ship, however, really doesn't. It appropriately occupies CCP's stated roles of intent for mining command ships, and does so in a blops fashion. it boosts the fleet, it helps protect the fleet (via fleet mobility rather than logi) and it mines a bit.

Most importantly it does this on a platform designed for commanding this specific style of mining fleet, a niche that is not filled by existing command ships, because none of the current blops bridge and boost ships have any place in an industrial fleet design. if you're talking about adding a new ship to the game, you should be talking about how to do an industrial op without requiring militarry vessels to actually make it work. The bridging booster concept does in fact take two ships out of your fleet, both of which are only doing the job of half of a ship. If you're using a covops command ship or BS, its entire combat utility is useless. it's like fitting a destroyer to mine and saying we don't need mining frigates (which is how things used to work before mining frigates)

Your hauler is a band aid on a much bigger problem, and that problem is that you're forced to use military vessels just to run an industrial operation. Not to protect that operation, but to actually run it at all.

By your logic you don't actually need a blops hauler. You just need the ability to titan bridge exhumer fleets and orcas. After all, that tool already exists and that fleet is already balanced.

the solution here is a temporary jump bridge, like a mini bridge that only lasts a few hours, can only be placed in High Sec going to low/null and that only allows miners and ore hold haulers to pass through it.

That would allow miners to setup up an op for the day, place the bridge and then hop into low or null for all their mining needs without the need for a permanently anchored thing, which also allows them to move often, this would get way more miners into low and null sec I think for a reasonable cost, but would only work or be viable if it locked access down to only miners and haulers with ore holds.