Science & Industry

With the talks of players wanting T3 battleships, frigates.... any clue if CCP is gonna throw us a bone and put in a T3 mining ship? Seems nothing new has come to miners in years. You can say Orca and Rorqual but they aren't just for one person to use. Its more for mining ops, not *just* the miner. T3 cruisers and i assume T3 battleships and frigates will be for both solo and group play. CCP said they were talking about comets... which sounded exciting and new. I remember a while ago though them saying that it was just talk and its not gonna happen.

What would a T3 mining ship offer to a miner?

A better yield?
More cargo capacity?

Until a function for a T3 miner is found there is no need for one. If you increase the yield then it wont actually improve mining or make miners any more isk because it would be the standard for anyone mining.

Now a subsystem for T3 cruisers (and any new T3 ships) which gives bonuses to Gas Harvesting or a bonus to obtaining any new feature (like comets) would be pretty good.

There can never be more yield than a Hulk. CCP won't accept that, as it would affect the markets.

More yield even to specific ores is not going to help, it will just mean people without T3's will earn less. Instead of mining ops with hulks and Orca's/Rorq's you will see them with only T3's instead. The Hulk (except maybe for solo mining) will be pointless as it wont be able to compete with T3's for yield. Unless there was a drawback, like not being able to drop the ore into a can or an Orca/Rorq. By having a ship with more yield than a Hulk will pretty much make them obsolete in one go and then we will have another ship in Eve that isn't worth the minerals it takes to make.

Extra cargo hold at the expense of yield, that would be OK I suppose, but unless you are mining to pass the time rather than make money I cant see it being used. If you ask most full time miners who aren't doing it solo (as in one miner) I bet they don't fit cargo expanders on their Hulks, for the reason that they drop their ore straight into an Orca/Rorq/jet can before their cargo hold will fill up.

The Skiff already has +2 Warp Strength, a mining ship that is immune to bubbles? Honestly if you get bubbled then you are doing it wrong. Remote Sensor Damp increases the time it takes for locking people up or having a small signature radius, however a 'ceptor will still lock you down fast enough.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. I think you are looking and saying "how could a new ship make me more money by doing the same thing I am doing now, at the prices I am currently getting?" What you are not seeing is the implications of what would happen if something like more yield or bigger cargo would have on the industry. All it would do is push prices down further.

Now if there was a new resource type or a new way to get current resources (see the inclusion of the Drone Regions and the affect they had on mineral prices as an example of how things shouldn't be done) that could only be accessed by using a T3 mining vessel (like a comet as I have previously said) then it would be all good. But having a T3 just replace a current ship by having better attributes would just be silly.

As for making those huge lowend roids that you get in 0.0 worthwhile to actually mine them, then that lies not in creating a bigger more effective miner but altering other things in the game to make mining profitable again.
Say making all rats in 0.0 more like the Sleepers so that you cant just sit tanking the initial spawn in a well tanked Hulk or other ship for all eternity. Maybe having the response from the local pirates match the number of ships which are in the belt/anom. So if you had ten Hulks then ten rats of similar ship size would turn up to fight you off and if you brought in more ships they would escalate as well. Maybe they wouldn't be that powerful but it would mean you might actually have logistics ships on hand to help tank the rats and a couple of DPS dealers to kill them.
Or making mining more interactive, like to increase yield you solve maths questions or some such that relate to the strip miner in some way (yes, not my best suggestion but you know what I mean, plus it would help with bots).
Or make the strip miners so that you actually have to aim them yourself to get the veins of ore in the rocks (like in current mines where you have your shafts to match the veins of the ore in the rock).
Or maybe even having the ores completely split up, so only certain ores appear in high/low/null sec (which would be kinda interesting).
Or any number of ways that I cant think of and are a hell of a lot better than the ones above but do you get my point?

Having said all that, why not just make a mining Titan with an AoE mining thingy and just DD to hell the belts and solve the problem once and for all, just like Titans did with blob's...oh wait...

Kasha, I'm all for having better looking mining ships and ones that can operate under harsher conditions, but as long as they are balanced in line with the current ships we have. If can survive doing some ninja mining in low/null sec awesome providing it doesn't out-mine the current Exhumers. The market would adjust to new influx of minerals if more people are mining previously untapped resources, however this percentage would probably be small overall and not have a massive impact, but larger yield mining ship would have a significant impact.

Specialisation yes, but specialising in something other than just bigger yield.

I think instead of having a new mining ship, why not a mining support ship? Not a hauler or a command ship though, more like what a Logistics ship does for a Battleship. Something that makes it more of a ship. How this would work I don't know but something you could have in your fleet that did more than improve cycle time and range or haul out all your ore.

I don't know, the only thing I can come up with is a ship makes mining more efficient or the lasers of better quality, so when you are mining a roid and the T3 targets the roid (or you) and actives a highslot module instead of Veld you get Dense Veld and it can have like 4 of these modules. That would have an impact on the market but it wouldn't just be a bigger better mining ship it would be something new, something different. Though it would just mean that this ship would be a requirement for any serious miner (or not if the improved yield is less than what you would get if you had another Hulk pilot).

Above is not the best idea by any stretch of the imagination but do you get what I am trying to get at? A new mining ship should either improve the ones we have or fill a role that they cant/don't currently do.

IMO the only way they could bring out a better yield miner without lowering prices is to release it in conjunction with other ships/items that require an excessive amount of minerals to create more need for ore mined to balance the influx of more minerals to the market.

A capability to control 10 mining drones but only 5 combat drones as usual ships, 5 mining drones are useful but 10 would better.

better tank!!!!..........

maby a bit more cargo or some utility slot like cloak/probe launcher/gas miners.


keep the yield the same whatever just give it a better tank

T3 Frigates are an answer to a question NObody is asking.



The Orca can be converted to fit a 100 mn MWD and makes an excellent 'really fast small freighter'.


Has anyone posting even actually FLOWN a T3 Cruiser ???

If you did, you would realize the instant uselessness of a T3 Frigate. And making BS as T3 would really put them power-wise more in the class of a Dread or something and that will be too much in High-Sec for operations there.

So, going on the 5 possible subsystems, where is there any advantage to any of them for mining ? More CPU ? Covert Configuration ?

Any kind of mining volume INCREASE I am HIGHLY opposed to. It's already plenty fast with the Hulk/Orca pairing, and any more volume WILL crash the markets.....AND help the botting miners grab even more more easily.

Maybe a slightly more 'tankeable' Hulk variant would work. As far as GasHarvesting goes.......it's just fine with the ships we have that can fit 5 Harvester II's.

I'm a hardcore industrialist and this is just a really bad idea. This would FUBAR the market from the flood of minerals which is already out of hand.

I'd like that, even if it only had 2 strips. Better tank too of course.