Ships & Modules

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=72890


Allright... lets get the ball rolling.

Design Philosophy:

• Mining output: first and most visible balancing factor, plan is to increase all barge mining output to be within an acceptable margin of the Hulk, not miles behind as it is currently.
• Autonomy: mining barges should have proper cargo holds so they not always have to rely on jet cans (without turning them into industrials however). That means giving them large, specialized ore bays where all the ore will automatically go into when mining.
• Resilience: another point is to give some of them proper EHP not to be one-shot by anything that even remotely sneezes on them.

As a result we thus get:

• New ORE frig: we want this ship to replace current mining frigates as low barrier of entry vessel, but also fulfill high-end gameplay expectations by providing a very mobile platform for mining in hostile space. Lowest mining output, decent ore bay, little to no resilience.
• Procurer/Skiff: primarily made for self-defense. Better mining rate than the ORE frig, good ore bay, but capable of having battleship-like EHP.
• Retriever/Mackinaw: made for self-reliance. Has the largest ore bay, similear to the size of a jet can, second best mining output but less EHP than the procurer mining barge.
• Covetor/hulk: ore bay is identical to its current cargo hold, little to average EHP, but best mining output. Basically made for group operations when players have industrials and protection to back them up.

My thoughts:

About damn time.





Procurer/Skiff changes: this means skiffs will still be horrible, simply due to mining yield. now i love the EHP, this means a small roam cant obliterate a mining op before corp mates can come to the rescue, but again, why would anyone mine on that? The yield is bad. The old idea of a specialized skiff was nice... just needed more work.

Maybe turning the skiff on the fabled gas miner?

(this oppinion is based on the skiff not getting an ABSURD mining modifier that makes it comparable to a 3 strip hulk.)

Retriever/Mackinaw changes: good, VERY good. High sec miners AND null ops can use them and maintain a good mining yield + good ehp. No more lolganks with one catalyst but hopefully still VERY possible to do with 2 or 3.

Now, all the new cargo hold and ehp comes at the price of yield, BUT it also means the ship will remain 50% of the cost of a hulk. Good trade off, and maybe we can see some non-stupid/suicidal miners fit MLUs on the lows.

Covetor/hulk Changes: this means the hulk is now ONLY a fleet miner; which sounds ok, so long as two things happen:

• first, a review of the current mining fleet mechanics, a special ore loot log listing m3's mined and type of ore on a member by member basis. (This, because you will see miners looking to maintain their current yield, and having to make fleets.)


• second, orcas with corp hangars accessible ATLEAST from a 5000m distance OR, preferably, a complete rework of the orca hangars.

Instead of having to use the corp hangar for ops, why not reducing the corp hangar so it can only be used for modules(as it should), and increasing at least 100% the size of the ore hold while making it accessible to the whole fleet?

With hulks pumping ore on 100% yield fits and having ZERO buffer on their own hull we need a real buffer on the orca, which will now be mandatory on belt. (8000m3 of hold assuming 100% yield fit means only ONE cycle can fit in it.)

The ore log has been on the miners wishlist for years, and the access range for the hold is also a must since hulks trend to pile up on the buffer orca and die horribly to disco ganks or Stealth bombers.



on a finishing note, i certanly hope macks ehp remains within a 4 volley tornado gank. (thats 2 tornados on .5sec)

yeah.
i do.
its only fair.

(and good for business)


please do share any thoughts you guys might have on this. usually when ccp releases a devblog like this, they are looking for feedback.

Who said that the roles will stay the same on the ships?
I see no reason that a Skiff NEEDS to be used for, or better at mining mercoxit.

The way I see it is that a Hulk will mine about 10-15% more then a skiff, with a mack somewhere in the middle.

You want to not have to haul as much? Use a mack. You tired of the ganks/rats/give your blues more time to save you? Use a Skiff. You give 0 f*cks? Use a Hulk and mine the most.

I think the role's will be removed, you wont NEED to use a mack because macks pwn at ice mining (in fact, a hulk should be better) however, you'll want to use it because of it's cargo space will be very handy for cutting ice.
Hell, even botters (or those 'real' people that warp back and forth from belt and station to cut ice) will have to choose between "hulk cuts ice faster... but i may actually make more if i stay in the belt longer and have less travel time".

Like when you move IRL... sure you own a 40mpg car with a sexy sound system... But you'll have to make 10 trips. Or you rent a 10mpg van that has a hard time going up hills... But you can get it all in one move. Your choice, both will get it done.
Choice seems to be the future of eve. Limiting ship choices to "doing job a, use ship x" is kind of restricting.


Now, about those Ore Frigs... those could be rock'in. You want old players to use um? Give um a reason.
Make a Jump Portal Generator for the Rorqual, like the blackops one. But allow it to only jump Ore Frigs.
Bam! Now you have a fun idea for an op for smaller corps, ninja mining in NPC 0.0. Both the older players will want to, and the fresh new ones will be able to.

No T1 ships will get cheaper .. the massive difference in cost of 2x[gang destroyer] vs 1 T2 mining barge will still be just a large as ever.

And how do you know they won't get cheaper?

I know miners that are fed up with ganks and would love to use the new proposed Skiff..good luck ganking that in you're gang of two destroyers...

These arn't her ideas, they come from ccp..did you read the linked dev blog?

They are talking about the Skiff and Mackinaw being closer to the Hulk while the Procurer and the Retriever are closer to the Covetor.

The Hulk gets the single Yield Bonus more then the T1 version just like the Zealot and the Deimos gets an extra Damage Bonus over the Omen and Thorax. T2 means slightly better in all area's such as cap, range, tank and in miners case Ore Hold.


Diminishing returns. You pay a lot more money for tiny improvements because you don't win a fight by loosing less ISK then the other guys you win it by killing all of them. You don't go 10 rounds with an enemy fleet you go one maybe two at most. Winner gets to hold the ground and do whatever they want looser gets to go home. So yeah 25% more Damage / Range/ Whatever, T2 Resist, Slightly Batter Base Stats and an extra slot or 2 is the advantage of a T2 Ship. That is enough to justify them because you have a better chance of winning the fight. ISK isn't the important in EVE Manpower and Time is the real currency of the game. 3000 Man Alliance with 10 times the money die to 500 Man Alliances because they can pull together 300 man fleets a day while the big boys get only 200 out of a less dedicated membership. It takes a lot of cash to augment that.

In EVE you pay 10x as much money for a 25% better ship all around and CCP doesn't seem to be changing that thank god.

im too lazy to rewrite what i posted on another thread on this new barge rework regarding the the t1/t2 thing, so ill just cut&paste it here. the TL;DR version is: if you fly a hulk now you are clueless, if the winter changes dont include either a buff to the hulk, or a drastical reduction on their manufacturing costs, the hulk will still be ****.



IPH simulation, assuming perfect orca boost/dedicated hauler. Mining only veld.

Hulk 2xMLUs 29,726,378.35 isk per hour.

Hulk tanked, no MLUs 25,019,858.66 per hour.

Covetor with 2 MLUs 25,848,206.13 per hour.


With the new CPU rigs, the only difference between a covetor and a hulk is the crappy +15% exhumer bonus. That +15% costs you currently 240millon isk.

On .5 sec one catalyst can kill a full yield hulk. 2 catalysts can kill a tanked hulk. So flying a yield hulk currently making 29millon isk per hour on highsec will cost you almost 280millon isk, and will die to 10 millon isk. While on the other hand tanking the hulk lowers your yield to that of a yield covetor... while still dying to a 20millon isk gank.

Given this, why would anyone fly a hulk now? And just why the $%^#$% do ppl insist on calling the hulk the "king of yield"? That is just beyond me.

Unless you are a stubborn miner you should be flying a full yield covetor, and keeping 10 or 20 clone fits ready to launch from the station as soon as one of you miners dies.


My point with all of this is, exhumers lvl V and Hulks are pointless now. After this "fix" they will be even more pointless. Well, maybe not the skills exhumers to V since macks will benefit, but hulks will be terrible.

the problem is that with all the whiners crying over their hulks getting blown up when they should be flying covetors instead, translated into CCP "fixing" miners so they don’t die, instead of fixing it so it’s not as expensive to die.

The question is, if after this "rebalance" the only difference between the hulk and the covetor will still be the exhumer +% yield. Because if that’s the only difference, what’s the point on the hulk? The solo miner will be the mackinaw, great, but the fleet miner will still be the covetor! And as soon as these changes go live, believe me "they" won’t let you undock a hulk, let alone stay with one on a belt.

The only way i see around this is making something crazy, like giving the hulk 5 strip miner hard points, but enough CPU to either fit a basic tank and 3 strips, or 5 strips and no tank. Now THATS a fleet miner.

That way you can actually justify flying hulks because there’s an actual reward for your risk. a change like this would ofc leave a lot of stupid highsec miners crying over their 5 strip hulk getting destroyed on a .5 belt, but they would have no one to blame but themselves. Even now the only place i can see lots of hulks mining is on hidden belts on null, and even there currently it’s still safer to fly covetors, why? Well because a 5 man SB gang can butt **** any mining op in less than 2 minutes.

Bottom line?

t2 barges are way too expensive. The rationale of "it’s the best mining barge so it should be expensive" doesn’t go well with how small the advantage they have over T1 and just how expensive the thing is.

which makes the mackinaw useless!

i appreciate CCP trying to reduce the need to swap ships to haul ore but it's futile. unless the mack and hulk end up having identical yields it's still going to be more m3/hour to mine several jet cans worth of ore, then haul them all at once.

sure it's an extra trip to the station to change ship, however i doubt the mack will mine fast enough to catch up to the hulk to make it worth using. let's say that we lose 1 cycle of mining changing ships, 3 mins to warp, dock, reship, undock, warp back out isn't unreasonable imo. the mackinaw can basically lose 1 cycle per hour vs the hulk, that's erm, early morning maths... 1 cycle in 20 (if we're hauling every hour for the sake of argument), 5%? so if the mackinaw has more than 5% less yield than the hulk it's effectively a pointless ship.

as far as i see, the mackinaw is the new bastard child of the exhumer family. the only way people will use a mackinaw is if it's A) substantially cheaper than a hulk. or B) they're a low sp character and/or have no skillpoints in industrial ships (minmatar industrial IV/gallente industrial V for example).

the skiff will be the wise choice for any empire miner in the current "lets gank all the mining ship" climate of empire space as of late, and the hulk will still be the king of mining.

also, due to the changes, i think it's safe to say that all ships will be losing their "speciality" bonuses, eg no ice or mercoxit bonuses any more thus the mack doesn't even have an ice bonus to fall back on and ensuring it's place as the bastard child of the exhumer family.

i'll agree to this. some thing irks me about it though.

oh well, nothing a large ship with an mwd can't fix. bumpy bumpy!

i'd imagine all three ships should have similar build materials, however the cost of each ship might be different based on demand, avalable blueprints etc