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One needs to consider the point at which a change goes from tuning and balance, and crosses over into the realm of different design. The amount of tank on a barge has typically been an irrelevant factor in the decision to steal a ship's ore. In particular this is less of a factor when the ship is no longer capable of holding more than a single cycle. Simply put, no one attacks a barge for isk.
While the decision to reduce the tank available on certain ships may have been made with certain intended results, the consequences of that decision have not been carefully evaluated. Barges are now being suicide ganked in high sec for no purpose other than their destruction, since the cost of doing so has been reduced to the point of triviality.
As I said initially, this becomes a design change when the allure of mining in high sec (low, steady, relatively low risk income) is altered to the extent that an individual who had invested in the skills to pursue that goal based on those factors will regret that decision, and newcomers with that goal in mind would not choose to mine.
There is never any shortage of trolls who prefer to prance around ivory towers with holier-than-thou mocking tones, telling individuals the idealistic 'shoulds'. They should expect this, they should do that.
However fine these statements sound while being trumpeted out of the ivory towers, they are limited to theory. In practice, this will lead to the abandonment of mining as a profession by many who were hit by the unforeseen consequences of the balancing (that was an effective role redesign); the lack several demographics of new miners entering the mining profession.
Ultimately this will have a butterfly effect and result in a dramatic increase in ore prices, and the cancellation of accounts of those who are now skeptical of investing considerable time and money into future goals in EVE.

It takes me over 2000m3 currently to comfortably hold a batch of every t2 crystal, 250m3 at half-batch with only 4 crystals and now I have to rely on somebody else to hold for me? Meaning now they gotta bump their big ass rorqual or orca up between me and the speckles of ore in the hidden belts to give me different crystals? I could not see many capital indy pilots bumping their ships up in a belt to trade crystals with 10-30 pilots. That is why they have a tractor beam that goes 80km instead.

So I guess as I see it, you are encouraging everyone to mine smaller amounts, afk longer, and know they can survive a small gank attempt with a passive tank? at least hi-sec miners can go back to afk-mining in their tanks! Yay! You're bringing back the botters almost!

And in the end, at least something is done for the most shafted backbone of EVE Online.

Now alls we need is a new hidden belt to spawn up in 0.0 systems that are sov level 4 or 5 that are slam packed with dense veldspar and Massive Scordite as far as the eye can load.

AAAAaaaaand as long as my hulks can tank about the same hits from npc spawns, I'll be happy, I don't want to warp my guys out just cause one or two rats aggros them.

One needs to consider the point at which a change goes from tuning and balance, and crosses over into the realm of different design. The amount of tank on a barge has typically been an irrelevant factor in the decision to steal a ship's ore. In particular this is less of a factor when the ship is no longer capable of holding more than a single cycle. Simply put, no one attacks a barge for isk.
While the decision to reduce the tank available on certain ships may have been made with certain intended results, the consequences of that decision have not been carefully evaluated. Barges are now being suicide ganked in high sec for no purpose other than their destruction, since the cost of doing so has been reduced to the point of triviality.
As I said initially, this becomes a design change when the allure of mining in high sec (low, steady, relatively low risk income) is altered to the extent that an individual who had invested in the skills to pursue that goal based on those factors will regret that decision, and newcomers with that goal in mind would not choose to mine.
There is never any shortage of trolls who prefer to prance around ivory towers with holier-than-thou mocking tones, telling individuals the idealistic 'shoulds'. They should expect this, they should do that.
However fine these statements sound while being trumpeted out of the ivory towers, they are limited to theory. In practice, this will lead to the abandonment of mining as a profession by many who were hit by the unforeseen consequences of the balancing (that was an effective role redesign); and the lack of new miners entering the mining profession.
Ultimately this will have a butterfly effect and result in a dramatic increase in ore prices, and the cancellation of accounts of those who are now skeptical of investing considerable time and money into future goals in EVE.

Regarding the mining barge changes The millions of isk spent on "cargo optimization rigs" are now useless.

I don't like the changes at all.

I thought there where too much mining barges already in game with different approaches to use them
(3 beginner barges, Highsec mining (Hulk), Ice mining (Mac), deep space mining (Skiff))

Now soon we get some more mining barges.CCP I think is working on them. I have no idea there will be 1, 2 or 3 different models and I have no idea they have other or smilar mining roles we already got with the existing barges. I am afraid this will not be the case but it just adds to the mining barge mess.

Instead I would have liked to see:

Mining barge 1, mining barge 2, mining barge 3

#1 is for beginners
#2 is for advanced miners basicaly for highsec mining ops (ore)
#3 is maybe one of the new barges for Highsec mining, team, ore & ice mining alike, 0sec, deep space mining

#? One of the new mining barges to come could even be a modular ship type like our T3's. Just make one mining barge and use different modules to let pilots put them together for whatever reason they want to use them. Result: One barge only!

With this solution and as far I care you could get the Procurer, Skiff, Retriever and maybe even the Hulk to the junk yard - or even all of the already existing barges - just give us 3 new barges with one of the next updates!

[rant on] I was playing for a long time and did quit my subscription. I want to see NEW stuff in the game to get back! It gets boring after 2 or 3 years! [rant off]


Orca and Rorqual Support:

Orca and Rorqual should both get a boost for team mining ops (cargo, speed) and Rorqual should be allowed in Highsec

I am afraid as far the options are now with the new rebalancing of the barges it will not get my main character back to the game as a subscriber.

Not yet.

Keep trying CCP, it´s looking good afterall!

I'm nowhere near as rich as a lot of other folks my age. But I just like blasting rocks in the occasional hour or two between dinner and sleep that isn't filled with RL headaches.

I'm slowly getting used to the new ships/bonuses... It isn't too bad overall, since I can now employ all the ships I've bought in some role or another. There are two things I'm not happy about though.
1) Rigs are permanent. We've rigged our barges/exhumers to fit their previous roles. Those roles have now been completely changed/stripped. ESPECIALLY if we've rigged some cargo expanders. Those are now just about useless.
2) Having the choice to augment tank vs. mining output vs. ore capacity is now only tank vs. mining output. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make some modules/rigs that can augment the Ore hold. It is silly to not allow the option to increase the ore bay. Make an Expanded Ore Hold module, and Ore Hold Expander rigs PLEASE!

No. As long as the hulk can fit one full cycle (with a hair of overhead) when the pilot is being boosted by a fully chipped, leadership trained, level 5 rorq pilot, and has every module, rig, and chip possible in their own head as well (including the Michi), there's no reason to increase the hulk's ore bay. Cargo, yes (see previous arguments re crystals), but not ore.

No. As long as the hulk can fit one full cycle (with a hair of overhead) when the pilot is being boosted by a fully chipped, leadership trained, level 5 rorq pilot, and has every module, rig, and chip possible in their own head as well (including the Michi), there's no reason to increase the hulk's ore bay. Cargo, yes (see previous arguments re crystals), but not ore.