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Dev blog: Corp Hangars on ships and You

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Crexa
Ion Industrials
#141 - 2012-11-30 17:25:26 UTC
Aethlyn wrote:
Sinzor Aumer wrote:
The freighter can carry MUCH more which means it is now the only viable choise for fleet mining. Sure, it's still fine for "solo" mining with a couple of alts. But when you have a dozen of ppl stripping the belt or gravy site - hauling Orca is totally useless now.
Just explain - why? What was the backgroud of that decision?

You are right, if you ignore align time, acceleration, gang links and tractor beams. I'm not sure you've ever mined with a full set (or at least 2) mining links. This boosts your output by more than 30% (also depending on whether there's a supporting mind link as well) and is very significant making the Orca far from useless. You could use a Battlecruiser for this, but you'll also lose the hull's bonus.
Using a Freighter just to collect or haul the ore back to station sounds feasible, but especially if it's in the same system, the Orca is still better for this - not just for the added tractor beams: it can zip back to station, drop the ore and be back in the belt boosting in 2 or 3 minutes. The freighter might need this time just for one trip (without the way back). A standard T1 industrial can carry like 40-50k m³ per run, so if one keeps moving back/forth the Orca should never get full. If it does, add another hauler. Either use the Orca as the hauler or use it as a collector/buffer for the real haulers.



The point that is being made is; If all the orca is for, is mining boosts, (which is all my fleet of 12 use it for). Then what is the point of such a large cumbersome ship?

"F=ma, so obviously they're putting mouths against arses to produce a force." "...its breakfast time and i am very hungry. may i have some of your paint chips?"
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#142 - 2012-11-30 17:25:33 UTC
Crunac Arclight wrote:
Nice changes, but why make the Blockade Runner's cargo unscannable?

It is already quite agile and cloaky enough to avoid trouble. It would make more sense to give this buff to the God-forsaken Deep Space Transports of which I have seen none to date.

I agree with this. It was a perfect opportunity to give one of the less used ships their very own role, but instead you gave it to an already very secure hauler.
Lors Dornick
Kallisti Industries
#143 - 2012-11-30 17:27:55 UTC
Sentient Blade wrote:

The only thing I would point out is that the loss of corporate hangers is going to be somewhat of a pain. On the Orca yes, but even more so on capital ships where the size of the hanger is limited + cans are in short supply, it's going to make separating items up a bigger pain.

The best "technical" solution I could come up with would be selectable elastic containers:

Quote:
* Buy an "Elastic Shipping Container" for something like 10m ISK (affordable for those flying orcas / capitals) that has an packaged size of say 100 m3.

* You assemble it, and it turns it into an "ElasticContainerer100" with an initial volume of 100 m3.

* You fill it with items you wish to separate, a particular kind of module lets say, but need a bit more room.

* You click on it, select "resize to ..." and select a bigger size, let's say you want to store a couple of frigates along side the modules, so you select 10,000 m3.

* The servers check the size of the parent container to see if the new 10,000 m3 would fit, minus the existing container, and if it does you flip the TypeID to a new "ElasticContainer10000" type, copy / replace it if necessary, and move all the items over.

* Use them in that size as long as necessary. Maybe expand / reduce their size again multiple during the course of an op; maybe one fleet member is storing significantly more than another.

* Shrink them back down after their job is done provided their content is not oversized.


This would:

Quote:
* Allow fleet hangers to have password protected cargo areas that could share space

* Not have to deal with the problems associated with shrink wrap; just spam TypeIDs for non-market containers and swap between them.

* Allow Orca / Carrier pilots to keep a few of these elastic containers always to hand to be use to partition their ships where necessary without having to haul empty cans just in case for no reason other than the code that handled a cargo bay having "dividing walls" needed to die (understandable).


Caveats:

Quote:
* You do not need to spam hidden containers for every 100 m3 for the entire range, 25, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, 10000, 15000, 20,000 etc.

* Removing the existing container from the DB and creating a new one with the same children and attributes (except TypeID) would be perfectly acceptable. If this means people have to re-open the can so be it.

* Repackaging them would return them back to a particular size "Elastic Shipping Container" which could then be sold on the market.


So CCP, a better idea than just removing them completely, no?


No.

The main reason behind removing the divisions in ship mounted corporate hangars was to reduce code complexity that had grown over years to become almost unmanageable.

Most likely partly down to the bright idea to reuse stationary corporate hangars on ships (and add a serious amount of hardcoded special cases to make it work (somewhat)).

And adding any form of elastic containers (automagically or manual) would add another special case so the server and all involved clients would re-sync correctly .

Most likely cause Team Gridlock to light their torches and go looking for someone to burn at the stake.

I'm fully aware of the many uses of the divisions on the Orca, have used them extensively and are sad to see them them go.

But the workarounds are acceptable and it's a price I'm willing to pay for cleaned up, functional and stable code.

CCP Greyscale: As to starbases, we agree it's pretty terrible, but we don't want to delay the entire release just for this one factor.
Merouk Baas
#144 - 2012-11-30 17:29:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Merouk Baas
Crexa wrote:
The point that is being made is; If all the orca is for, is mining boosts, (which is all my fleet of 12 use it for). Then what is the point of such a large cumbersome ship?


That's the point of it.

It provides boosts, it tractors cans, and has some cargo hold for cases where you don't have a freighter available.

You may find it "useless" for you, but it's not useless for others.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#145 - 2012-11-30 17:30:10 UTC
Salpad wrote:

Why not just do a quick fix, and change the Deep Space Transport bonus to something useful? + to active shield tank is a very, very poor defensive bonus to have. Change it to +5% shield resists per level, or +5% armour resist for the armour tanking versions.

I'm pretty sure I've never trained my Transports skill above 1, even though I fly Blockade Runners quite a lot, and Deep Space Transports every so often, and the reason for that is that the effect of the Transports skill sucks.


Making the DSTs immune to bubbles like the T3 ships can might be a good adjustment to them.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#146 - 2012-11-30 17:34:03 UTC
Kimo Khan wrote:

I suspect it is more the idea that a Freighter can now do this. The orca can now just sit in a POS to give benefit, but does not even need to be present since the freighter can do all the hauling.


Or maybe CCP should bump up the ore volume on the Orca to something sizable like 500k m3, to give it back the premier role of being the mining fleet's logistic vessel. It's been sidelined already by the 35k m3 ore bay on the Mackinaw (which can also mine while it waits for enough ore to haul away.

(A 500k m3 ore bay on the Orca would also be a boon to w-space miners, making their logistics a bit easier.)
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#147 - 2012-11-30 17:37:08 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:
Quote:
i can partially understand the freighter is a bigger hauler and can now pick stuff up in space part, but surely the main advatage to a mining fleet in belts etc.. is its extended tractor beam range that can pull in jet canned ore from a distance meaning less moving around in big clunky ships? fairly certain i read the devblog properly and didnt see anything about freighters using capital tractor beams or anything like that.


now: one orca for tractor beams and bonuses, one freighter for hauling
before: one orca for tractor beams and bonuses, X orcas for hauling

Then what are you complaining about?? You just got X-1 more pilots to do actual mining!
Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#148 - 2012-11-30 17:38:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Alx Warlord
This is a really welcome change, I think blokade runners should also evade NPC's scanner... it would be fair!!!

Also these changes makes simpler and remove from the messed up Corp management a important feature of the game...

Now I just hope that you guys Revam the POS system soon, as the CSM is asking!!! for more info, read the topic related to pos in my signature.

And about the Hi-Sec freighter minning.... good luck with that... it gets stuck on roids too often...

Please read these!

New POS system New SOV system
SportBilly
GHOSTS OF THE FIRST AND ONLY
#149 - 2012-11-30 17:45:23 UTC
Once again you seem to be messing about with the game.

An orca has a far better tank than a frighter and is very usefull for a small corp, by the very nature of being fitable, fleet mining, hauling various items about .
i have used it to swap ships, refit ships and it has some ability to fight back.

A frighter is more expensive, slower, and has a lot lower tank and only usefull to haul large quantities about..

Please stop trying to make every thing the same in the game, your already doing it on this next upgrade by making all the ships have rolls and fits, let people learn. and use thier imagination. We dont want every thing the same , predictable fits etc.

Its not all bad I am looking forward to the game enhancing upgrades on Dec 4th.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#150 - 2012-11-30 17:50:52 UTC
SportBilly wrote:
An orca has a far better tank than a frighter and is very usefull for a small corp, by the very nature of being fitable, fleet mining, hauling various items about .
i have used it to swap ships, refit ships and it has some ability to fight back.

A frighter is more expensive, slower, and has a lot lower tank and only usefull to haul large quantities about..
…which makes them quite different in what they can and cannot do and not at all the same.

Quote:
Please stop trying to make every thing the same in the game,
…what what?! Ugh
Tarvos Telesto
Blood Fanatics
#151 - 2012-11-30 17:54:26 UTC
Good changes in general, also yay!

"Freighters will have most of their special-case restrictions removed: they will now be able to perform cargo operations in space, including moving items into and out of containers, moving things to and from containers in space, and jettisoning items"


Finaly people may use freighters on adsteroid belts as haulers, a bit dangerus to kamikaze who just wainting for some lolzzz., but nice to get this option, isk vs reward.

Good stuf CCP.

EvE isn't game, its style of living.
MadMuppet
Critical Mass Inc
#152 - 2012-11-30 17:55:21 UTC
I just wish I could be on-line to take advantage of this in the market.

This message brought to you by Experience(tm). When common sense fails you, experience will come to the rescue. Experience(tm) from the makers of CONCORD.

"If you are part of the problem, you will be nerfed." -MadMuppet
Crexa
Ion Industrials
#153 - 2012-11-30 17:59:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Crexa
SportBilly wrote:
Once again you seem to be messing about with the game.

An orca has a far better tank than a frighter and is very usefull for a small corp, by the very nature of being fitable, fleet mining, hauling various items about .
i have used it to swap ships, refit ships and it has some ability to fight back.

A frighter is more expensive, slower, and has a lot lower tank and only usefull to haul large quantities about..

Please stop trying to make every thing the same in the game, your already doing it on this next upgrade by making all the ships have rolls and fits, let people learn. and use thier imagination. We dont want every thing the same , predictable fits etc.

Its not all bad I am looking forward to the game enhancing upgrades on Dec 4th.



Basic premise of what you say is dead on. As I step back and look at all the propose changes I get the sinking feeling that its all about, and nothing but, reducing complexity. Very sad really.

As to the Orca, its just plain common sense to see where the changes take you. Already peeps have switched from the Hulk for mining to the Mack, why? Its like a "DUH" moment. The larger cargo hold stupid. What do you think will happen with freighters having 25 times the cargo space of the Mack and 5 times the cargo space of the Orca.

YOU WILL see asteroid belts FILLED with Freighters>>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While I likely will experiment with it too, as it will become the way of things. Is it really what CCP envisions? Actually now that I think about it. What is CCP's vision for industry in EvE?

"F=ma, so obviously they're putting mouths against arses to produce a force." "...its breakfast time and i am very hungry. may i have some of your paint chips?"
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#154 - 2012-11-30 18:08:50 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Greyscale
Sinzor Aumer wrote:
CCP FoxFour wrote:
On top of that when we looked at what the restrictions were and why they had been put in place we no longer deemed them as necessary.

In fact that is what I wanted to figure out - what have changed since those restrictions are implemented? Why are they obsolete in your CCP opinion?



Not actually a whole lot. Mainly the introduction of the Orca, which makes the freighter largely irrelevant as mining support in our opinion.

The reason we're happy doing this now but weren't back when freighters launched is that they've had plenty of time to bed in and establish their boundaries. In a game with an economy as vibrant as EVE's, going from ~25k max hauling space to ~1,000k max hauling space is a pretty risky move, so it's a smart play to restrict that capability as much as possible. Now that we know exactly the impact of freighters, and given that we've already opened up some of their functionality (being able to interact with starbases, for example), we can be more confident that removing the constraints is not likely to cause major problems.

The reason we're doing it *now* is that we wanted to make some new non-compressive (ie, same volume internally as externally) containers, but we didn't want to create an entirely new group for them if we could avoid it, but we also didn't want them to sit in a group with compressive containers. We already have a group of non-compressive containers called "Freight Container", which includes the current General Freight Container and nothing else, so it made sense to put them in there, but that group is heavily involved in the freighter special-casing. The cleanest, simplest, least complexity-adding solution was therefore to put the new containers in the Freight Container group and then lift the freighter-specific restrictions as on review we didn't feel they justified their complexity any more. (This is I think a relatively uncontroversial example of less complexity = better, and also a nice example of the kind of rabbit hole you sometimes end up falling down with this sort of thing Smile)

Crexa wrote:

"...but we need to get the complexity of EVE under control and doing so is going to require functionality downgrades in certain areas."


This scares the living Be-jesus out of me!!!!!!!!!!! Why? Because complexity is the hallmark of EvE Online. PLEASE! Keep in mind that streamlining for the sake of reducing complexity is not always a good thing.


Don't worry, it scares the bejesus out of us too Smile The trend over the last few years though has been steadily increasing complexity year-on-year, which makes it harder and harder for us to replace lost customers. We've got to get this under control to keep EVE healthy. It's not something we do lightly, but we've got to find *safe* places where we can make incisions.
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#155 - 2012-11-30 18:15:04 UTC
CCP FoxFour wrote:
GeeShizzle MacCloud wrote:
CCP FoxFour wrote:
Gilbaron wrote:
so you just removed the single most important use of orcas, hauling for mining fleets

not cool


How did we remove that?


i think a lot of people are scratching their heads as to how this guy got to that conclusion... maybe he thinks his orca will be ganked all the time with the amount of trit he's carrying/hauling for a mining fleet.

ohh if only he knew how gankers operate! LOL


The best I can come up with is that he thinks the Orca will be rendered obsolete by using freighters to pick up ore from Orca's? That is the best i can come up with and I think that is just crazy. Why would you use a freighter to do that instead of another Orca or industrial ship. Sure the freighter can carry more, but its align, warp, movement, and bump factor all make it a far worse choice.


Today: station-less system => perfect for corp ops mining, orcas provide the logistics and buffs.

Tomorrow: no system is "safe", freighters (once again) trivialize logistics. You should nerf JFs and freigthers not buff them.

As for the Blockade Runners: I am happy I randomly made zillions of prowler BPCs already (for another usage) but I don't feel like they should have unscannable cargo. It's trivializing the game way too much.

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Mag's
Azn Empire
#156 - 2012-11-30 18:28:01 UTC
I must say although it looks like a nice buff to the BR, scan immunity isn't needed or wanted on this ship. It's whole purpose is cloak hauling and it's cloak is not only it's tank, but also it's scan immunity.

As the DST is massively underused, it would seem to be far more sensible to have given that ship that bonus instead.

A really strange move tbh. I say this having had the same BR fully fit for cargo, since cloaks were allowed on them. What?

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Verran Skarne
4 Marketeers
#157 - 2012-11-30 18:30:50 UTC
My thoughts as a high-sec industrialist and w-space miner:

1) The Orca

I see the Orca as really being a fleet backbone ship for mining fleets. I'm ok with changing the corp hangar to a fleet hangar but I'd like to see further changes to the ships to help make it more relevant in that role. Specifically:

- Increase the size of the ore bay. The current one really isn't very useful in any serious mining op.
- Add additional high slots so that an orca pilot can run boosts and tractor beams at the same time. Right now you either have to set one up for boosting or set it up for collection - there's just not enough slots to do both efficiently.

I'm not really so concerned about losing the unscannable cargo hold although I know a lot of people who will be upset about this. But the problem there really is that suicide ganking has become ridiculously common, rather than that people can do it.

I will say that if the Orca isn't intended to be doing hauling outside of fleet ops, it should probably be a bit more agile than it currently is. My Obelisk aligns faster than my Orca does.

2) The Blockade Runner and the Deep Space Transport

As others have mentioned, having an unscannable hold doesn't really make any practical sense on a Blockade Runner which can already cloak, MWD, and align fast. The ship's already good at evading ganks - inviting bored gankers to take a free pass at it because of an unscannable hold just means that it will get targeted more, not less.

On the other hand, the DST could definitely use some love. I don't necessarily think an unscannable hold is the answer (again, I think the problem is that suicide ganking is too easy/common/not enough consequence). I wouldn't mind seeing better agility or a bigger cargo hold or something.

3) Hauling in general.

Large-scale industry requires a significant amount of hauling. Right now we have Industrials (small), Orcas (medium), and Freighters (XXL) in terms of hauling ships. It would be nice if we had something in between an Orca and a Freighter in terms of capacity to help fill in the gaps there and to provide an alternative to the Orca for hauling.

There also needs to be a better defense against suicide ganks, or at least a deterrant of some kind. To be clear, I'm not saying that suicide ganking of haulers shouldn't be possible, but it's simply far too common now with the advent of the (Tier 3) battlecruisers. I've heard different options presented in the past but here's the ones I like.

- Containers or ship modules that make it less likely items will be dropped as loot are one option.
- Being able to take out short-term insurance on the ISK value of a ship's cargo would be good. (That's how shipping companies do it in the real world, after all). That would help someone recover from the loss of a 1.4b freighter and an 800m cargo when they get ganked.
TheLostPenguin
Surreal Departure
#158 - 2012-11-30 18:33:14 UTC
I always understood that limited freighter interactions in space was to ensure there was some role for the smaller haulers left, other than simply those people that hadn't trained freighters yet or happened to be doing a smaller haul.

Yes rock hauling has evolved somewhat, with orcas taking over primarily as haulers in addition to obvious natural role as boosters, but in some ways this still allowed the 'lesser' pilots not fully skilled etc for boosting to be usefull with a orca, and indeed itty5 (or other indy, dependent on fleet size really) could still shift a respectable amount with its lower align times helping make up for lower capacity.

Now, we're left with the default situation for any mining fleet above a couple ships being orca+freighter, the lesser able orca pilot no longer has a way to be remotely as useful to fleets, unless you can boost perfectly there's no point bothering with an orca now, unless you want for it's still-usefull (thankfully) ability to taxi a bunch of smaller ships about.

Just as well nearly there on cald freighter 5 personally, gonna be nice to have option to sit there a load up a couple belts into that hold :P


Also...
Quote:
...but we need to get the complexity of EVE under control and doing so is going to require functionality downgrades in certain areas. This is annoying but unavoidable.


In terms of how ass-handed your code is, sure.
In terms of user features, NEVER.
The only reasons for not replicating prior functionality with your new, not-re-purposed-14-times-from-what-it-was-originally-meant-to-do code boil down to either laziness, or a disregard for users leading to not allocating sufficient time to do so. As always when someone at CCP thinks "nobody really uses this, lets just scrap it", the reality is actually, lots of people DO use that feature and do get pissed that it was scrapped for no good design/balance reason, simply because cba to do it right.

Rather than add annoying spam of never-the-right-size freight cans, why not simply make them resizable? As they're already a group unto themselves its no addition of new exception webs, and would allow much easier replication of the lost hangar functionality than players screwing about with umpteen cans, or you later having to redo hangars again because you realised actually people did use and do want that feature.
Bagrat Skalski
Koinuun Kotei
#159 - 2012-11-30 18:38:11 UTC
Eeeeeh... I believe you can't always satisfy everyone. Roll

Custom ship skins, character creator style "repaint". Bring it!
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
#160 - 2012-11-30 18:43:43 UTC
Adding +1 to the fact that Blockade Runners are already unscannable because of their covops cloak, and that making them unscannable just means that AFKing them about empty becomes far riskier than beforehand. It's the sort of idea that sounds great at first, but five minutes' thought later sees you headbutting the table in despair at its stupidity.

If you insist on making BRs unscannable, make this the function of a BR-only module, and make sure that there's a difference between the scan results returned from an empty BR and those returned from a scan-proofed BR.

But ultimately, this effect is neither needed nor useful, either as a bonus or a module.