Player Features and Ideas Discussion

[Hulk, EHP]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Medium Shield Maintenance Bot II x5

30,000 EHP without boost, with boost youre looking at more like 35,000

Also, your Orca (youre using a hulk so you do have an orca right?) has 3 high slots . . . consider using one of them for a shield transfer . . . it gives you a 400 DPS tank and hits at the beginning of the cycle . . .

ugh and I though PvPers failed at fitting their ships.

I must agree that there are several illogical features when it comes to eHP vs ship's actual size and structure. Even if it is a game mechanic or whatever attempt on reality, fact is that it is not great to see a ship of such mass (let alone the actual MASS stat) easily be blown to bits. It is obvious that some industrial would have paper armor or vulnerable segments unlike a true battleship, but I must say that the game could be more fun for everybody.

I'll just cast a thread hijack
Vayn Baxtor sucessful casts a "Forum: Thread Hijack" spell!

Just a quick note, this is a seperate suggestion to buff the chance of catching miners (!) but also not having the miners be punished or easy killmail food(!). See this as a proposal+counterproposal. So to be clear, something for those who attempt to get kills on miners, but also having mining-vessels that don't go poof that easily(!).



We have two sides, the miners in their barges + hunters trying to kill them. Let's see if this proposal can please both, even if it is just a bit:

So there are people who try to catch unwary miners or just simply trying to have luck by blinding jumping into a system and randomly catching miners specifically in a belt. Reality shows - regardless of Amazing Intel/Local or just out of pure luck- that mining vessels usually have more than sufficient time to get out of the belt and be in their cozy POS shield; by the time hunters have arrived, they'll see x numbers of Barges/Exhumers all bunched up at °5 dirscan at the tower. Botting alone profits from getting away easily, even if the current sets of barges have crappy align-times.

Now I've always been mouthy about getting industrial ships more into combat and stuff, so excuse me if I'm nutty here.

So how about this:


LOTS of HP for barges/exhumers
+ Barges and Exhumers, all in general (I don't care right now about Skiff/Procurer) get a very decent amount of HPs across the board - resists being the same as now. The point of this is to give the barges a very large buffer to actually take a tremendous amount of damage over time.
- Hunters/pirates would need considerably and logically a lot more time to nuke these Barges.

(Side note: NPC rats should have a decent dmg penetration vs exhumers. Be it a dmg bonus of some sort. Also, the Mission Rat AI needs to "ignore Barges/Exhumers" in missions. To avoid dummy-tanking)


+ Extra capabilities for combat for barges/exhumers
Aside to fitting the usual Strip Miners, maybe there could be some chance of fitting real turrets/missiles (so you have a few weapons vs tacklers for instance, but nothing special)
- Hunters/Pirates have to worry a bit more about getting hit aside to the drones

Those were the advantages for the Miners, now here's the miner's downside -> thus advantages for the Hunters/Pirates

- Exhumers/Barges are to have a seriously long align time. It should be almost like with Freighters or any other capital sized vessel in somewhat that one would need crapton of time just to warp. Somewhere a rightclick "Cruise Mode/Mining Deployment Mode" would be interest but lets ignore that for now.
Anyhow, the Exhumers/Barges wouldn't be able to get away that easily. After all, their tummies are usually just LOADED with yummy ore.

+ Hunters/Pirates have the real chance to catch these miners! Rushing tackler-Pirates can actually catch these or even catch them in a dictor bubble.
However, it won't be an easy kill! They need quite some time to chew through the loads of HP.

This idea is to give the miner's friends a chance to respond. So they have the time to scream SOS on their ally channels and call for help rather than just posting their instant-lossmails.

I know there are some godly tankers out there, but I've also seen ships of such kind go pop in seconds.


Nonetheless, this would or could give both sides advantages and disadvantages (and actually pleasing both mouths). You can catch the miners faster, but they won't die that easily and they would have some breathing time to call for help. If they have no friends or pirates-DPS was faster/higher, win for pirates. If friends show up before the miners blow up, perhaps a chance to suceed.

This would also nerf miner-bots as they are likely to be mining without support. They would need some crapton of time to warp out and unless somebody programmed SOS+system -> happy killmails for you.

Anyways, I'll make a seperate thread sometime; a discussion thread, that is.

Fleet defense against hisec gankers? Well that one is easy. Many hisec gankers come in already blinky. Blinky is fair game for a highsec kill. Each barge mounts 5 light scout drones. My personal drone control range is 54km, but let;s cut that down to 48km or so. If your fleet op consists of an orca and a hulk, you have 10 hobgoblin IIs to send against said blinky catty. An Orca also has decent shield rep ability. Now let's put a small corp out there, 5 people. That's 25 Hob IIs. Most gankships aren't going to last too long. They would need a fresh pilot to take out a single miner.

Let's put this at absolute worst case scenario. We have a fleet op of 5 people, 1 orca and 4 hulks. In warp 300 gankfit cattys, all fresh toons so none are blinking suspect or wanted. The Orca pilot immedietly hits squad warp to a safe or celestial, and the fleet warps out. Well warps out about 10 seconds later. The orca pilot, being the intelligent Op handler he is, made sure everyone was about 30km from the warpin point of the belt, so our goonfleet warps in and has to travel to the targets, granting more time for warpout. The orca pilot may have also told the fleet to align to a particular spot before beginning mining, so that warpout time is further reduced. Now only 1 person needs pay attention to keep 5 people alive. With fleet boss and squad leader roles being passed around afk breaks can be done in shifts, or watches can be done in shifts.

Ultimately, with fleet support your highsec hulks can afford to scout out a nice, quiet lowsec system and mine there, while your defensive cruisers and cloakys stand guard. The occasional ganker warps in only to be tackled and popped. Even without defensive ships, a large enough mining fleet can defend itself just fine with drones. Few ships can stand up to 25 drones for long, much less 50-100 drones (10-20 man fleet).

Lastly, the larger the fleet the more ore mined in less time. Less time in a belt means less chance to be ganked.

1. You do understand that any changes to mining vessels will mainly impact hisec ( yes, the area with immortal and omnipotent NPC police force ) ?

2. If you have any problems with survivability of your mining fleets in nullsec when using current barges then you are just incompetent or your opponents were simply better. No problem with the game whatsoever. Actually its a fine example of : "Working as intended".

3. What illogical features might those be ( concerning ehp ) ?
You do know that Hulk is quite a bit smaller than attack BCs and it still has more raw buffer on Shields ( Armour and structure being similar ). The only attack BC having slightly more structure and armour is also 33% bigger. Hulk even gets much higher shield resistances.

Oh you meant Skiff? Nope. It already has aBC sig and BS tank.
Makcinaw? Nope. It's weaker but it has gigantic ore hold and much better mobility ( align time included ) than Hulk.

So I repeat : What illogical features might those be ( concerning ehp ) ?




I'm sure CCP Sreggs would disagree with you. Actually, anyone having at least faint idea about the game would disagree.


Oh and just for my own perversive amusement :
- how many raw HPs should be added in your opinion? Would 10k be ok with you? 20k? I think 30k would be fine.
- would 4 additional hislots ( including hardpoints ) be enough? I imagine 2 would be quite weak. Oh you want to give them that neat double damage bonus. Smart, very smart.
- medium sized guns?
- you do understand that they won't be able to hit tacklers without tracking bonus ( even when using small guns ) or web?
- you do understand that adding turret capabilities would mean huge increase in PG/CPU?
- you do understand the implications of adding hislots, PG, CPU?

Those are all serious questions ( no they aren't ) and I expect serious answers ( no I don't ).

And just a fun fact : You typical Tengu sports ~35k EHP ( with Hulk size sig rad ) meaning that it is actually easier to destroy than most barges. Just in case anyone tries to bring cost into this 'discussion'.

it still takes a 200m+ fit BS with 1400s and instalock to take out a tengu befor it turns on its shields but it IS and has been done.
as for mineing barges maybe 5 gank-a-lysts are needed for a hulk still (not too sure) but cost is much cheaper to gank miners but yealds next to no reward except stat padding on killboards and +7 douchebag status.

if you think 5 cats are needed to take a hulk your out of touch with reality. Agreed with the "no reward except stat padding on killboards and +7 douchebag status" however you might not have heard of this new group that ganks for the lolz called the new order... if you haven't I'd like you to go to www.minerbumping.com... actually more so being better defined as a cult funded on the ideas of ganking miners and trolling them. I get the attraction, trolling people can be hilarious, however it crosses a line when you lose 2, 15 million isk ships for a kill mail of a single 250 mill exhumer. sounds legit ... A 4 day old character can potentially put out enough dps to down a 10 year old toon in the currently glass tanked exhummer... just saying I can make a kill board look great in less than 24 hours of downing hulks look I went 15 and 15 but my isk ratio is 4 billion kill value to 300 mill in losses yea that's legit. Im asking for common sence, make a ship of similar value have to take down something this expensive. A tornado vs a mining barge for a gank to me is acceptable why because they actually have a negative effect on that persons wallet, Ive **** bigger isk amounts than it costs for a gank cat


To answer an earlier question How much ehp should they get boosted... well about how much ehp does it take a tornado to single volley? add a little bit to that and we have a deal. Yes there shouldn't be an issue and isn't an issue in low and null with miners assuming risk of being in that sec status. however High sec miners are the patsy that is a ridiculously easy target and with the current tag system is near impossible to help against attacks. IF you keep a safety on like any miner should aiding a friend with logi drones pulls a Limited engagement with the ganker. making the kill of the next miner legal in concords eyes as long as its within the next 5 minutes.

Now Adding Ehp to barges is one fix for the ridiculous problem of gankers or fixing the limited engagement tag system that is currently set up as anti fleet when assisting against a criminal


Also as an edit I'm referring more so for the covetor and the hulk as they lack the existence of a tank especially at the new player level that cannot afford the 5 implants needed to properly fit a single "medium" shield extender.

two pages. impressive.

consider the following; a retriever.

1) Hulk is an exhumer ( advanced mining ship ). When you are able to fly it, you are no longer considered a newbie, you are an experienced miner.
2) You only need +2% cpu implant , which costs ~8mil. Alternatively you can downgrade single AIF to meta 2 ( I already pointed that before ). Another good thing to do is to mine in safe areas ( harder logistics but near total safety ).
3) Covetor costs ~32mil. Now go and compare that to properly fitted ganking catalysts. Also - I don't think anyone cares about ganking Covetors because Exhumers are much more attractive targets.