Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Checked the forum to see if there was a previous thread about this and came up short. Therefore starting a new thread to air the idea.

Freighter weapons

Freighters are know by all in EVE, whether newbie or veteran and my first trip to Jita, I was in awe at the shear size of the freighters. However, I was shocked to find out they have no space for defensive purposes. They carry millions and sometimes billions of assests worth of modules, ships and other things, yet have no defensive capabilities short of a full escort.

Now, shields and armour on freighters are considerably okay, its not a warship afterall, however the fact they can be stopped by a single frigate that can scram and hold a freighter in place for as long as it wants seems, well odd, in my opinion.

The proposal

What I am proposing is a new weapon sub-type called 'Freighter Weapons' or 'Industrial Weapons'. These weapons will be considerably weaker than their military counterpart, but strong enough to hold off a single destroyer/cruiser or two/three frigates perhaps? Weak enough so that freighters can still be taken down just as easy with a group, which is the normal, but have the ability to at least have the chance to get away, before possible reinforcements arrive.

Three turret (or launcher) hardpoints for the freighters perhaps seems acceptable in my eyes?

It just baffes me that freighters dont have some form of defensive system, short of a full escort...

Disclaimer: I am not a freighter pilot, nor have I ever thought of ganking a freighter (yet ) its just simply an idea to make ganks on freighters a little more interesting in my opinion.

OK, interesting idea, but...

Don't fly a Freighter with Billions of ISK in the hold without an escort if you don't want to lose it. You wouldn't anchor a POS without defenses and sentries and as such a Freighters weapons system IS intended to be an escort compliment.

This in itself generates interactive gameplay between Corps contracting Mercs to ride shotgun and protect shipments etc. Atlantic Convoys in WWII didn't just sail on with 1 x 150mm Autocannon.

Well proposed but -1 from me.

Q-Boats! \o/

Make it first a rig -- i.e. "Capital Mystery Ship Rig", needing the skill "Q-Boat Rigging". Really this shoudl be just enough to kill off any tackle that gets through the defense fleet.

Rig -
+ 2 high slots and Turret Hardpoints.
+ ~15 PG, + ~25 CPU (should allow only fitting the smallest of each racial light weapon)
25% reduction in cargobay

T2 Rig (if used)
+ 4 hi slots
+ ~55/100 PG/CPU (really really rough number to allow "largest" small weapon)
22.5% reduction in cargobay

Skill -
4% reduction in penalty for fitting Mystery Ship rigs per level

All numbers are used for illustrative purposes only, and based off T1 Meta 0 fitting requirements.

Obviously, if we were sporting turret models on the freighters this would take forever and a day, because the models/skins would have to be fixed to allow the turret slots. Don't know if it's possible to _not_ have turret models, but still allow damage to be dealt. If it's not allowed, then there would need to be _something_ to keep the turrets 100% hidden from visual inspection until after the fight starts.

I like this reply, you're getting some heat but you're accepting the comments and trying to evolve your idea.

Nice one, keep it up matey.

15-20 Tier 3 BCs (yes I know Tiers are about to be gone) is a bit much imho. However 6-7 is too few as well (or 20-24 Dessys). If CCP added ~15% EHP for example (about 30K EHP) it would only require an additional 1-2 Nados/Talos's and 3-6 more Dessys. That's not a game breaker, keeps the gankers in business and the Freighter pilots on their toes but gives them a tad more sense of security.

However, if CCP did indeed add more EHP to the Freighters they should keep the materials required to build them THE SAME. Part of the problem with Freighters is the sheer cost of the Hull alone. Many of them get ganked empty just for the KB points. Unfortunately every time CCP changes anything in the positive for a ship these days they also add a bunch of crap to the material requirements for building, thus nullifying the change to begin with as the ratio of gank ship cost to Freighter Hull cost would remain the same, which is the actual problem now.

Don't misunderstand, ALL ships in Highsec should remain gankable by a reasonably sized fleet, thus perpetuating the concept that Eve is Space WAR and your actions have consequences, even if it's the act of undocking a ship into space.



Indeed it would only add 1-2 BCs and only a handful of Dessys, but that's the point. The problem is even though Freighter EHP is a bit low now with BCs doing such high dmg at such a low cost of investment, CCP couldn't raise it too much without all the carebear Highsec Miners and the like screaming for CCP to make their Macks/Hulks/Barges have such high EHP that they can fit max yield and zero tank to AFK mine all day long, which is absolutely the wrong approach in my opinion. The number may not be 15% but it shouldn't be more than about 25% as that alone would add ~75k EHP which is a bit absurd.

To give an example why CCP shouldn't boost the Freighters too high, you can fit an Orca to 312K EHP while costing less than 850 mil, Market price. Said Orca would only have ~46K cargo using cans but after June 4th may be the new intermediate Freighter since it's cheaper and has more EHP... Damn I think that's what CCP is doing by lowering the Orca training to 17 days. It makes sense and it's a way for CCP to fix the Freighter issue without admitting there's an issue lol.

Also if CCP increases the T1 Freighter's EHP by say 25% then it's seriously encroaching on the T2 Freighter in EHP (JF) which means either CCP has to raise them also or there'd be no point to have a JF with it's lower cargohold. But to increase the JF too much could make it near ungankable, which pretty much breaks the game in that aspect so it'd be a tough balancing act, which is why I suggest a smallish % to keep things realistic.

i'm not really sure why your dragging barges and exhumers into this, regardless of what carebears want this is something very different. I understand that they might want them buffed, but if you asked them now i'm sure they dtill do, changing a completely different ship class doesn't make them more entitled to ask for it.

I don't personally think the cost of the hull is a problem, the mineral changes should lead to a deflation in mineral prices which will bring the freighter hull costs back down. but considering how much of a specialist ship it is, i don't think it is unreasonable for it to have the price tag it has now.

the only time i think you would ever see freighters ganked empty is buring things like burn jita, which is not a cost/balance issue.

For the life of me I can't find the link I used to have but 2 months ago alone, 3 Freighters were ganked in Highsec empty, something like 15 of them had less than 1 billion, with somewhere around 10 had more than 1.2 billion, and like 2 with over 2 billion. The stats were for Freighter loss in Highsec only and not to WTs (I'm not 100% on the numbers).

As for the cost of the Hull, I'm fine with it as it is NOW, what I was saying is that if CCP increases their EHP they will likely increase the mats to build it thus defeating the purpose of the change. As it sits right now it costs roughly 480 million in ships to gank a T1 Freighter. Said T1 Freighter's hull alone is 1.3+ billion on Market right now, meaning the value destroyed is VASTLY higher than the value lost. And YES there are MANY players who actually care about their KB ratios, and many of those are gankers. What I'd like to see is a reasonable increase to EHP without ANY added cost to manufacture the hull. This keeps the value destroyed the same, while increasing the value lost, thus helping to attempt to balance the risk -vs- reward.

The issue I brought up about miners is valid as well. There are posts almost daily begging CCP to make mining vessels nearly invulnerable to ganking, a real change to Freighters would renew their fight and even give them fuel. In any case, yes the Freighter could use some CCP lovin, I just hope it's not at the expense of increasing the cost even more to the hull.

That's pretty much put the finger on the point.

During burn jita, I managed to move my freigher from jita to Urlen with a cargohold full of expensive stuff.

How?

Even when Goons had bumped it 60km off the gate I got away.

I didn't get away because I could have convo'd the FC and told him who my main was.... That would have seemed like a cheap "get out of jail free" card. I wanted to play on the same playing field as everyone else.... worst case I lose a bunch of crap but learn something...

I didn't get away because I had special modules....

I didn't get away because I had special skills....

I got away because I understood the game mechanics and used them to my advantage.

I will admit that freighters are vulnerable and that 9 times out of 10 if someone is intent on blowing it up they will succeed.

I'll also admit that during burn jita my main spent 99% of his time killig war-targets in jita (yeah, he's a nice guy as far as Goons go) but that I spent a lot of time learning how the exact mechanic works....

Do I think freighters should have modules....

Yes. They are the only capital ship that can't do anything to tip the odds in their favour. They have no offensive capability, they have no defensive capability. They are completely at the mercy of what other people want to do.

It would be a lot better if freighers had some flexible fitting options. Less cargo space, but more EHP, more cargo space but less EHP, stabs but slower aligning, capital hull reppers with some other disadvantage.... the whole objective being to make killing a freighter less of an exercise done on a calulator...... For example, one of our FC's "calculated" how many frigates it would take to kill a freigher and went out and killed one with frigs..... because the whole exercise was done on his calculator.

In my opinion it would be better doing something like that involved some degree of risk.

T-

Make a smaller freighter (about 1/4th the size and storage) with a fairly thick EHP tank, and gets a bonus to running microjumpdrives

they get 5x the range on them (just enough to shoot you offgrid), The jump keeps its 12 sec spoolup time (enough for a skilled ceptor or attack frigate to get a scram on you) at the penalty that for 3 minutes after the jump, it can't warp or jump.

Basically it'd be able to get off gate if theres hostiles or suspected hostiles nearby. But if the hostiles are trying hard enough, they can probe him down and still get him.

A combat freighter would be cool, but unless you removed jump freighters whats the point?

In the idea in my signature a combat capable transport would be really cool however there are two problems.

If you make the freighter strong enough to defend itself, no matter how strong you make the ship, it will be blobbed mid route.

If you make it extremely nimble, it will be an OP transport ship.

This ship would need to cost probably 700mil a pop, be as maneuverable as a battleship, have battleship defenses, but have 1/4 the cargo capacity of a freighter.