Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I certainly respect your opinion, Rise, but there is a group of true haulers in EVE, and what may be boring to you PvP types has been the focus of many an EVE career.

Well, if I can counter the bolded statement, it almost sounds as if you're suggesting that because you're putting *some* effort into it, we should just be satisfied with the bone we've been thrown. I couldn't disagree more. You've admitted that the industrial lines have never "popped," and that their purpose is to haul stuff cheaply. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. We (meaning the many posters who've passionately made the various suggestions) are merely advocating that there is room for innovation here, and if you're going to go through the trouble of rebalancing this line--not as some sort of afterthought or half-hearted effort--then you ought to give it the same attention you'd give any other line.

You could have argued that Mining Barges were boring and only served to suck up asteroids at the fastest rate. You could have buffed Barges' respective rock-sucking amounts and left it at that. But you didn't. You innovated on a line that could have used some help, and the results have been fantastic.

It's the same treatment we're asking for here, because, look, we all get that Industrials won't be even on the list after these changes are made. So give them a proper balance now, and have them pop. Give them the Mining Barge treatment where one can actually tank something (~50k ehp) to stop mindless ganks, make one really fast for afk, low-value hauls and make one enormously capable of carrying goods for the high sec bold or for those that live safely deep in the back reaches of space.

The "flavor" of the lines--at least as I understand it, since there isn't "traditional" flavor by optimal range or tracking, etc.--is how slick it can do its job. Is it engaging to have a ship that has a huge cargo bay? Is it satisfying to fly that boat when I need to pick up my daily haul? Does it feel good knowing that when I undock my Hoarder it'll actually survive the random ganking dessie? It can.

If you don't take the opportunity to innovate now, then it'll still be just a matter of who holds the most and train that--look how this has worked out historically: The Itty V carried the most, and it was trained into the most for haulers. The Covetor/Hulk sucked rocks the most, thus it was skilled into the most for this. In fact, in every instance where a ship did "the most," it was trained into and flown extensively until tiericide came along (Hurricane?). With the proposed changes, admittedly you're looking for viable choices, so as not to have them all marginalized, but it almost sounds like you don't want competitive choices. As players we like competitive choices and decision making. Adding flavor to the industrial line gives that--true choice with pros and cons to each.

I'm sorry, but I'm not content with holding off on the future promises when the issues facing Industrial rebalance can be addressed today. Besides, it's not worth being complacent today, since this is THE chance we'll get to innovate. Obviously, we haven't seen behind the candelabra and know what future industrial changes are coming. All we can speak to is what we know the Industrial line can--and should become now and not some future balancing period.

Lastly, just to address the point that T1 Industrials are effectively replacing DSTs' role as a "large" high sec hauler, I'd like to say that DSTs are horrendously broken at the current time. They perform poorly as tanky haulers, considering that their cargo bay is smaller than a blockade runner when properly--read: as intended--tanked, and they're far too slow to align when fully fitted for cargo for high sec duty. The Orca--the world's premier mining support ship--does their job better in spades, having an enormous hold AND a ridiculous tank. Certainly, the changes to T1 Industrials' cargo room is warranted (with other changes, to be sure) and their impact on a broken T2 line should never be considered. If that were the case, T1 cruisers would never have ended up so well if Fozzie and his team were worried they'd marginalize proper T2 ships (Deimos says hello).

First, there is a significant difference between asymmetrical role assignment, and an actual difference in ship count. While the Scorp doesn't have disruption counterparts at the moment, at least it has SOME counterpart in the form of the additional ship in either combat or attack roles that each race other than Caldari gets. This is a big deal. If there was a Scorpion as the only disruption BS, but it was a 4th BS, and Caldari just had it as an extra compared to only 3 for the other races, I think people would be a lot less happy with it.

Why on earth are you not considering using all the bay mechanics in some really cool way?

Why not add a skill bonus to specific bay types on the industrials, and then add ORE, SHIP, MINERAL-BAY etc to the industrials?

The baytypes and their mechanics is really what could make T1 and later T2 industrials really interesting again..

(The types can be seen on the dev-ship the cockroach)

A few other hot topics or ideas..

Make compressed ORE able to compete in compression with current workarounds like the 450mm guns.
Make Compressed or only go into ORE-BAY. This would make industrials an alternative to freighters.

Make drop destruction chance linked to containers. So container always "saves" all content, but is much harder to scan. So using no containers denies gankers the loot at a higher degree, but sacrifice the benefits from containers getting a proper capacity boost. Something like 25-50% bonus.

Make cans/containers drop by themeselves, so the secure ones could be linked to hacking skill.

Thus a true specialized freight would become a vital part of the game, in a more inspirering way then atm.

The difference between DRY and WET freight, and all the emergent gameplay to come from it, while still allowing "easy mode" usage.

Caldari ships always have the less cargo capacity of their role, yet I heard that it was an industrial race .

Why would a hauler bother with all those different ships when he can buy a Orca/freighter and haul more in a single ship? Thats why there is no specialised bay. A 75K ore bay soulds cool till you understand it offer nothing over an Orca available under a month of training.

COmbat ship of different class have a reason to still be flown because they counter each other. Hauler have one job and it's the same from all calss of hauling ship. Take X from A to B. No matter what X is made of, if you want to carry more, you get a bigger ship.

There are things a battleship will never do like a frig do. An orca can do anything a T1 hauler can do and then some.

Well the Rorqual and Orca are a problem all to themselves.. They need to really be integrated properly into the industrial role and balancing, and atm they are a terrible misbalanced part of the industry class.

Primarily the Orca should be exceptional Booster and Mineral(Ore) low range shipping class, and the Rorq should be a "mini-station" with compression, and even refining, and long range RAW hauling.

The reason you would want a huge range of variety on Industrials, as well as all other ships and game mechanics in EVE is to get away from the WoW optimizing and flavor of the month problem..

Sadly the last 4-5 years CCP have let the pvp community bend things a lot into the flavor of the month philosophy, hopefully the new direction will go back to the old complexity and lateral integration concepts.

One thought.... Give us a mid range hauler that is balanced between tank and cargo. As for hull, all we need is an amarr hull.

For gal, use the ity 3. Minmatar, use the mammoth (or shuffle, but you have the spare hull).

For caldari... Use the badger Mrk 2. For the max haul badger, use the mrk 3. The MRK 3 does exist, look at the bustard (t2 blockade runner) it uses the badger Mrk 3 hull, always have. Just reskin it with the standard t1 caldari color scheme.

Them all you need is an amarr middle ground hauler.

OK, then, how about the Tristan? Gallente have always had one extra frigate.