Player Features and Ideas Discussion

To me this seems like trying to force 12 ships into just two roles, because "its time to wrap up the tech1 rebalancing" and because no one bothered to come up with anything more intresting. "Just get them out of the way and focus on combat hulls, cause they aren't that important anyway."

Granted, industrials are not like frigates or other combat hulls. While combat hulls can serve alot of different fucntions, haulers are pretty mutch just "move junk from point A to point B without getting killed on route." They could however, have different roles based on intended area of usage. This distinction could easily give at least four separate roles:

-High capacity hauler with low tank, low speed and bad agility. For use when gating ganked is fairly unlikely.
-Auto pilot hauler with alot of speed, large sig, and weak tank. For low value transportation in high sec.
-Fast, tanky hauler with warp strength role bonus. For low and null sec transportation and when trying to avoid suicide gankers.
-Low mass hauler with scanning probe bonuses. For w-space use.


As for the skill bonuses, there are a few more aside form "+5% to Cargo Capacity, +5% to Agility, +5% to Max Velocity" that haulers could benefit from:
+5% to Armor Hit Points
+5% to Shield hit Points
+4% to Armor Resistances
+4% to Shield Resistances
+? to Warp Speed
-? Reduction to Signature Radius

It might also be a good idea to balance the Tech2 industrials at the same time when balancing Tech1. The "Tech1 firs then Tech2" approach seems to work well with combat hulls. The industrials however seem to be more likely to step on each others toes if balanced separately.

So don't do it. Seriously. If it's worth doing, do it right. Don't half-ass it. As this stands right now you're telling your customers that you don't care enough to do something good.

"We have some good ideas, but we're not willing to put the effort into something creative, so here's a homogenous pile of crap."

Agreed. Just wait until the overall industry side of the game is ready for its updates/rebalance and then turn back to industrials. No problem is being solved with this rebalance and it would be a shame to waste the resources on what will undoubtedly turn out to be max cargo with mwd/cloak dominance.

I also agree. The saying, "If its not broke, don't fix it" applies here. Industrial ships were mostly fine before the skill requirements were changed. However, it seems CCP has made up its mind to go ahead with the changes despite all the negative reaction to them. I don't expect the proposed changes to have any meaningful affects in game. A few more people will train for the Bestower and less people will fly the now 4 useless ships. Does that make this balancing pass worth the effort?

I'm getting the distinct impression this thread should have been posted weeks earlier, so the community could have added their input to the design and purpose of industrials. Instead, the dev team have posted a rather tepid proposed change that only now is getting the feedback it deserves.

Bottom line; either scrap the lot and give us two ORE haulers, or add some diversity to the ship's capabilities instead of just being flying cargo containers with slightly different stats.

Ships and BPOs : Convert them

Skillpoints: Convert them

T2: Convert those at the same time

Freighters/JF - Skills were already converted, so convert the skill tree until proper ORE/Interbus freighters can be devised, then convert.

They already showed it's possible to mess around with skill points at this scale when they did the Destroyer/Battlecruiser skill modification.

I think this is completely wrong, for two main reasons:

1. Realistically, speedy-tanky versions would be used to autopilot through hisec. While bulky haulers - for cargo aggregation or "last mile" delivery in conjunction with freighters, i.e. that would be short trips driven manually. For that reason I strongly recommend to switch speed bonuses, that is:
SIGIL: + Max Velocity,
BESTOWER: + Agility.
Gate camps are insta-locking anyway, so it would mean nothing for PVP. But it would be a great incentive to train the skill, cause watching your hauler aligns kills you from the inside.

2. Who was that evil person who told you every race should have exactly the same bonuses? No wonder you cannot come up with reasonable racial "flavours". Also, 10% total bonus pool is kinda poor. When Iteron V was only accessable at level 5 skill, it was irrelevant, but now there is very little initiative to train skill to 5. Consider this option instead:
- BESTOWER: +7.5% Cargo Capacity, +7.5% Agility;
- BADGER MK2: +10% Cargo Capacity, +5% Agility;
- MAMMOTH: +5% Cargo Capacity, +10% Agility;
- ITERON V: +15% Cargo Capacity.

Voila! Now you have the flavours with
- Iteron is still the champion at lvl5,
- Mammoth being the fastest of snails (and good cargo at low skills),
- Bestower is all-round hauler (maybe have equal cargo with Iteron at lvl4),
- Badger falls a little behind Iteron at lvl5, but is faster and tankier.

Now let me know what do you think!

I'd also say it would be better to leave hauler rebalance on the shelf for now until you can bring some interesting diversity to the table. The changes you've suggested look remarkably weak in terms of what would be brought to gameplay. The whole thing about eve is diversity and choice, wanting to train into everything to get that little edge over someone else. These changes would destroy that completely with no need to train into any other race given the small differences involved. This is the polar opposite of the frigate and cruiser changes where I still find myself totally spoilt for choice given the diversity they bring and yet remain equally useful. I have never had so much fun changing which ship to use and being unable to settle on 'the best one'.

What if you're wrong? In fact you are...

Let's be honest - you've never done anything industry-related, did you?
Neither have anyone in your team, and active CSM members. Or they do it in a weird way that is totally diffirent from everyday practice. The case of Mammoth/Hoarder emphasizes that. Am I right? Or am I right?

So here comes the question: are you ready for REAL discussion? You know, I have more interesting things to do other than feeding forum trolls, so if you're firm in your decision - so be it. If you're open for dialogue - let's begin from the beginning and speak about the purpose of T1 industrials, their niche and it's overlap with Orca and freighters.

Sshhhh, he got stuck with the boring make-work, he wants to do move onto HAC's! He said so himself.

Pity that leaves an awfully lot of player's out in the cold for a lot more years waiting for a real iteration to the T2 Industrials which are probably also too boring to do correctly.