Player Features and Ideas Discussion

While part of me would love to see a class of large hull miners, I can't see them as too viable for low and null.

You really have three schools of thought when it comes to surviving low and null sec mining (especially solo): Damage, Survivability and Escape. Each advocate can effectively argue for their favorite. It is impossible to know which is best without actual experience.

The large frame miner lends itself to the survivability camp, but the goal is still escape. Survivability works best in high where CONCORD has your back. Just live long enough for Big Brother to come kick some tail. That kind of tells me that the larger ship would be best in high sec.

To take a barge/exhumer into low and null with the intention of being able to fight back is like facing an army with a pistol. Sure, you'll pick off a few attackers, but the result is the same - you're waking up in a vat. If capsuleers weren't immortal, the ability to fight back might be more effective, but remember, this is Eve, we have suicide gankers in cheap ships and cheap clones. Dying means nothing.

This leaves escape. Give a low/null sec miner the ability to warp out quickly (even while being disrupted), enough tank to survive until they can warp, enough DPS to handle native NPCs, enough hold to make a trip several jumps from the nearest outpost or POS and maybe the ability to mess with an attacker's targeting and I think you will have something effective.

I'd start with the slot configuration of a battle cruiser - 8 highs (the rest subject to figuring out the right balance). Give two of those highs the ability to mount strip miners or ice harvesters. One or two could be utility high slots (for cloak) and the rest could be weapon slots (or for mining lasers or gas harvesters).

This would give the player a definite choice on how to fit the ship. You could fit it out for a specific goal - say ice mining so you fit the two harvesters, a cloak and some weaponry or useful utilities. Or, you could fit it to be ready for whatever you find. A strip miner, an ice harvester, a couple gas cloud harvesters, a cloak and whatever else. This would be pretty damned sweet for going deep into low and null or even into wormholes.

It could have a lot of tank, but due to its conversion, not nearly as much as a battle cruiser. Maybe half way between a barge and a battle cruiser. Again, subject to actual balancing.

Give it an inherent +2 warp stability. Tech 1 normal cloak, Tech 2 can mount covert ops. Role bonus could go to lock time and/or target range (including for the survey scanner) and maybe to mining yields (but only maybe half of the current Procurer/Skiff - it's not supposed to be an uber miner, its a ninja). Skill bonus could be to mining yield (but not if it is a role bonus), align time, ECCM use, hold capacity...whatever makes sense but is balanced. Make the drone bay pretty big - maybe 5 mediums and 10 lights. I wouldn't go too big on the cargo hold as I don't see a need for this ship to carry mining crystals since I, personally, would want to fit it as cheaply as possible. It is not a matter of if it gets destroyed, but when.

Strip miners do not use whatever high slot is free. Otherwise you could mount them on Orcas.



Hence my suggesting creating an ORE re-fit (or whatever) of a battle cruiser. Take the 8 high slots, allow two to mount anything up to a strip miner or ice harvester, two strictly utility and the last four can mount weapons. Fitted right and adding in decent drone abilities and you should be able to handle a lot of rats. Ideally, the devs would look at allowing mining lasers and gas harvesters to be mounted on utility slots and not just weapon slots. This would allow you to, say, go in fielding three gas harvesters, a cloak and four medium weapon mounts.

I know you are aiming your idea to combat rats, but those are pretty tame compared to roving PvPers. I have ventured into low and null with adequately fitted Procurers and could handle the rats I saw, but a PvP in a frigate with a scrambler was another story. It took him forever to kill me. If I had had CONCORD backup he would have been toast before I even got down to the armor belt. Instead, it just took him a long time to kill me while he repped away my drone damage.

The longer targeting range and quicker lock would also allow for the use of multiple stabs without having to sit right on top of the rocks to target them.

Lots of interesting ideas and thoughts on he Procurer/Skiff in these posts. One thing jumps out: it is not a covert ops ship and should not be covert ops capable. Also, I believe that on Mining Barges +1 High slots translates into +1 Strip Miner necessarily, as they do not take a hardpoint to fit. So adding high slots is not an option.

Really when it comes down to it, you can suggest a lot of changes but the ideas most likely to get out of this thread and into the game will be the simplest. I don't think anything drastic is required to make this ship's survivability interesting, just a +2 bonus to Warp Strength. This ship and its intended role is kind of screaming for it IMO. At least on the T2 hull though IMO it could be warranted on the T1 hull (or just +1 Warp Strength on the T1 hull).