Player Features and Ideas Discussion

^This +100

with a perfectly skilled Orca pilot with Tech II links and a Mining Foreman Mindlink in the head (Attention, the values are for 3 minutes, not for 1 Strip Miner cycle)

Rokh = 5276 m3
Retriver = 5936 m3
Covetor = 6535 m3
Mak = 6232 m3
Hulk = 7201 m3

Hell, even with these numbers, I like the Rokh... just take a Rokh, cut and paste, give it a 25k m3 ore hold and a bonus to mineing laser range and presto one mineing battleship its good enough....

with all the battleship properties.. big + slow + ugly

the pilot would still need to make sacrifices on yield to get any offensive capability, by droping mineing lasers and adding rails or blasters .. the above numbers are assuming full set of mineing lasers

Rokh for example has 8 hard points, and those numbers above assume all 8 have mineing lasers, but if want combat capability, and say choose to sacrifice 2 lasers for 2 blasters / rails... then your yield drops 25%

maybe shave some off armor / hull to compensate for an added ore cargo hold

could do same with the other semi popular mineing battleships that used to be used back in the day as well easily enough

Hi Nick, I agree with your commentary and I've enjoyed reading your posts here and elsewhere.

I thought I'd add a bit more... I really like the idea of the ORE battleship size command ship. It has a very specific role but is not a capital ship, (Orca and Rorqual). Now the combat command ships are based on battlecruiser T1 hulls and I thought I'd copy/paste in the following from the eveonline item database to serve as a point of discussion:

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The command ship is a fearsome addition to any fleet. The Tech 2 hull is based on its first tier Tech 1 battlecruiser counterpart. While intended as a fleet support/booster, it can be seen roaming solo, stalking the space lanes.

As with battlecruisers, Command ships can use gang assist modules to increase the abilities of any fleet they are part of. They can also do a high amount of damage and its tank is better than many ships out there. It is not difficult to fit a fleet command ship for a tank with an effective hitpoint buffer of over 200,000.

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From that ^^^; If you want a sub-cap ship able to equip the mining foreman links you pretty much guarantee that the devs will push it into being a T2 ship. Which is not the end of the world and frankly, if you want it to do everything I would expect this. If on the other hand you want it to stay T1 then drop the mining foreman links.

Now if you want an ore bay and mining yield you have to start giving things up. Start by forgetting strip miners... those are strictly for barges and exhumers. That being said you can still do a lot with mining lasers and mining drones... In any case, the point of this hybrid ship is not to exceed any capability of a dedicated miner or combat vessel. It does those things considerably less well than its dedicated counterparts however, none of those dedicated counterparts can do all things as well as this one. I think this point is key to maintaining play balance.

Then there is the firepower and EHP of this ship. This is the second key distinguishing feature. This miner can mount guns and take a hit. Belt rats? No problem! Sleepers? Maybe... depends on WH class. Roaming pirates in Tengus? Not a chance! Exactly what it should be based on using the combat command ships and/or T1 battleships as a baseline. Note that this thread is suggesting a battleship size vessel not battlecruiser. This key point has consequences for cost, performance and skill requirements. From a conceptual point, given my reading of other people's comments... what you are looking for is a combat ship that can do mining. Not a mining ship that can do combat.

I agree with the poster who said you should focus a very high level discussion. Leave the actual ship design to the Devs. If in fact they ever do create one I volunteer to take if for a test drive on the test server for them.

One last thing... if the ship is meant as a soloists/small group miner's dream then adding a 'utility' high slot is great for probe launcher and/or cloak! Give me a scan bonus to hunt for mining anomalies and I'll take all the devs out to lunch in a nice little bistro I found on Luminaire!

There are some interesting ideas in this thread.

I agree EvE needs new mining ship, but a tanked ORE beast is not the answer.
Things in EvE need to be destroyable with reasonable effort.

I would much rather see bigger, more profitable and more expensive version of "hulk" which is little better tanked so it's potential can be utilized fully even in low/null sec under fleet protection -> which means it can take a bit more damage then hulk.

The ship should have very limited ore hold so it's used ONLY in fleet or it's bonuses can come entirely from fleet.
Because to have another solo mining ship is just silly we have enough of those and high-sec is not a better place because of it.

A bit more tanked ship would be nice. So it's not like you need only 3 catalysts in 0.5 to take it down and score 200 mil on faction loot while losing 30 milion.

I generally agree with you and it's truth that EHP only will not help you in most low/null sec situations.
Well in the situation which you're describing you have to run or fight.
I would go for ship which can run relatively quickly.
Because I can't imagine how hard it would be to come up with ship which is killable in high sec, can defend itself in small fleet engagement in low/null sec or in numbers even destroy it's opponents.

When ship can run quickly then yes, you don't need tank because you're not sticking around long enough to get hit.
This would pretty much work for low/null sec where you mine i guess only when friendlies are around or system is pretty much empty.

But for high sec, ship like this is just not that good. It's great it can run fast, problem is spotting the enemy who want's to kill you. In general mining in high-sec system you can have 70 people who are just grinding on the belts, even if you dscan you can pick up new combat ship within range every time you hit "scan" button. Because there is so much traffic you have problem to distinguish who is friend and who is just there to blow your precious boat to pieces.
Simply, It's hard to keep track of all the people.

With your input and what I just wrote in mind:
Logical solution for this situation is to have modular option -> either your ship is fast or it's a bit tanked.
Problem would be designing such ship with existing modules while not having impact on maximal productivity of the ship.

Ideal solution would be modular ship similar ( T3 if you will ) with limited number of modules.
When you need tank - you fit tanking module
When you need speed - you fit module which increases agility and decreases time between warping and actual warp.
And there could also be for example a module which would increase your drone damage.

Everything within reasonable limits, we don't wanna make it invincible or uncatchable but for it's reasonably high T3 price it should be better. It can even look almost the same as hulk if CCP doesn't wanna add new design per say something like "T3 hulk"...
But I would appreciate MUCH MUCH more completely new hull which is looks different.

Just let the pilot chose what's best for the situation.

Time and again I see posters saying they are worried about an undestroyable mining ship... yet no one here, the author of this thread or myself are suggesting any such thing.

Look all ships in Eve are destroyable. In case your not following current events the battle in B-R5RB last weekend has seen a hundred or so titan class ships popped. I'd like to say folks are throwing those things away like used underwear but no one I know uses a hundred pairs of underwear in a day! (Not sure I want to meet the person who needs clean underwear every 15 mins but I digress...)

From my experience most PvP'ers are lazy and risk averse. They engage when they have near certainty of success and/or overwhelming numbers. This ship won't unbalance anything because like any PvP encounter as soon as they evaluate its combat effectiveness they will either move on, call friends or dock and get a bigger ship if they don't have one already. This ship changes nothing.

Secondly the issue about high sec ganking is a non-issue. If you want to avoid high-sec ganking you don't need anything special... just pay attention to local. The New Order Knights are exceptionally vocal in declaring their presence. I would never use this ship in high-sec because it would have a far lower yield than a mining barge or exhumer.

The idea here is a ship that can mine and fight in low, W and null space. It is really for small groups or solo miners. I wouldn't use it in a larger mining op because an Orca or Rorqual with proper support would be more effective.

As others have said. The proposal for this hybrid is to address a niche that is currently not available in the existing ship classes.

this

though ur skiffs yield looks a little low. u can get a 84k tank and a 966m3/minute yield.

dnt u mean the opposite way round?

In essence your both right, yes we have these ships and they are great at what they do but when I decide what I'm going to do i always pick high sec mining with hulk. I risk skiff only when WH is under control of friendly players. Because I would have to be hours on field just to mine enough to afford the new skiff which is in most low sec systems unrealistic unless in large numbers.
The longer you stay on field the more risk you're at in dangerous areas which is all right but the risk is mostly disproportional to the gain if you're thinking about using an exhumer.
If you're mining every day few hours for example barge is just not the way to go.

With this yield and cost, venture is best of them by far. You can buy stockpile of them and if one is down you just take next an replace it within few minutes of mining in dangerous areas.

If you're in null-sec and you know who's coming before they come or you're in deep allied territory or WH is under total control of allies then it's a different situation and it reasonable to risk expensive miners.

I'm sorry I've wondered off the topic a bit. I just wanted to answer.

To the Battleship:
As for the battleship, when you have such boat it will be not effective in high-sec, that is clear.
I think if this Battleship idea is implemented it will end up after balancing as both bad at mining and combat because you will either have to sacrifice your firepower or your yield to make it work.

Why bother with turrets?
Just add a bonus to sentry drones, give the shields invulnerability for 12 hours when they reach 15%, use a strontium bay to extend the invulnerability for 7 days or more.... etc etc