Science & Industry

Lots of good ideas about reducing the cycle of siege mode, giving different bonuses etc. However I would love to see some new functionality. Though allowing it to siege and be a cyno jammer for a system you have sov and upgraded industry levels would be nice.

I would like to see it get the ability to sport 1 strip miner with 500% bonus.

The ability for the rorqual to link to fleet members cargo while on grid.

While sieged the rorqual pulls directly from miner ore holds (if allowed permission)... processes ore through industrial core
and then places compressed ore in its hold all this while effectively mining itself and giving
bonuses... etc.

Siege timer is 1 min or so. Ill leave it up to you if the cyno jammer is a good idea or not.

The complacency could be a good thing if it allows more ships to be destroyed because they are afk.
The afk mining could be a bad thing but could be balanced out by the developers retooling how we mine
to make it a more active process.

Thoughts?

~Cerias Shadows

Tau has very good ideas, solid, constructive and very well thought.
And reading this thread again from the start, I see LOTS of good ideas.

(and we can't let this topic go to the bottom of the forum...)

I do agree with you. Here is what i already wrote in post 109:

What i would also like to see for the rorq is something like a Survey link which would transport the Survey Information from the rorq to the other miners in the belt. So that barges and exhumers won´t have to fit their own Survey scanner, if they want to know how much Units in the rock are left.

Theres all these low sec ore anomalies that seem to go to waste. Other mmos use stealth and tactics to harvest in hostile environments. Only two ships really viable for this, and they are both only good for gas harvesting. Anything else, and you're better off in empire mining veldspar.

The Rorqual can be altered to help mining operations in hostile environment and the mechanics are already in the game. The devs can give the Rorqual a high slot module that functions similar to a mobile scan inhibitor. A better version where nothing shows up on D-Scan. Should only work with mining vessels, transport ships, and freighters.

With introduction of structures in the future pos revamp that can alter local, and a Rorqual with a scan inhibitor it'll be possible for players to do some serious stealth mining in low sec regions.

TL;DR - Introduce new emergent gameplay that would require a specialized ship and use the Rorqual for it

I know its not the most popular school of thought, but here's my opinion based on some of the EVE lore:



This is the opening statement given when reading the description of the Rorqual, the emphasis is mine. The ship was never intended to see combat, so of course it wouldn't have very good offensive or defensive capabilities.

Lets look at what the Rorqual can already do:

Use a jump drive to travel massive distances in an instant

Carry an entire fleet of mining vessels with it while jumping

Allow allies to transfer their consciousness onto the ship through the use of Jump Clones installed in the ship

Store 40,000m3 of supplies in an unbonused cargohold, and an additional 30,000m3 in the Fleet Hangar

Support a mining fleet through the use of mindlinks and incredibly large tractor beam ranges

Haul up to 250,000m3 of unrefined ore in it's Ore Hold

Achieve incredibly high compression ratios of unprocessed ores

What the Rorqual needs is to be the pioneering colony ship that it was designed to be.

Give the Rorqual the UNIQUE ability to jump to a distant star WITHOUT THE NEED FOR A CYNOSURAL FIELD. CCP could introduce entirely new systems that are within the same sphere as the rest of New Eden, but are not yet mapped, or alternatively this strategy could apply to the concept of W-Space. As someone who thoroughly enjoys W-Space as it is, I personally would prefer new, unmapped systems added to New Eden.

This would add an entirely new tier to the exploration meta-game. New exploration sites would be added that would be similar in difficulty to an Incursion. Pilots would be attempting to gain access to a piece of (Jovian?) technology that provides coordinates of a distant star system. Once obtained, the coordinates can then be used by the group who obtained them, or sold on the market for another to use.

The one who activates the coordinates would get something similar to an escalation, that would require them to travel to a designated system somewhere in nullsec. Once they arrive, the pilot would then warp his Rorqual to the location, activate another piece of technology, and jump coordinates would be introduced into the ship's navigation computer. They would then be able to open their starmap and see a new star system far away from the New Eden cluster. Presuming they have made all the necessary preparations, and have the requisite supplies, they click on the previously undiscovered star and click Jump.

Once the pilot arrives, he/she is alone. There is no local subspace communication beacons, just like the recently discovered wormhole space. Upon arrival the Pilot would be able to activate his Cloning bay to allow his/her allies to make the one-way trip into the unknown with him/her. Together up to seven (Clone bay limited to 6) pilots would then be able to build a staging POS and establish their own forms of travel to and from their new home.

A Jump Portal Generator at a POS in the system that the Rorqual jumped from can provide secure transportation between these new systems and New Eden, but their use is costly and can only be done a few times per day. This also requires that a group maintain control of the New Eden system, lest their fledgeling system fall to invading forces. A more permanent system would be to establish a pair of massive stargates, one at the source and one at the destination, to facilitate fast, cheap travel between systems.

Over time as more and more of these new systems are discovered, links between them can be established and an entire new galaxy of star systems can be added to the already-massive universe.


Alternatively they can just change some stat bonuses around and make it more tanky to die ever so slightly less quickly, because lets face it, my idea is too much work just to fix a ship that has no real purpose anymore.

Grendell, you miss-click heading to the MD forum?

Such a link would be death to Capital Tractor Beam I, the module nobody sane currently fits, so no big loss, but I would like Graviton 5 refunded!

If you saw the 2015 Fanfest response of CCP Fozzie, it seems they are considering more of a fleet oriented mechanic. Though, the one mentioned, invulnerability and immobility for the fleet, seems impractical to me.

It is a puzzle how to make it so it is desirable, and practical, to have the Rorqual outside of a force field.

So now that they are removing pos shields with new atructures, the race is on to fix the Rorqual.

... or about to announce mining boosting while docked

From latest Dev Blog

"Most if not all of those structures will have a replacement for the current Starbase forcefield with the use of the invulnerability link (final name to be discussed), which will ensure safety for friendly ships within a specific radius. This will not cause your ship to stay in space when logging off."

Guess the Rorqual is safe a bit longer.

An Idea that I had, and never got round to posting is below:


I propose giving the Rorqual a unique module/bonus, that allows it to create a "time warp" effect on demand, for offensive or defensive purposes.

In effect, this would be a module, that would deploy a sphere, much like a Warp Bubble, or POS shield, that would "stop time" within the spheres influence.

When activated, all non fleet members will be expelled from the time warp. Alternatively this could be managed by the POS shield password mechanics.

Nobody within the time warp can be targeted, much like a POS shield. Only the Rorqual itself can be targeted.

All those within the time warps influence are halted. Target locks are broken and further targeting is not possible (preventing the fleet from carrying on mining). Movement is disabled, warp and jump drives are disabled. If the user logs out, their ship will remain in space, and will have a combat timer for 15 minutes AFTER the sphere ends.

The module, would require fuel (a not insignificant amount), therefore preventing it from being used indefinitely. The maximum active time would be for 20 minutes or so (adjustable by skills). It is not possible to end the effect early, and will enter a not insignificant cooldown after the effect ends (to prevent you from over abusing every time a hostile enters system)

The Rorqual enters "reinforced", whereby it cannot be attacked, cannot have additional fuel given to it, cannot be repaired, etc.

HOWEVER, the Rorqual can have an entosis module activated against it. If the attacker is able to run the entire cycle time of the entosis module against the rorqual, then the shield will be disabled after a period of time, ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

The ships within the time warp are now able to move, but are still negatively affected by the effects of the time warp, meaning that it takes them longer than usual to warp out (allowing them to be caught by the attackers).

The purpose of this module, is that it allows for the mining fleet to call for allies to come and defend them. If they are unable to get allied support in time, then chances are, the entire fleet will be destroyed by the attackers.

There could also be potential uses in offensive warfare, purposely deploying Rorquals against enemy fleets, in order disable a portion of the enemy fleet. Or even against your own fleet, if the fight isn't going your way, and you are hoping that the reinforcements 10 jumps away can make it in time.

Obviously, this would require many a balance pass, and the numbers I have suggested above are plucked from thin air. However I do feel that this has the potential to be a very interesting and unique module.

Whilst I have obviously based this on the Rorqual, this could also potentially be a new mechanic that could be applied to Supers and such. I'm not exclusively limiting this to the rorqual :).