EVE General Discussion

You know I look at this thread and I do some EFT-warrioring, and I think I see a few problems with the Prospect. But it's a catch-22, the problems can't be fixed without throwing off game balance in a major way. So while I'm about to put forth my opinion on the Prospect's shortcomings, keep two things in mind. 1: I'm just pointing out what I think is wrong, not suggesting it needs to change or can change. 2: I don't mine, so take my opinion on this with a grain of salt.

That said, here's what I see.

1: The Prospect's training requirements suck. You have to get mining frigate to level 5, to be precise about the problem. And while the Venture is an utterly fantastic ship for beginner miners, it doesn't seem to justify that amount of time investment for level 5. You just train up the requirement so you can move on to barges, so if you want to get into a Prospect, you have to divert time to train something you don't really want or need in the first place.
-As I said, I never said any changes can happen. All ship progressions are like this, but tier 1 frigates from the 4 races do have tremendous use that can justify level 5 training.

2: The Prospect doesn't offer that much for the price. It has a greatly expanded cargohold and extra yield over the Venture, but so what? For the same price as the Prospect, you can get a better mining ship you probably were already going to train into: the Procurer. The Procurer has slightly more yield, a ton more tank, and defensive drones. "What about the cov ops cloak", you say? Well...

3: The Prospect's role is too narrow. The cov ops aspect of it opens up a lot of opportunity, I won't deny that. But precisely what do you plan on doing with it? Ninja mine? That seems to be the purpose. But how you envision ninja mining in a way that yields better profits than just normal mining? And I know you can't mine while cloaked, so while you're mining you are still exposed and vulnerable...without any tank or drones to help you in the case an interceptor drops on you. And you can't cloak while targeted.
-So to make this cov ops thing worth it, you'd have to find a place that was defended enough for you to have to cloak to get into the front door, but a neut passing through the system won't cause people to start patrolling for you and scanning you down. The more time you spend dodging belt rats, gatecamps, and patrols, the more isk/hour you lose where you could have been mining in your hometown area, wherever that may be.
-Your complete lack of any defensive options, against rats or other player ships, needs to make sense verses the availability of using a Procurer for the same price.
-The use of the cloaking device has to be vastly limited. If you catch something on D-scan and/or local and you cloak, again, you're missing out on isk generation you could have gotten if you were in your normal security zone, whether it be blue doughnut territory or highsec.
-You most likely would have had to take time to scout out a place to mine in the first place. Have a favorite spot 4 jumps into lowsec/nullsec where you think nobody goes? Okay, but that's still a lot of time to scout out and time invested dodging high-risk gatecamps to get there.
-Oh, you're going to ninja mine through a wormhole into nullsec or in wormhole space? That's fine, but that's still unpredictable chances to actually use your investment into the Prospect. And I speak from experience, yes, those wormhole exits can be camped as well, though not as often. That requires even more work to scan down wormholes, and then ore or gas sites within those territories.

Basically it boils down to appearing that the Prospect is little more than a gas miner. That's the only practical thing it has over the mining barges. You don't have a lot of cargo or defensive options, and any ore that was valued enough to really justify jumping through all of these hoops to get, would already be mined to hell and back by whomever is local to THAT area.

The Venture and Prospect can gas mine fairly well...but you can use gas miners and a Venture with only like 2 or so hours of training, right? You don't need corp members to devote 14 or so days to get into a Prospect with Tech II gas miners. Just have most of your corp cross-train into a basic gas mining venture and call in as many of them as you need to clear a gas pocket. Done.

Am I wrong? Please, by all means, if there's more to the Prospect, now is a great time to let more people know. Maybe if more people know about some awesome things you can do with it, more people would use it. I could be very mistaken about these things since I don't mine, but looking at this ship's stats and the way EVE seems to be played, I just don't see any real use for it.

not really.

the prospect lives to fill a niche that simply doesn't exist.

Exactly my experience to.

As I said, read the original post.

Or nah, I'll spell it out for you because I already asked you to do it and you failed; he is a carebear who went to low sec only to find it unprofitable and not worth the risk vs reward.

I was also a carebear once, mercoxit made me enter 0.0. The rest is history.

I visited lowsec many times during this period but the fact that the profit of mining in low sec was only marginally better than high sec considering how you need to fit to survive a gank attempt ( mining upgrades vs warp core stabs or intertia stabs for example ) I ended up staying in highsec til I could move on to 0.0.

Don't speak like you are the collective carebear voice because you are not.

Also, lock down lowsec? In case you didn't know warp bubbles cant be deployed in low sec. Escaping a gate camp would be hillariously easy, especially since you can deploy capitals there and bring in materials whatever way you want.

My experience was that highsec mining was kinda slow or not "engaging" enough. So i turned to the Venture and later on to the Prospect to get a more "active" mining with the tense moments that goes with low/wh traveling.

Im diving into "hostile" space witch feels really good, im doing something exiting and fun, i really get the "exploration" feeling!
And ofcourse i watch dscans, i notice whats in local. Im doing my best to stay alive and try to get some ore in the hold, and when i finaly get my ore hold filled up, i notice how much it really is and i kinda, bleh, is that all? :s

The experience is totally awesome, the payday aint. I really wish it was, because this could be dragging me to low/wh everyday!

Recently ive started trying to get to gas in WHS, if you find the right stuff its really worth it, and if you dont its kinda meh. But the experience is as i said really really nice. (Atleast for me!)

Can someone please tell that genius up there ...
... that he is completely clueless about what I am saying?

Because it seems that his brain shuts down when he reads my posts ...
... so you might have more luck than I do.

Kind of embarassing talking to him .....
... so please don't do it if you feel the same.

And please note his cool name.
He is definitely cool.
Can obviously be noticed easily.



Thanks. :)

I would agree with most of what you wrote

Edit: Apart form that bit and the bit about them all being stupid because they haven't seen the entire universe inside out.

Low Sec : Ok So what is there ? Jaspet , that's about it,, get down to 0.2 it apparently gets more interesting but chances are you will fly through 6 red systems to find it's already been mined out of existence.

What's to say that if you put a different rare ore there the same thing won't happen ?

I wouldn't say the niche isn't there, only that the niche isn't lucrative. I fly my Prospect almost every day in low/WH space just for a cheap little thrill.

In response to the OP, I would say that making the niche lucrative would either cause the Prospect to be overpowered or cause other methods of mining to become even more profitable comparatively. Outside of gas mining, if you're going to ninja mine, you just have to do it for reasons other than isk.

I am not sure how higher isk/hour earned from mining would result in a comparable increase in a non-player manufactured item like PLEX. ISK from mining doesn't introduce new ISK into the game unlike some other ISK-earning activities. It's really a transfer of wealth from the consumer of goods to the miner.