Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The problem:
As anyone who has used a hauler knows, the only decent way to tank the ship is with shield modules. The only way to have any significant hauling capacity is to put on several cargo expanders in the low slots. If you have even 3 low slots without cargo expanders in them, you cut your max cargo by more than half. Now armor haulers can fit more cargo expanders due to having more low slots but they don't actually get more cargo space because their base cargo is reduced to compensate. This makes it so that fitting much of anything other than cargo expanders in your low slots will quickly gimp your hauling capacity. This leaves only the mid slots for customization. This isn't just frustrating for ship fitters, it is unfair to armor haulers, and it goes directly against the spirit of EVE Online in that every ship is supposed to have a wide array of viable fitting options. The only haulers that don't fall prey to this fitting travesty are the Gallente specialized haulers which bypass cargo expanders entirely by having specialized bays which aren't affected but are already very large. So those ships can freely fit anything they want in their low slots with no loss of hauling capacity while every other industrial becomes gimped if they use even two of their low slots for something other than cargo expansion.


Adding stacking penalty as a solution:
An easy solution to this is to give cargo expansion a stacking penalty, and increase the base cargo space of haulers to compensate such that max hauling capacity is unaffected. This way cargohold expanders are still important, but once you have a few on you might as well use the remaining low slots for something other than expanders. Armor industrials with several low slots will be able to fit some armor plates and hardeners without hurting their cargo space much, or can even fit a total armor tank with a significant reduction in hauling capacity, but without completely gimping their capacity.


Here are some examples:
3x Expanded Cargohold II without stacking penalty: +107.267% cargo space
6x Expanded Cargohold II without stacking penalty: +329.597% cargo space

3x Expanded Cargohold II with stacking penalty: +82.774% cargo space
6x Expanded Cargohold II with stacking penalty: +104.414% cargo space


Bestower without stacking penalty
Bestower base cargo space (skill 5): 6000 m3
Bestower with 3x T2 expanders (skill 5): 12,436 m3
Bestower with 6x T2 expanders and 3x T1 cargo rigs (skill 5): 39,201 m3

Bestower with stacking penalty
Bestower base cargo space (skill 5): 19,200 m3
Bestower with 3x T2 expanders (skill 5): 35,092 m3
Bestower with 6x T2 expanders (skill 5): 39,247 m3


Tayra without stacking penalty
Tayra base cargo space (skill 5): 9125 m3
Tayra with 3x T2 expanders (skill 5): 18,913 m3
Tayra with 4x T2 expanders and 3x T1 cargo rigs (skill 5): 36,674 m3

Tayra with stacking penalty
Tayra base cargo space (skill 5): 18,400 m3
Tayra with 3x T2 expanders (skill 5): 33,630 m3
Tayra with 4x T2 expanders (skill 5): 36,247 m3

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Other changes just fall into place:

• Increase expansion amount of rigs to be on par with expander modules
• Allow the specialized hauling bays to be affected by cargo expansion and shrink some of them to compensate
• Increase battlecruiser and battleship cargohold space so that they have room for a significant amount of ammo/capacitor booster charges/loot/liquid ozone, so their cargoholds hold significantly more than destroyers
• Give freighters less fitting restriction without having to worry about them reaching 1,000,000 m3
• Retriever/Mackinaw should have higher max ore hold; they will have reduced mining speed with cargo expanders instead of mining laser upgrades

I don't see a problem with allowing people to fit only expanders, but I do see a problem with forcing them to.

Haulers are incapable of fitting a tank... it doesnt matter how much you nerf cargo expanders.

a three slot tank on a hauler is literally worse than useless... at least if you had left the slots empty you could have saved yourself the ISK and trouble of buying the modules.

So now you want tanked haulers with cargo?

Aren't all ships already antigank as hell with all the ehp buffs and ganking nerfs?

Hello kitty online.

GO!

So I take it you'd massivley increase the fitting stats too, since that's what's really stopping them from fitting a tank.

If you want a tanky hauler, fly a DST.

Cargo expanders are currently stacking penalized.

yeah....no, they will still be ganked if you do anything but nano it and warp to 0 at every point. it takes less then 20 catalyst to gank a freighter, tanking might stop a thrasher but 1-2 cata will surely take a tanked indy out still...or in some cases the gankers in vexors will still take one

It's an idea, it just isn't a good idea.

-1

Do I really have to grace this with a response?


How do you figure? If you were able to put an 800mm armor plate, damage control, and 2x EANM on the Impel and still have near max cargo, then you'd be taking advantage of that armor resist bonus. Then the Impel would have a bit more EHP than the Bustard with about the same cargohold size. At current with fits like that, the Impel will have slightly more EHP but the Bustard will have over twice the cargohold.

After checking EFT I see that the Bustard does actually net higher EHP than the Impel, but only slightly. I'm not sure what you're doing wrong with your Impel fit. The only advantage the Bustard has is being able to fit 2x LSE more easily than the Impel can fit 2x 800mm plate, while damage control and power diagnostic both go in low slots. Otherwise, LSE has just a smidge more HP than 800mm plate, and adaptive invuln has slightly more bonus resist. I didn't even try fitting a 1600mm plate to the Impel but it might boost the net EHP a bit further.


Yeah, I forgot they had fleet hangars added. It's a lazy fix that ignores the real problem with cargo expander modules.