Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So, if you are going to do that, why not just make it so that the boosting Rorqual is not locked in place by the Industrial Core? In other words, get rid of the mining boost bonus on the Industrial Core. Then make it so that mining boosts no longer work inside the POS shields. It would be nice if the next step after that was to make it so that boosts only worked on grid (or as a targeted module, as you and I have discussed elsewhere).

The next step after that is to give a Rorqual pilot a real reason to expose his ship and lock it in place for five minutes at a time. Various ideas have been kicked around. You could make it so that the Rorqual could tractor beam asteroids to bring them closer to the mining ships. You could also make the Rorqual do something else to the asteroids to make them easier to mine.

Perhaps if there were mining complexes, which had to be scanned down, and inside of them there were very valuable ores, but also very volatile ores, and the only way to keep the miners alive was to remote repair them with capital remote shield reps? Then, people hunting miners would at least have to bring probes. If the Industrial Core increased sensor strength considerably and made it hard to scan down the Rorqual, then it might have a fighting chance. Still, I admit, I'm stretching.

I don't really have any great ideas on this topic, because although I have owned a Rorqual for several months, I have never used it for mining. I'd like to see it become more useful, because it is a great looking ship.

I don't fly Rorq or know anything about Industrial Core thing, so I can't speak to this idea specifically..

but +1 to making more ships on grid and not in station/ in POS, however you want to do that.

It would be good to allow the ship to tank and allow for friends to bail you out, but ideally it would great not to have to rely on them at all.

A capital industrial cloaked whilst running its industrial core (which is similar to siege / triage / bastion)
How about we give it a Doomsday device as well?

#deletetheindustrialcore

To be frank, most threads discussing rorqual rebalance barely touch on the rorqual ands delves mostly into 'let's make the Indy core worth the trouble'. I don't mind at all retesting ideas and uses for the core, but before we start investing more and more use into this module, we need to make sure the ship itself has a good base, so as not to entirely require it for use. Similar problem (in my eyes) with the dreadnaughts. Basically building a ship around the module instead of the other way around.

Remove all current bonuses of the industrial core to the ship hull (compressing, boosting, etc.) and go from there.

With regards to mining, offgrid boosting is sucky, why should some ship Lightyears away impact anything. Either get in a POS and log off or get on grid and play the game.

Actually that's the point. The projected mining bonuses come from the rorq being on grid. Its a bonus projector which requires a lock on the recipient, and then acts like a remote sensor booster, but for fleet bonus which is why it is in a high slot. I realize I was very ambiguous in my description.

I left the offgrid bonus on so that bears can bear, but get better yeild for putting the rorq on grid.

While I normally agree with your suggestions, I think you are taking this the wrong direction.

Eve is not about fair fights. Most Eve combat, like most combat in the real world, is very one-sided. No one wants to be on the receiving end of that one-sided fight. For that reason, it is usually essential to force people to fight when they do not want to do so. This usually involves tricking or trapping them. In the case of the Industrial Core, it helps with the trapping portion.

I am all about conflict generators - things that make people fight. The Siege Mode on the Dreadnought was awesome for this (when Dreadnoughts had a role that was not made obsolete by Supercarriers). A Dreadnought is stuck in place for five minutes - it had to make a limited commitment to a fight to be a useful ship. But when it is in Siege mode, the Dreadnought does as much DPS as 7-10 battleships (against structures or other capital ships). That is a huge force multiplier (if you have to shoot structures or other capital ships).

The fundamental problem with the Rorqual is that it tries to do too much with one hull. It needs a role that really works for being on grid and it needs to do that way better than anything else.

Right now, the Rorqual's most useful bonus is to Mining Foreman links. But how good is that bonus?

Hulk - 3x Modulated Strip Miner II, 2x Mining Laser Upgrade II, Arkonor Mining Crystal II, max skills = 1720 yield
Adding Orca boosts with maxed skills and mindlink = 2923 yield
Adding Rorqual boosts with maxed skills and mindlink (without Industrial Core) = 2752 yield
Adding Rorqual boosts with maxed skills and mindlink (with Industrial Core) = 3421 yield

So, the price of being locked in place for five minutes is a less than 20% yield bonus versus using an Orca. Totally underwhelming.

The Rorqual needs to be forced out of the POS shields. A 20% yield bonus is not enough to do that.

The Rorqual's other bonuses are also not worth it. The ship tries to do too much. Instead of being really good at one thing (like the Dreadnought, which is as good as 7-10 battleships at killing structures or other capital ships), it tries the proverbial jack-of-all-trades approach.

1. It can fit the Capital Tractor Beams, which gives it the ability to pull cans up to 240km away. How many mining fleets are spread out this far? Even assuming we are in a huge belt or anomaly, it is not like it can remotely repair a ship that far away. Not to mention that it is a useless bonus, since the Orca can pull cans up to 84km away, which is far enough.

2. It has a 20% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage. It can do 1005 DPS with Ogre II's and max skills. Frankly, using a Rorqual in the belt for it's DPS capability is absurd. I can put a Dominix in the belt at 10% of the price and do the same thing. For that matter, four Skiffs do about the same DPS and apply it better (medium drones vice heavy drones). The best use for this bonus is to hopefully be able to kill one tackler before the rest of the gang shows up to kill you, if you get caught moving it solo gate-to-gate. In short, this is a stupid and pointless bonus.

3. It has a 50% bonus to Capital Remote Shield Booster range. Once again, an underwhelming bonus. It has a max range of 57.8km. How many shield transporters can it actually employ? The ship only has six high slots. One is for the Industrial Core, which is mandatory. Assume that you do not use all three Mining Foreman links (Laser Optimization), so you can fit up to four remote shield boosters. Although frankly, you probably want to use some other high slot modules (like a cyno, for when you inevitably get caught). If you really needed that kind of repair power, you could use a Chimera or a Nidhoggur instead (and have the option to go into Triage mode when the enemy inevitably escalates on you).

Buffing the combat potential for the ship is pointless. A mining gang of Skiffs and Procurers can already give a small mining gang a good run for their money. I remember going up against a large fleet of Skiffs and Procurers (30-50) during some roams to Cobalt Edge (almost certainly one or two dudes with ISBoxer). The one or two times our small Interceptor roams caught them, we could not even touch them. That is not a problem in my eyes. We had to prepare properly for them. At one point my Corporation had 20+ Black Ops, some recons, and some bombers in the same region, hiding in a back corner, ready to drop on them, with a cloaked Heavy Interdictor in a mining anomaly just waiting for them (these guys were confident enough to mine with a single neutral in local). Unfortunately, another blue gang prematurely alerted them and they docked up. We didn't get another good shot at them before we moved away from Tenal.

If they had a Rorqual on the field, it would not have changed the equation much. All it would have done is given us even greater incentive to find a way to get overwhelming force on the field. We would have neuted it dry very quickly and killed it.

Ultimately, a fleet of Skiffs is not going to go toe-to-toe with a proper combat fleet, even with Rorqual support. When the enemy escalates, then the mining fleet will have to escalate as well.

Buffing the yield bonus for the Rorqual does not seem to me to be the best option, but it is an option. That's still not a very fulfilling role.

Frankly, take away the mining boost ability, take away the remote shield boosts. Give it the ability to use 3x Capital Strip Miners. Give the Industrial Core a huge bonus to range, cycle time, etc. for Capital Strip Miners (like fitting a Siege module to a Dreadnought). Let people run the risk of using a 2b ISK ship instead of 7-10 Hulks, at the risk of a 5 minute cycle timer. Give people an incentive to get out there to hunt these tasty killmails waiting to happen.

I agree. I do not really like that role for it, but I hate the idea of capital ships purely as support ships for subcapitals even more.

The image of 4-5 Rorquals in a belt makes me salivate. That would be something worth guarding. Or attacking. Instead of having 40-50 characters sitting in a belt in Skiffs or Procurers, you could have 4-5 Rorquals. All stuck in place for five or ten minutes minimum - CCP would have to adjust the cycle time to something that balanced risk and reward.

Another idea is to turn it into a sort of Black Ops mining ship. Give it the ability to jump to covert cynos. Get rid of the drone damage bonus and the remote repairs and make the boosts only work outside the POS shields. Lower the cycle time on the Industrial Core to one minute.

Increase the size of the SMB, so that it can carry a decent number of Exhumers. Currently it can carry five Hulks.

Then it would theoretically have a role in ninja-mining. Players could use Prospects as scouts. Once they found a suitable location, the Rorqual could jump to a covert cyno. The other miners then jump to the clone vat bay, jump into their Hulks, mine away until the Rorqual was full, then clone jump or fly Prospects back. The Rorqual could compress the ore on site in order to enable them to cram more into it. Yes, it would be kind of a niche role, but at least it is theoretically possible. Most people would still use it for boosting their static mining operation, but at least it would be outside the POS shields for at least a minute in that case.

The critical thing is to get it out of the POS shields. Sitting inside a POS boosting is about the worst role on earth.