Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm combining my old idea for frigate-sized industrials with someone else's idea for navy industrials. These ships will be more expensive than tech 1 industrials and hold quite a bit less, but they are small and maneuverable, and hard to hit, and much cheaper than blockade runners. Blockade runners will maintain an advantage in capacity, cloaking technology, and hit points (smartbomb resistance), while navy light industrials will have an advantage in max velocity, signature radius, price, and training requirements.


When fully fit for cargo, these could haul around 5000m3 of stuff, while their base cargohold would be over 1000m3 and they would have enough powergrid to fit frigate-sized afterburners or microwarpdrives, allowing them to zip around much like frigates or destroyers--they'll probably be a bit more massive and less agile than T1 frigates. Their warp velocity should be at least the 4.5 that fast T1 industrials have. A high warp velocity combined with a fast align time enables them to carry smaller loads around pretty quickly. I imagine plenty of less-established industrialists may find these ships valuable for their early ventures. They can also act as a poor pilot's blockade runner, being cheap but altogether not as good as a true blockade runner at getting past gate camps.

Do I really need to answer this again? Sig radius, mass, velocity. I said it in the original post and I've said it all of the other times I've suggested frigate industrials, and I've repeated it every time I get asked that question.

Interesting idea. I like it. One thing: a frigate is a warship. A cargo ship is basically an empty space surrounded by hull. So I don't see how one of these frigate sized industrials could realistically be more massive than a frigate. Of course, if you want to sacrifice realism for game parameters (we want it to be more massive because... and we don't care if it's "realistic") have at it. Less agile does make some sense, though I wouldn't think they should be much less agile. After all, same hull, essentially.

Or maybe trying to inject "reality" into EVE is crazy.

It's more massive because the mass of its load is not factored into the vessel mass in EVE Online. Were it factored in, I would opt for the empty ship's mass to be less than a frigate, but full it would vary depending on the density of the cargo and could potentially be heavier than a destroyer.