Maduin Shi
Breakwater Testing Inc Aegis Requiem
2
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Posted - 2014.04.04 11:19:00 -
[1] - Quote
Not really sure where CCP Fozzie got these ideas to change the mining minigame, because I thought that the Proc/Skiff and the Ret/Mack barges were fine and relatively well balanced. The only barges that needed real help was the Covetor and the Hulk - they needed an ore bay at least the size of a Procurer and ideally a Skiff, and the Hulk needed a buff to its tank to justify its cost.
What we got instead is the following:
1. Procurer midslot nerf - basically this works out to a yield nerf with the loss of a midslot, in order to get the roughly the same EHP you have to consume two low slots (RB II + DCU II) but you only gain one additional low slot from the change and you lose a midslot. So assuming you still need a large tank to survive a gank attempt long enough for help to arrive, you will take a yield nerf to get it. For Procurer PvP bait, losing the midslot just means less fitting options, which is basically fail as well since Skiffs are generally too expensive to use as bait. I don't really see the point to either of these changes.
2. Retriever/Mack yield nerf - Just why? Most solo/small gang highsec miners and newer players fly this ship for its convenience. Its not nice to just nerf their yield because it happens to be your opinoin that too many people are flying Retrievers and Macks. From my experience mining in highsec, I see plenty of procurers and skiffs because of their anti-gank advantages. The only ships I don't see often are Covetors and Hulks for the reasons listed above. But the landscape is diverse enough, and would have become more so if everything was left alone except for the above buffs to Covetors and Hulks. Along with the Procurer nerf, this works out to a mining yield nerf pretty much across the board, in practical terms. I thought the intention was to avoid a mining nerf since that was the stated intent in the Refining/Reprocessing changes? Well this change is a mining nerf since most non-botting/ISBoxing miners fly these ships, and the buffs to Skiffs, Covetors and Hulks are probably not enough to get them to switch. Don't get me wrong, miners will still make more or less the same income as before, but mineral prices will go up and ship costs will therefore go up so PvP will cost more.
3. Skiff buff - Probably will make the Skiff the best mining ship in the game, excellent yield, decent size ore bay, incredible tank and great drone DPS. This could be a rather significant nullsec mining buff since the drone HP and DPS bonuses could allow this ship to solo null belt rats, though I would have to defer to the nullbears for the final take on that. For any ore belts and anomalies that are close to a station, this is the go-to ship. Skiffs will probably also entirely displace Covetors/Hulks in corp mining fleets since the latter didn't get the buffs where they were needed and the yield bonuses aren't worth the paper thin tank. But this brings up what could be a major problem with this buff in that every botter and ISBoxer in New Eden will be buying fleets of these ships and fielding them with the usual Orca + Freighter setup and they will be almost impossible to harass by suicide gankers, at least not economically. It would take an entire gank fleet to take out a couple of Skiff botters with this change, and I don't think this is good for Eve. I've had quite good faith that mining bots were more or less policed by players via suicide ganking, and that if players decided they just didn't like botting/ISBoxing, they could take justice into their own hands if they so chose. Well post-patch, player policing may no longer be viable against this class of miners. Now, I have nothing against ISBoxing per-se (of course I hate botting, but thats a given), the problem here is that in the long run most highsec mining ganks will fall entirely on the small time miners in retrievers and macks, and that would be unfortunate to say the least.
4. Covetor/Hulk "buff" - Sigh, well it got the wrong stats buffed so it goes in the trash bin until the next balance pass. |