I like the idea but just have to balance tank vs mining yield.
Though they may not used as often as the current ships, they provide an option. Would be an awsome ship for mining Veld in null sec because you just set 1 drone pre roid.

Here is a thought.

Make a turtle.

Make a mining drone ship.
No turret slots, no launcher hardpoints.

Make it so tough, that anyone trying to solo gank one is recommended to take a drug test afterwards.
(Think Marauder level defenses)
50 m3 dronebay / 25 bandwidth
Put the Ore hold for 8k m3
Set a cargo hold for 200 m3

(We don't want this thing cross training to be a replacement for the blockade runner either)

Now, have it rely exclusively on mining drones. It can fit 10 total in it's drone bay, and control 5 in space.

Give it bonuses so these 5 drones can collectively perform at a level between the Covetor and the Hulk.

Now, gankers can eat these drones, sure... but the ship can get away. It can fit a tank they can't get through, if it wants.
(again, Marauder levels, but focusing on defense... a fleet could eat one, but not a solo ship very well)

Worried about bots? The ganking clans can still show up and clip those drones to ribbons. Bots don't mine much if there are no drones to supply them, and a smartbombing vessel can instapop them.

TL:DR Gankers can stop it from working, but it is likely to survive the encounter

Figure, using estimates based on: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Advanced_mining

Rokh hourly output: 84,000 units of Omber

Covetor hourly output: 101,880 units of Omber

Hulk hourly output: 181,920 units of Omber

We would want serious miners, with proper fleet support, to never stray from the Hulk's standards. (Till the day CCP decides they need something better)

This would be a serious mining ship.

Using T2 mining drones, a set of 5 with minimal travel delay can mine 31,200 per hour.
This travel time has the mother vessel parked on top of the asteroid, (within 1km), however, not aligned for safe exit, or between multiple asteroids doing several at once.
It also presumes skills Mining Drone Operations at 5, and Drone Interfacing at 5.

I would suggest the ship to have a skill, Mining Drone Ship, each skill level to give a 100% increase in drone yield.

For reference, this means IF you have:
Mining Drone Operations at 5
Drone Interfacing at 5
Mining Drone Ship at 5
AND the ship within 1Km of the asteroid

Your output would be, (in Omber), 156,000 an hour.

Not as good as the Hulk, certainly more skill intensive, and you get to be safer.

I've seen worse ideas for mining, but it does break things a bit.

TBH, I want to see CCP ramp up the scarcity of minerals even more. Get rid of daily respawns and go back to M/F (or maybe M/W/F nowadays), with Friday being the "big" respawn and M(and W) being 50% (or so) of the "big" respawn -- pretty much just enough so that you've got a little trickle of minerals during the week.

Along with that, make the rocks able to be bigger (say 2-3x, not so big that they take days to mine out)... but they have to grow to that size. So, in hisec you're probably never going to see huge rocks, lowsec border systems will be big-ish, and deep low and null will be full of these absolutely massive rocks...

The idea of weekly respawns are really good. Especially if the roids respawned were HUGE. This could also make exploration for virging roid belts more interesting and create some good new opportunities for all types of gameplay.

About that... gameplay will be biased if this becomes a regular scheduled event. Anyone able to log in right when they respawn would have first servings on the roid buffet. They would get rares that had limited spawn, etc.

I would suggest instead something more randomized. Allow me to suggest instead a simulated natural event.

Nature hates vacuums, and when a space region becomes too empty of mass, white holes explode out with randomly located belts of asteroids. (They probably came from areas that were too densely packed)
If the existing belts were not mined, and won't be vanishing, then the new belts won't be as large.

Just balance it for content, value, and to not favor players in any specific timezone or style favoring any specific day of the week.

It would also remove the Rorqual's main function.

Sure, you cannot use a Rorq in hisec, but it is completely viable in empire space.

You mentioned me by description.

Here are the specs on the vessel, evolved and fleshed out by the questions that were in the thread I made.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=98273&find=unread

I like the idea but just have to balance tank vs mining yield.
Though they may not used as often as the current ships, they provide an option. Would be an awsome ship for mining Veld in null sec because you just set 1 drone pre roid.

As for thew ideas about different belt pre respawn mechanics...it just is not dynamic enough as the belts are always in the same exact spot in space. Ore belts should be replaced entirely by gravimetric sites. And some small low-value sites for the starting miner should be able to be found with the on board scanner. And this scanning this should be part of the starting tutorials.

Furthermore, some ore rocks should be "spiked" with tiny amount of other ores. A rock is thus not pure scordite for example, but also contains possible traces of ANY other ore. You cannot mine for these traces explicitly, but it would provide small amounts or high end minerals to dedicated mining/manufacturing corporations.

As for the true cause of suicide ganks versus miners...

The ganker gets insurance payout, even if he got killed while flagged by concord in high sec. Remove this imbalance in cost versus reward and only the true meaningful ganks remain as blatantly killing every miner is going to cost a whole lot more!

* We still need a buff to structure to prevent small cheap ships from succeeding in a quick gank of course, let them need at least a battle cruiser without getting insurance payout. Even then the ganker doesn't loose much compared to the ship being ganked, but at least it ain't profitable then by selling the loot unless it is faction gear!

insurance payout for suicide ganking were removed in cruiceible - I believe

To avoid the technology creep a new ship that mirrors the ore ships with s larger tank and a smaller yield.
with the introduction of the fleet ships we can hope that the 4 Races produce some hardened tanked ships.

whats the point of its existence?

As far as mining itself goes, I'd offer a range of mining lasers, some of which have long, slow cycles, and some of which have much faster cycles, in return for much lower yield per cycle. A drone mining barge sounds good, but what I would do is give it a bay that can hold 5 Harvester drones + a flight of medium combat drones, and give it a 50% bonus to Harvester drone velocity per level of Exhumer, so that Harvesters are worth getting.

700 Tritanium
140 Pyerite
140 Megacyte

Per refine (less taxes or refining waste, of course)



serious answer is that it's a "not as good" variant of ABC ... which USED to be relegated to -1.0 systems (or maybe 0.8) and as such was very rare.

when looking at the ore prices, i'd have to say "not as good" is a huge euphemism...
and when mining for production it isn't a big help either. its just the thing thats keeping your small hidden from respawning.
makes it really frustrating...

The issue however goes beyond simply what you can mine in nullsec, it's compounded by the fact that you have nearly no manufacturing slots out that way. Sure, it's supposed to be "the wild west" ... but looking at the numbers, it's seriously out of line. The "best" station for manufacturing (Amarr) has a base capacity of only TWENTY (20) (non-drug) mfg slots.

You can have one (1) Outpost in a system.

This makes the POS revamp look like a better idea to have on the front burner. The plans are to have POSes become able to dock ships, modular (expandable up to station sizes) and able to be anchored more than one to a celestial. If they do it right, it will be a huge boost to nullsec self-sufficiency.