My only concern is T1 destroyers might make T1 frigates obsolete due to sheer firepower.

And yea... i am hoping that Hulk will get EHP boost... because even in fleet you cant help it survive if you leave it like its now.
Like I said before, ORE ships are made of aluminum foil, and it just cant survive in space.
Even if you say its not for solo mining, you must make it so it can survive in space because now even the biggest fleet cant save if from alpha and it will pop in one volley.

I'm afraid the changes to the T1 electronic frigs are going to make the T2 EAF's even more irrelevant.....

if this should be an answer to hulkaggeddon then ccp fail in their own game lulz ^^

That was my question as well.

Sentry drone on a frigate would be a bit dumb - sentry needs Drone Interfacing IV, which is a rather longish skill to train for a frigate, on top of Drone Sharpshooing IV. That's a week of training if I remember right. And a sentry is pretty useless against frigates anyway, except when they're on approach. When they get close, it's over, even a Garde II won't track them.

And I don't see how any other drone can be considered a "sniping" weapon, not unless CCP plans to drastically boost the drone travel speeds across all sizes, or give them jump drives or something. Because even lights take a bit of time to cover 40km, especially Gallentean ones.

Are you ytterbed?

Gallente need a brawler frigate that's for sure. Tristan is currently a bit funky since its the platform for the Gallente Stealth bomber. I always found it an odd fit for the Gallente line. Almost works well, but the split weapons system with the unbonused missiles hamper its effectiveness. I have a fondness for it and enjoyed flying it anyway.

I think as long as the brawling blaster frig role is adequately covered elsewhere, Tristan might make a good platform for entry level missile boat (which is a secondary rarely used Gallente weapons system, or perhaps tertiary after hybrids and drones).

A clarification about the time line.

This blog is an update on what we are doing this summer (therefore the title 'Ship balancing summer update') to be released this winter and later.

So um.. is there a petition out to give this nice new mining frigate a name.. perhaps.. the "Chribba"?

Excellent, that's exactly what I was hoping for. The first set after ATX in August, the second set in September, and the rest of the balances October-ish. Following that with new destroyers and mining frigate in November.

Hi,
I'm happy to hear that you are willing to give *some* of the mining barges a bit of a buff against attackers. The ore hold bonus to the retriever/mackinaw is nice but I don't think that 1 jettison can worth of ore + a bit tougher defense is going to get people to switch to using these ships. The best setup for a lone miner is to use a hulk to mine and then use an Orca to pick up the jet cans.
I believe that if you want to make the ore hold really worth while on the mackinaw/retriever, you should look at the minimum of 4 jet cans in space if you're expecting pilots to give up using a Hulk/Orca combo.

In Eve, time is money and vice versa- unless you can make the mackinaw/retriever mine more efficiently w/o Orca or other hauler support (basically make it mine more or equivalent to a Hulk mining and then the time it would take to fly back to station and grab an orca to haul jet cans etc), the Mackinaw/Retriever will be used by only a small percentage of players.

To the point: CCP, make the Mackinaw/Retriever worth my time as a lone miner and I will use this over the Hulk.

A suggestion: allow freighters to pick up ore at belts or wherever miners mine. The cargoholds of industrials are getting a bit small for the quantity of ore they must transport when a mining fleet of several hulks are chewing up belts.

I'd prefer not to give exact dates on stuff that's potentially months in the future, but that's fairly close to what we're hoping to do. The alliance tournament is next month which will see the first ships go out (the prize ships) which will be followed by the rest of the package, with changes going out somewhere around august and december.

Well I am new here so I guess I'm not used to EVE work cycles, but you know - entire games were made in less time.

Plus there's the "why would I play/fly this now if it's going to be buffed/nerfed/changed anyway" factor.