It seems a shame to train up skills like "ORE Industrial" and "Industrial Command Ships" when there is currently only one ship available for each skill, (not including the utterly redundant Primae.)

I would like to see a new ship or two available in these classes:

A semi-modular heavy hauler in the "ORE Industrial" class. A battlecruiser sized hauler with a bit more EHP than the normal haulers. Add a single sub-system slot. Into this slot you could place one of the following sub-systems:
Cargo Bay - this could give the hauler say a 40k m3 cargo bay
Ore Bay - this could replace the normal cargo bay with say an 60k m3 ore bay

A sub cap command and support ship ine the "Industrial Command Ships" class. Same size as the Orca but with no ore bay, a about 5k m3 cargo bay, same corp bay as the Orca and a larger maintainance bay, (maybe 800k m3, so you could fit an a BS and a few cruisers.) Allow one gank link, (low or no bonus,) and you've got a ship that you can load up and allow small fleets to swap and/or repair their ships on roams or just load up a bunch of fitted ships and drop them off in a station without having to fly them all to the location individually.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

I like a lot of those idea's, though I'll draw the line at the super-miner...

Anyway, at the very least, it seems we do want more depth to the industrial ship skills.

I would like to see a semi-static nomad vessel that acts a a portable base. Very cool, but would need to be limited in its abilities to prevent it being over powered.
I really want to be able to move larger amounts of fitted ships without the use of capitals.

Anyone got any other thoughts on the use for industrial ships? A niche not yet covered?

When I introduce a "Super Mining Barge" I
don't see more mining efficiency or revenue
but much more resilience and
independence in mining process for the
"lone wolf lowsec/0-sec miners". Much
more ore cargo or possibilities to reduce
the needed cargo amount for instance by
onboard ore processing (low grade). Super
Barge Skills may slightly buff refining bonus
or ability to use refining modules or
additional drones or so on.
Mining Barge Skill rise (ore) cargo,
Exhumers skill rise whatever it do and the
ORE industrial and Ore Capital Industrial
Skills may be needed on a average level
too.

So, a massive Procurer then, with Rorqal bits stuck on AMD a mobile refinery...

As for the ORE hauler, 50k m3 is massive, more than the racial maxed out haulers. I would have said minimal cargo space and big ore hold, 500m3 and 70k m3 respectively. But then I've already suggested a modular hauler system for that.

one of the following sub-systems:
[i]Cargo Bay - this could give the hauler say a 40k m3 cargo bay

A Retriever can hold 27,500m3 of ore and a Mackinaw can hold 37,500m3. I suggest a total of 70,000m3 for transport by a 'specialised hauler', regardless of its origin. A standard cargohold of 12,500m3 using a ''virtual compression' ratio of 5.6:1 would provide the 70,000m3

You need THREE modules GǪ

Tractor Array GÇô able to slowly tow a single object (jet can/ship/pos module) in warp and through stargates (jumpbridges?). The mass of the object would be skill dependent and would not exceed the mass of the largest battleship so that there wonGÇÖt be anyone moving an orca/freighter around without spending the SP the fly it.

Role Bonus:
250% bonus to tractor beam range
100% bonus to tractor beam velocity
500% bonus to survey scanner range
99% reduction in CPU need for Gang Link modules
Can use 3 gang link modules simultaneously.

Industrial Command Ship Skill Bonus:
5% bonus to cargo capacity per level
3% bonus to effectiveness of mining foreman gang links per level

Role Bonus: 99% reduction in Warfare Link module CPU need
Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously

Battlecruiser Skill Bonus:
10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret optimal range
5% bonus to all shield resistances per level

Command Ships Skill Bonus:
10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret optimal range
3% bonus to effectiveness of Siege Warfare Links per level

So, identical boosting bonuses. Its called an Industrial Command Ship. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and call it a Command Ship.

And the price tag, for a hauler is immense. Fitted for hauling, your looking at around 800 million isk, so just over half the price of a freighter. For that, you get a ship that aligns like a decrepit snail attempting to dive out of the way of an on coming train, (much like a Freighter.) On top of that, you get a fraction of the tank and a fraction of the cargo space.

Lets talk skills then. It takes less than 30 days from character creation to get into any one freighter. It takes nearly 50 days to get into an Orca.

using an Orca as a hauler just doesn't make sense with facts like that. In my eyes, the Orca should have been an ore hauler. A T2 version should have been the booster.

As for Mining Titans, already been done and a couple have been popped.
Doomsday Capital Mining Laser. ORE-Deathstar then... Shoot moons with it to mine everything out of them and leave them a husk...
Drone miners? Their called carriers. Stick 15 T2 Mining Drones in a Thany and you'll get a decnt output. Having said that though, a specialsed one would be pretty cool.

But I'm talking Drone Miners that are useable in higher sec, non-caps.

For the OP (and u paik if u want)

[Orca, Orca C2 - Hauler]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Prototype 100MN MicroWarpdrive I

Improved Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Ancillary Current Router I


Hobgoblin II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5

This orca can haul 80 621m3 + 40 000m3 (120 621m3) of whatever u want

-plus, if u so wish, u can carry 400km3 of assembled ships (just less than half a freighter)
-u can also carry 50km3 of ore if u want
-it comes with a BS sized mwd for quick align times
-warps almost as fast as a BS (2.7au/s)
-has 91.5k ehp
-comes with drones for whoring on KM's or jamming ppl trying to gank u
-has secret holds that cannot be scanned by others and do not drop on destruction
-can cloak

AND

-can be used as a small mobile POS for corpies
-can boost friendly gangs (doesnt have to use mining gang boosts)
-can be used to swap from bait ships to combat ships (the basis of ninja pvp)
-can be used to support miners
-costs less isk than a freighter
-can be refit for 200k+ ehp fits
-can re fit for more space with another cargo rig (u would need a 5% grid implant to fit the mwd though)
-maybe the coolest looking hauler in the game

I have often wondered why tractor beams don't work on ships... Of course, hauling in this manner would be open to all sorts of piracy, involving bumping the container and the hauler away from each other and landing another hauler to take its place. Not bad.
Space tug...