Verran Skarne
Shadowfire Enterprises
6
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Posted - 2012.11.30 18:30:00 -
[1] - Quote
My thoughts as a high-sec industrialist and w-space miner:
1) The Orca
I see the Orca as really being a fleet backbone ship for mining fleets. I'm ok with changing the corp hangar to a fleet hangar but I'd like to see further changes to the ships to help make it more relevant in that role. Specifically:
- Increase the size of the ore bay. The current one really isn't very useful in any serious mining op.
- Add additional high slots so that an orca pilot can run boosts and tractor beams at the same time. Right now you either have to set one up for boosting or set it up for collection - there's just not enough slots to do both efficiently.
I'm not really so concerned about losing the unscannable cargo hold although I know a lot of people who will be upset about this. But the problem there really is that suicide ganking has become ridiculously common, rather than that people can do it.
I will say that if the Orca isn't intended to be doing hauling outside of fleet ops, it should probably be a bit more agile than it currently is. My Obelisk aligns faster than my Orca does.
2) The Blockade Runner and the Deep Space Transport
As others have mentioned, having an unscannable hold doesn't really make any practical sense on a Blockade Runner which can already cloak, MWD, and align fast. The ship's already good at evading ganks - inviting bored gankers to take a free pass at it because of an unscannable hold just means that it will get targeted more, not less.
On the other hand, the DST could definitely use some love. I don't necessarily think an unscannable hold is the answer (again, I think the problem is that suicide ganking is too easy/common/not enough consequence). I wouldn't mind seeing better agility or a bigger cargo hold or something.
3) Hauling in general.
Large-scale industry requires a significant amount of hauling. Right now we have Industrials (small), Orcas (medium), and Freighters (XXL) in terms of hauling ships. It would be nice if we had something in between an Orca and a Freighter in terms of capacity to help fill in the gaps there and to provide an alternative to the Orca for hauling.
There also needs to be a better defense against suicide ganks, or at least a deterrant of some kind. To be clear, I'm not saying that suicide ganking of haulers shouldn't be possible, but it's simply far too common now with the advent of the (Tier 3) battlecruisers. I've heard different options presented in the past but here's the ones I like.
- Containers or ship modules that make it less likely items will be dropped as loot are one option.
- Being able to take out short-term insurance on the ISK value of a ship's cargo would be good. (That's how shipping companies do it in the real world, after all). That would help someone recover from the loss of a 1.4b freighter and an 800m cargo when they get ganked. |