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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 6 post(s) |
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3072
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Posted - 2013.02.11 03:06:00 -
[1] - Quote
The changes to exhumers were rather poorly thought out. I don't agree that miners now "have their cake and eat it too" since exhumers still get suicide ganked more than any combat ship in the game. Yes, exhumers still get ganked. Just not by the ISK/hr maximisers operating out of Brapelille (g'day Bob H).
Heck, the last Hulk I lost was left surrounded by the wrecks of the ganker's ships for twenty minutes before the Hulk pilot was able to get back to the site to continue mining.
The poor design decisions that led to the Mackinaw being the king of mining are as follows:
- Giving a battle-cruiser sized ship a cruiser-sized tank with cruiser-sized yield (contrast with the tier 3 BCs such as the Oracle, their 'yield' is heads and shoulders above any other ship in their class, the trade off is paper thin tank for incredible gank in an agile package)
- Giving a cruiser-sized ships a battleship-sized tank (this has been done with the Maller, for example, but the pilot has to sacrifice DPS, and a 300 DPS brick Maller certainly doesn't have 80% of the 1000 DPS of a gank Oracle)
- Giving a cruiser-sized ship the hauling capacity of a capital ship, to an extent not seen before (an Impel can almost equal the capacity of a Mackinaw, but sacrifices tank)
I was one of the people looking for 10PG more fittings for Hulks. Even then I thought I was perhaps looking to have my cake and eat it too, since 10PG on the hull would mean I can fit a tank without sacrificing a low slot for a MAPC. My choice would then be bulkheads for more structure to complement the DC II, or MLU for more yield with the same tank. Fitting armor plate was out of the question due to fitting restrictions.
The current Mackinaw is an insane combination of high storage capacity, huge tank and high yield. The Skiff and Mackinaw need to lose their bizarre yield bonuses, so the yields of the ships are in line: 1, 2 and 3 times the yield of the strip mining module. The skiff gets the huge tank, mackinaw gets the huge capacity, the hulk remains the king of yield but requires fleet support and alert pilots.
Miners should need to be aware of suicide gankers, just as mission runners need to be aware of suicide gankers. There are many ways to improve the lot of miners without taking everything away from gankers. Giving miners a ship with huge storage, high yield and incredible tank is not a sane option.
Of course rebalancing back to the point that Goons are happy gankers again is out of the question. Suicide ganking miners is a sport, not a factory line.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3073
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 04:00:00 -
[2] - Quote
La Nariz wrote:I for the most part agree with your post aside from this part. How is the CCP Xahangen and the rest of the CSM noting that ganking is at historic lows not an acknowledgement that miners are getting a "free" tank due to the EHP changes?
The level of ganking going on when it was possible to make more ISK from the gank than it cost to perform the gank was far too high. I attribute the profitability of ganking ice harvesting ships down to the market value of Ice Harvester IIs, along with the value of salvage from an exhumer, along with the requirement for ships harvesting ice to be sat in space for tens of minutes at a time doing absolutely nothing.
La Nariz wrote:They don't have to choose between cargo/tank/yield anymore. Cargo was completely eliminated due to the ore bays. Tank is a non-issue because of the EHP buffs so now everyone goes full yield. There are literally no trade-offs to be made now.
We agree on that part. No need to complain to me that I don't understand your ganker rage.
I agree with CCP though: it should not be possible to make a living by ganking ships that are adequately set up for the task they are designed to do. Why is a T2 ice harvester worth 6M ISK? What other medium-sized weapon module is worth that much? Officer turrets maybe? What do we call people who fly officer-fitted battlecruisers into missions? Loot pi+Ķatas. Is a T2 fitted combat ship economically viable to suicide gank? Nope.
A correct rebalancing for mining barges and exhumers will require CCP to decide that they are cruiser or battle-cruiser sized ships (Procurer/Skiff is clearly cruiser-sized, Hulk is clearly battle-cruiser sized) and adjust their EHP and fittings appropriately.
Even better would be moving mining to grav sites exclusively, though I'd retain the basic mechanic of pointing a mining laser at a rock for a long time due to the niche of mining as a social or semi-AFK activity.
And to people who whinge that you shouldn't be able to play EVE while AFK, I don't care for your opinion: anyone who has a Jabber server that tells them when to log in doesn't get to lecture everyone else about playing EVE while AFK. Do you use login traps? Do you coordinate activities before logging in to the game? Do you participate in the metagame more than you particpate in the actual game? You are playing EVE AFK.
At least an AFK miner is providing "content" for gankers. Mining as an activity that requires mining sites to be "made safe" means that mining is an activity that can be made "unsafe". Without the logistics chain of industry being vulnerable, how do you interrupt the logistics chain?
So let's look at what opinion we share and don't share: We agree that the EHP buff was too much. We agree that the current Mackinaw is an abomination and an affront to sanity (35k m3 ore bay? more tank than a Hulk before even fitting tanking modules?). We agree that mining is too safe right now.
We don't agree on the appropriate level of "tankiness" for barges and exhumers. I wanted all the exhumers to have a little more tank than they used to have (10PG for the Hulk? Is that too much to ask?), you want the easy money from ganking endlessly.
Given the option to fit for tank or yield, many miners will opt for yield. That's where you the gankers come in: your role in the ecosystem was to find the lame, the sick, the slow, and be the visible hand of the evolutionary process.
Your role was not to bankroll your nullsec PvP activities selling Ice Harvester II modules back to the miners you stole them from.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3073
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 04:03:00 -
[3] - Quote
La Nariz wrote:If exhumers are not "too tanky" then please answer why ganking of exhumers is at a historic low instead of average?
First you need to appreciate that ganking of exhumers was at an historic high before the EHP buff.
To understand the cure, you must first understand the disease.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3074
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 04:06:00 -
[4] - Quote
Mallak Azaria wrote:Anyhow, this is not a discussion about gank profitability.
That is exactly what the discussion is about. That is exactly why ganking was so profligate leading up to the EHP buff. That is exactly why ganking fell off a cliff when the buff was introduced.
Since the EHP buff, I have lost exhumer(s) to gankers who had no interest in the economic benefits of blowing up someone else's stuff. Suicide ganking still happens, despite the loss of profitability.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3074
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 04:28:00 -
[5] - Quote
La Nariz wrote:We can extend this idea to mission runners/ratters/T2 fit combat ships. The dude who active tanks their faction or officer mission running/ratting tengu is in the same boat as the max yield miner.
Not even close. If the max yield miner was fitting officer modules, sure. The profit for ganking a T2 fit ship should not be enough to cover the cost of ganking it. Now if there were officer strip miners to go with those extremely rare high-meta MLUs, I'm sure you'd see some fools try to use them. I have no complaints about gankers making a profit from the foolishness of others.
Of course making a T2 fit ship a profitable ganking prospect would encourage people to engage in more PvP, at which point I'm all for it. But make that happen across the board. Until it's profitable to gank a T2 fit HAC, why should it be profitable to gank the T2 fit exhumer?
You gankers want to have your cake and eat it too.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3075
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 04:49:00 -
[6] - Quote
For those discussing the size of tank and fittings these ships should have, consider that the Covetor/Hulk is closer to battle-cruiser than cruiser in size, while the Procurer/Skiff is closer to cruiser in size.
The Moa (a cruiser) has 1800-odd shield HP, 5% bonus to shield resistance per level, 4 low slots, 4 mid slots, 780PG. The Hulk has 1500-odd shield HP, 5% bonus to shield resistance per level, 2 low slots, 4 mid slots and about 35PG. I'm happy to accept arguments about the mining specialisation of the Hulk requiring that it doesn't have a particularly strong power plant, but I feel it deserves something more than 1/20th of a cruiser PG.
CCP did the wrong thing by buffing the base hull. They need to give players enough rope to hang themselves: give the barges and exhumers the fittings comparable to similar sized ships, then let the players make the mistakes. The Hulk would be able to field an awesome tank with just double what it currently has. There are other options for addressing the profitability of ganking mining barges: you wouldn't need to fit much tank if the strip miners and ice harvesters used about 1/3 to 1/2 of the current material requirements.
Bringing the exhumers fittings in line with other ships of the same size would be a good start though. Given their nature as sedentary devices (i.e.: they do their job by standing still), I'd like somewhere between cruiser and battle-cruiser tankability. But by no means should the Mackinaw have second best yield, second best tank and a vast ore bay. It has to lose something in the trade.
I disagree with Mallak though: even with the destroyer buff, the ganking rate wouldn't be anywhere near as high if the loot drops and salvage from a T2-fitted exhumer weren't so valuable.
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3075
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 05:02:00 -
[7] - Quote
La Nariz wrote:I gave the example of the faction/officer fit because it is the most memorable for me. You can profit off of ganking T2 fit active tanked tengus as well.
So why aren't active tanked tengus dying as much as exhumers?
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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
Cosmic Consortium
3076
|
Posted - 2013.02.11 06:33:00 -
[8] - Quote
Mallak Azaria wrote:Suicide ganking a Tier 3 BC is profitable.
So why aren't autopiloting T3 BCs ganked in Uedama? What about the T2 & faction gank-fit Oracle that I regularly autopilot through Uedama with a hold full of faction crystals? Why isn't that ganked?
Why aren't mining ships continually moving? Could it be that setting up bookmarks and navigating between them is simply so much effort that the actively playing pilot is going to be better rewarded running missions, incursions or even hauling contracts rather than staring at rocks?
Perhaps it's simply the case that Goonswarm isn't posting a 10M bounty on every Oracle killed?
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