Why on earth are you not considering using all the bay mechanics in some really cool way?

Why not add a skill bonus to specific bay types on the industrials, and then add ORE, SHIP, MINERAL-BAY etc to the industrials?

The baytypes and their mechanics is really what could make T1 and later T2 industrials really interesting again..

(The types can be seen on the dev-ship the cockroach)

A few other hot topics or ideas..

Make compressed ORE able to compete in compression with current workarounds like the 450mm guns.
Make Compressed or only go into ORE-BAY. This would make industrials an alternative to freighters.

Make drop destruction chance linked to containers. So container always "saves" all content, but is much harder to scan. So using no containers denies gankers the loot at a higher degree, but sacrifice the benefits from containers getting a proper capacity boost. Something like 25-50% bonus.

Make cans/containers drop by themeselves, so the secure ones could be linked to hacking skill.

Thus a true specialized freight would become a vital part of the game, in a more inspirering way then atm.

The difference between DRY and WET freight, and all the emergent gameplay to come from it, while still allowing "easy mode" usage.

Well the Rorqual and Orca are a problem all to themselves.. They need to really be integrated properly into the industrial role and balancing, and atm they are a terrible misbalanced part of the industry class.

Primarily the Orca should be exceptional Booster and Mineral(Ore) low range shipping class, and the Rorq should be a "mini-station" with compression, and even refining, and long range RAW hauling.

The reason you would want a huge range of variety on Industrials, as well as all other ships and game mechanics in EVE is to get away from the WoW optimizing and flavor of the month problem..

Sadly the last 4-5 years CCP have let the pvp community bend things a lot into the flavor of the month philosophy, hopefully the new direction will go back to the old complexity and lateral integration concepts.

Well, that's good then, because then obviously Gallente should get the "specialized" haulers for industry, e.g. one with an ore bay and one with a mineral bay. And there are plenty of spare Gallente hull designs that can be assigned to those roles.

Do you know how cool it would be if instead of having the Iteron II through IV you could simply purchase the level 1 and then several "addons" and then could adjust the ship on departure. Increasing the volume and mass with each level. Like a semi truck. And you could have additional addons available that when repackaged could fit inside the level 1. So let's say I needed to haul a bunch of ships in one direction, I could take off with an Iteron I with 4 addon modules inside. Fly to Jita, expand the ship into an Iteron V and then load it up.

The fact that only Gallente has it really isn't a problem. It's a tech 1 ship that only requires level 1 skill to fly. We're talking about less than 1 day of training.

As an industrialist bitter vet, I can say that there is a lot of lost potential here. Haulers can be so much more as presented, and there are some very good examples in this thread how to make that. CSM member Ripart Teg for example. CPP would be an idiot not to listen to them.

As a side note: maybe not an experience small gang pvp-er is the best person for this rebalancing. Just saying.

I'm not making any judgements just yet, but it might be helpful to clarify the priorities a player has when choosing a T1 hauler.

1: Max cargo capacity

2: This is a tie between alignment time (for those who manually pilot) and speed (for those who fly AFK).

3: Warp speed

4: Tank (a distant last)

That would be one way to go I suppose, but I'm not in favor of it.

I was merely quantifying the obvious, because it's easy to lose perspective in this. Obviously the number of low slots would have a direct bearing on how flexible the hauler will be and what it's max capabilities are.