Today's update:

We are going to go ahead and bump the unpacked volume on the Hoarder significantly (up to 400000) to avoid any major issues with compression. This gives it the same packed volume to cargo ratio that the Iteron V has currently.

One of the most recent posts mentions increasing the bonus per level from skills for the special bay haulers, and I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to increase the skill bonus per level for all the special bay haulers from 5% per level to 10% per level, and reduce the base bays to give basically the same potential bay size as before. This means you will still get an improvement at level 1 over any normal hauler, but you have to invest SP to make the difference quite as big. This seems especially appropriate since these ships don't have to sacrifice lows to reach the same capacity.

I talked with our story team about renaming and they are going to think about it and get back to me. As I said before, there are problems with both sides so I've just left it in their hands and will report back to you guys as soon as I know more.

As always, thanks for the feedback o/

edit: Also I want to acknowledge all the ideas around converting the special bay haulers to ORE, or any other similar solution. I completely understand where you're coming from but this simply isn't possible. It would either require an enormous investment by our art teams, which we don't feel is worthwhile, or would mean some kind of hacky re-texturing type approach, which we feel is ultimately bad for the game (we have standards okay). This is why we were originally hesitant about giving anything exciting to all 5 Iterons, we knew we didn't like where it would leave us in relation to this stuff. I'm glad that most of you seem to be able to cope with it as it stands though.

Yay!

But you still need to acknowledge the fact that the ability to haul 50k m3 of ore isn't equal to the ability to haul 50k m3 of minerals. Eitgher the 50k m3 ore bay is underpowered, or else the 50k m3 mineral bay is overpowered, and unequal power isn't in the spirit of tiercide. Personally I think you ought to enlarge the ore bay, since as someone else (Mara?) pointed out, the ability to undock with 50k m3 of minerals is sweet, sweet potentail for suciide gank, but if you want to go conservative, you can make the mineral bay smaller instead for starters, then change your mind in some months.

Other than that, I'm absolutely ecstatic about these changes! Great job!!

Then just scrap the specialized bays. It is a dumb way of making these ships unique. I understand that there is sort of a built in imbalance with Gallente have the most Industrials, but this just magnifies the imbalance. Sure, the Iteron V is only the second biggest general hauler now, by 2000m3 maxed out and then you give Gallente all the best specialized hulls. To the point where these specialized bays are so awesome that the Hoarder has to be tweaked because its only value is in abusing mineral compression and hauling with carriers.


You want to make them unique, interesting, have reason to train one over another for different roles? Give them something other than cargo and velocity/agility bonuses. Balance out Gallente by giving each ship just one bonus and double up bonues on the Caldari and Amarr hulls.

Badger - cargo, agility, shield resists

Badger II - cargo, velocity, fleet hanger

Bestower - cargo, velocity, armor resists

Sigil - cargo, agility, drones

Wreath - cargo, agility, warp speed

Hoarder - cargo, tractor beam and/or turret bonus

Mammoth - cargo, velocity, probes

Iteron I - cargo, agility

Iteron II - cargo, drones

Iteron III - cargo, fleet hanger

Iteron IV - cargo, tractor beam

Iteron V - cargo, velocity



There are so many options to make Industrials more interesting that just "small and fast, big and slow, and Gallente hauls the most with special bays".

if gall an min get "special ships " so should amarr and caldari anything else would be unbalanced and as far as i can remember this was about ship balancing and this would be an unbalancing i really wanted a badger mark 3,4 and 5 too anything else would be unfair plus a badger mk5 would be awesome

That's also a novelty ship and not really relevant to this rebalance of the actual ships people fly for fun and profit.

The issue is that the Gallente Industrial skill is quantitatively more valuable than the other racial Industrial skills, because it yields vastly superior ore/mineral/PI hauling capacity at the cost of a paltry ~2000m3 general capacity compared to Amarr. That's a little imbalanced, which is why many folks in this thread have been suggesting that the specialized haulers be reassigned to ORE. CCP doesn't want to do that because it would either look half-baked or require art work that they want to focus elsewhere, so I'm proposing a compromise that solves the racial industrial skill imbalance without any art issues.

Keep in mind that the ships with bays have free low slots. The bay size needs to be toned down or the lows reduced to make them better but not outrageous.

So, how long till someone stuffs their mineral hauler full? One hold of pyer is in the tornado price range.

I will be grinning from ear to ear if we finally get the "missing" hauler hulls filled in for Caldari and Amarr in a year or two and they turn out to be the specialized POS fuel/moon goo/isotope/ship hauling hulls everyone is asking for... and everyone starts complaining about how terrible that is and how you have to crosstrain into those or you'll be useless, etc.

I don't expect it, but with this precedent set it starts looking possible.

Rise just spent a week revisiting his original proposal to come up with a "solution" where Gallente are the only industrial skill worth training. How can you people not see the problem here?

This is true, Rise is breaking our mining empire by giving newbies the tools to haul the ore themselves.

Curse you Endeavour Starfleet!

I wouldn't mind seeing more Mark-x/cloned hulls for other factions.
But clearly, different hulls as well as names would be cool.

I won't toss in all my thoughts just yet about the debate as I have to digest these recent desired changes. They're good and it is going the right way - and I don't give a frakking yotz about what other big allies have to say about it.


But here's something that could be of interest maybe:

We had a "draw a combat ship etc" contest...
How about a "Draw/submit Industrial vessel designs" contest for a change, for the respective races or other factions?

We could see some diversity and EVE'lings like to help out on artsy stuff.
Should help so we wouldn't have to see Mammoth Mk IV, though I don't have any problem with such.

I love the changes and specialized haulers but I think they should have a max of 2 low slots.

Sure. Or time for training things other than hauling - like industry and refining, or PI skills. Or even Accounting and Broker Relations. After all, what makes those other racial Industrial piloting skills more 'must-have' than the skills that directly impact your bottom line?

I'm done arguing this point, I'll just leave this little gem here for CCP Rise to explain to CCP Rise why this proposal is bad.

...

these industrials are designed around what can be acheived with max expanders and cargo rigs, which leaves them with a small base bay and basically makes them require cargo expanders and rigs

but they have to be considering that your cargo increases exponentially with expanders/rigs which makes a lot of expanders/rigs pretty much the only option when fitting

if they all had bigger starting bays and cargo expanders increased cargo by a set amount, could this allow more design freedom where it came to slots/bonuses and therefore more interesting ships and fitting options without having to resort to specialist bays?

noone armour tanks an indy, even bestower/iteron, it's all shield tank

Still doesn't change the fact that it is way unbalanced.


Hey newbee, want to pick up a hauler spawn?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to grab your jetcans from the ice anom?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to pick up all your planet goo in 1 run?

Gallente Industrial.

Want to just generally haul stuff?

Well, you already have Gallente industrial for the awesome specialized ships, so keep with it and get an Iteron V.


Want to truck ammo to a combat site?

The current doctrine is blockade runner and blops bridge.
Maybe a basic cyno alt with Minmatar Industrial I, and don't expect it to come back because it will die for no other reasons than being a Hoarder near ships with guns.

well. the dst could have been interesting except for ccp putting the unscannable hold on the blockade runner

and also the armour dst concept is kinda ruined by the whole 'needs cargo expanders' bit because of 'give it a small bay because people are going to cargo expand everything anyway' bit because of the 'cargo expanders stack exponentially bit'

well that's the way imma seein it atm

when it comes to combat ships fitting a cargo expander that has a fixed bonus... i'm pretty ok with that considering they lost a slot

yeah there's an issue with frigates getting holyshit how much cargo does your tiny ship have. i can see [s]highsec[s/] everywhere magnate/atron haulers everywhere

Yeah, probably, heh. I'm actually thinking you can have it moving with the fleet and then cloaking up at safe spots, like off-grid command ships do if there's no safe pos in-system. Though obviously, they have to uncloak and watch d-scan for the fight, the truck should, in theory, just have to cloak up and then keep moving at sublight to be reasonably safe.

But see, now you're the one crying 'overpowered' because the 'large alliances' are thinking of ways to use these ships that are advantageous to them, but not to the little guy. I'm afraid I have bad news:........

no, -if- cargo expanders are an issue they need to be looked at at the same time as industrials because of the close connection (especially if cargo expander mechanics are limiting design freedom on industrial balancing)

it's like balancing a titan without considering bridges or doomsdays

......

I don't know about changing the way expanders work. That would probably break a lot of other common fits outside of T1 Industrials.

But separate bays that aren't effected by cargo expanders means we could get out of the rut of balancing Industrial ships under the assumption they will all be fit with 3 T1 cargo rigs and a T2 expander in every low slot. Just use the racial industrial skill to increase Industrial bay size. That way, ships can be given a balancing pass where the cargo capacity is one thing, and classifying the ship as being best HP, speed, or agility can be done with all available fitting space on the table.

Goons aren't always the bad guys.

Or even the Bad at EVEGäó guys.

Agreed - but that's why the T2s would have to be done at the same time. So it might well be that the specialized bays are a 'right now' measure, and the final revamp to T1 industrials comes when the T2s are finally up for their turn.

you're not getting this. this is the discussion on industrial balance. we will discuss industrial balance. what you've been saying is 'hey maybe doing it properly would take extra work'. it either takes extra work or they choose to do what they're doing now. that's fine. that's glaringly obvious to anyone posting. but it doesn't stop people discussing what they think might be problems or better ways of doing things. bringing up the idea that 'ccp can't do everything' as an argument against an idea is entirely pointless. as is 'you stupid rich goon i bet you're arguing something else because this change is bad for you'. neither actually addresses any argument or idea someone posts. you need to stop it because it's a waste of time and doesn't facilitate an actual discussion.

ccp is perfectly capable of prioritising their own work on the game. it doesn't and shouldn't stop us discussing industrial balance.

e: although there's other issues brought up by starfleet and shepard regarding changing expanders and i already said i liked shepard's cargo thing instead so can we get off this line of conversation now :(

Comments in no particular order.

Specialized haulers: The specialized haulers don't really need to carry more than 55 000 m^3. This is still better than the Bestower (witha maxfit of GSCs the Bestower weighs in somewhere around 50 700 m^3), but a much smaller difference. Given the fitting options of the specialized ships - rigs and lows that would otherwise be reserved - the ships will still have a clearly defined niche use worth pursuing. You could probably even dump it down to 50k flat without removing it as a serious contender for enough flight profiles to make it worth picking up.

This is what I am thinking to be honest. The gallente general purpose haulers need to be the worst, or at least not as good as they are right now. The specialised haulers are so good that it seems unfair to make the gallente general purpose haulers this good also. My thoughts would be to make the iteron V a specialised hauler as well and remove the normal cargo space.

How about adding the stacking nerf formula to cargo expanders, then balance the base cargo hold of t1 and t2 industrials around fitting 3 (or 4?) expanders.

This would allow for Amarr transports to have one mid slot and plenty of lows. When fitting you can then choose between tank and agility.

Caldari Ships with a lot of mids and few lows will fit a tank, then choose between agility and cargo hold.

Minmatar & Gallente will be somewhere in between, choosing from a lesser shield tank with a good mix of cargo and agility, or maybe less agility with a bit more tank.

Biggest problem I can see with this idea is it greatly reduces the value of cargo rigs - not sure that's much of a down side though, at the moment 9/10 industrials are 3 x extender rigged and this will add some variation.

It is sort of circular that Industrials are designed around a specific fit.

I don't know about changing the way expanders work. That would probably break a lot of other common fits outside of T1 Industrials.

But separate bays that aren't effected by cargo expanders means we could get out of the rut of balancing Industrial ships under the assumption they will all be fit with 3 T1 cargo rigs and a T2 expander in every low slot. Just use the racial industrial skill to increase Industrial bay size. That way, ships can be given a balancing pass where the cargo capacity is one thing, and classifying the ship as being best HP, speed, or agility can be done with all available fitting space on the table.

Well seeing as how i just rigged mine so it hold more i will selfishly say. I don't like this.
Especially as this will be the second time that I'll loose good cargo rigs (millions of isk) because of a change.

Just saying.

I mean, if the others will eventually get their own speciality bays (e.g. Caldari gets Fuel, Amarr gets starbase structures, there's a maintenance bay in there somewhere, and maybe something else) then alright. But there isn't a large enough difference in effectiveness to warrant spending 22 days training up any racial industrial skill which doesn't have access to speciality bays.

http://themittani.com/news/industrial-homogenization-no-more

Since I can't keep my thoughts on this to a couple of condensed paragraphs, I made you another article Rise.

Yah, it still leaves the one that aren't Gallente Industrial as nothing but a prereq for freighters and transports. 22 days so your Bestower can beat out an Iteron V by 2000m3 is one hell of a diminishing return. And you'll still end up training Gallente because the restricted haulers they have are just too sweet not to use.

So I was thinking about this and I believe there can be a fair tradeoff for the Iteron V

Make it a poor mans hauler. It gets a bay that can fit anything but loses quite a lot of its cargo potential.
- #1 The bay can't be changed by rigs or mods. Only skills.
- #2 Max Capactiy is 25 thousand at Gal V

If you do this it will end up making Gallente completely different from the other lines. And better yet you can rebalance the Iteron Mark V to be a poor mans hauler with the build requirements reflecting that. If people don't have to invest in T2 rigs or cargo mods they might start thinking about other fitting options.

Thoughts on this? This is just my early idea based on earlier ideas posted in this thread.

I think that thre are a lot of good Ideas here. But they all fall short of the overall intent of the original concept behind the starting of this thread and it's predecessor.


The Gallente do have to many industrials, really why do they need 5 of them? But the Amarr and the Caldari only have 2 each. I don't think that is enough. I think all races should have 3 industrials, Drop 2 of the Gallente ones and add a Badger Mark III (fitting with the Gallente / Caldari relationship). Add an Amarr ship. Revisit the Primae to upgrade it for the original purpose it was intended for but no longer works.

All of the racial Inustrials should have a skill requirement of 1, 3, and 5 respectively for the 3 racial industrials

The smallest one of them should be a cheap throway industrial
The medium should be a quick/fast (built in Warp stab +1?)
The largest should be a slow tanky/massive cargo hauler.

Then take the primae and give it all the specials that everyone on here says should got to the Gallente extra industrials. Give it a few slots for tanking.

Maybe make some new low slot mods for only usuable on industrial ships that add cargo for Fuel, PI goods, etc.

So now you have made Bestower best cargo capacity, rather than Iteron, you will be giving a skill refund to all players who trainined Gallente V for cargo capacity, right?

Seriousy, you just downgraded a 20 day train skill. Either fix that so it remains best capacity, add something useful like Ship Hauler Bay (50,000 m3 ships ONLY so an iteron can move a packed battleship), or give up a skill refund so people can swqritch to the new flavour of the month ... Amarr haulers.

I love the idea, but taking the top cargo ship off Gallente after so many years and giving it to another race is just a bad call, and a slap in the face to all those players who trained Gallente V - who now see everyone else flying thier ships with Gallente 1.

Iteron V needs to stay top cargo, or fair's fair, skil refund option.

So I was thinking about this and I believe there can be a fair tradeoff for the Iteron V

Make it a poor mans hauler. It gets a bay that can fit anything but loses quite a lot of its cargo potential.
- #1 The bay can't be changed by rigs or mods. Only skills.
- #2 Max Capactiy is 25 thousand at Gal V

If you do this it will end up making Gallente completely different from the other lines. And better yet you can rebalance the Iteron Mark V to be a poor mans hauler with the build requirements reflecting that. If people don't have to invest in T2 rigs or cargo mods they might start thinking about other fitting options.

Thoughts on this? This is just my early idea based on earlier ideas posted in this thread.

The logic is that flying them, you become the joke eventually.... and if you care about your cargo, you don't use them.

- If a t1 industrial dies, the mission is failed . Not the same with noob combat ships.
- No one has fun in a fight while flying them, other than as bait or in comedy fleets.
- There's no intermediate cargo haulers as per capacity and skills lead to a dead end.
- They are a leading class of ships that causes rage quits which reduces revenue stream.

They cease becoming a joke, when they can be more than glass bottles.

So I train Gall Indy to 5 to fly an Ity 5...you take that away...ok I can kind of understand that. At least my skill trained has use since trained to 5 its better than the other indies. NOW you want to take that away and make the skill virtually pointless??

Id like a refund of that skill, I can then apply it to Amarr Industrial instead. Im quite sure CCP wont do this as they are trying to shake skills up to force you to train a new set so that equals more subscription time and more money.

The part that really erks me is that historically the tradeoff for cargo has ALWAYS been speed. If you have a faster speed then you have less cargo space and the otherway round. However, you now had the bestower with a higher base velocity and a higher cargo space, and the same % of velocity bonus for skill. This means that the bestower will ALWAYS be faster and have more cargo space than the Ity-5...that is ******* stupid tbh.

Thinking it well, what is not broken you don't fix....They never had to do the tiericide at least on industrials, it was good as it was, no artificial flavors just plain: More skill level = more cargo space....Maybe doing it easier and adding some new ships could have been the solution like this:

Gallente industrial 1 = iteron mk I
Gallente industrial 2 = iteron mk II
Gallente industrial 3 = iteron mk III and iteron mk IV (special ability)
Gallente Industrial 4 = Iteron mk V (second biggest cargohold)


Caldari industrial 1 = Badger
Caldari industrial 2 = Badger II (special ability)
Caldari industrial 4 = Badger III (T1 version of the Bustard) (c'mon.. to reskin this one should'nt be so hard )(third biggest cargohold)


Minmatar industrial 1 = Wreathe
Minmatar Industrial 2 = Hoarder (special ability)
Minmatar Industrial 3 = Mammoth (fourth biggest cargohold)


Amarr industrial 1 = Sigil (special ability)
Amarr Industrial 4 = Bestower (biggest cargohold)

in this way there's a reason to train your race and no compulsory reason to cross train

Amarr = easiest to get special ability industrial / largest top cargo but less variety

minmatar = easiest to get top cargo industrial

caldari = good and practical all round / new top cargo Type badger III

gallente = good variety but hardest to get special ability industrial


looks neat to me...

No matter how many times you say "poor man's hauler" for a ship that was the best of the best, a ship that wrote countless chapters in EVE history


IT'S JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

Yes, they nerfed the drake, another legendary ship, but it wasn't cause someone proposed the drake as a "poor man's battlecruiser" ;)

Well if you want to open pandoras box by looking at T2s in this topic...

In my opinion the Tech 2s should continue the trend started by the specialized T1s. One race ought to keep the classic Transport and covert hauler while the others become highly specialized ships.

Caldari
- POS Ship with a hold designed for just about everything POS related.
- Capital Ship tender with hold designed to jump fuel and drones (Fighters etc..)

Amarr
- Super EHP with very little cargo for carrying those extremely precious items.
- Paper tank. But can warp inside a bubble. Very little cargo and meant again for hauling small precious items.

The issue here is T1 specialization. In the frigate series there are sufficient in each race to do each job. However, there arent in the industrial family and thus they give certain roles to certain ships that require cross training. As for the Ity-5 I would be fine with the bestower gaining cargo space and beating the ity-5 out in that regard so long as it wasnt faster. As it stands the Bestower is both faster and more cargo space than the Ity-5 and that is NOT balanced at all. Furthermore, the other 3 ships in the same tier as bestower are given 5 slots for thier tank assuming there are no cargo extender mods.

Bestower - 2H 4M 6L - For 11 slots, 6 Armor Tank slots Total Base HP - 2240
Badger MKII - 2H 5M 4L - For 11 slots, 5 Shield Tank slots Total Base HP - 2250
Mammoth - 2H 4M 5L - For 11 slots, can do 5 Armor Tank slots Total Base HP - 2175
Iteron MKV - 2H, 4M, 5L - For 11 slots, 5 Armor Tank slots Total Base HP - 2160

Seeing as how all four have very similar total HP, that much seems balanced; however giving one indy a slot more in its tankable area just seems too OP to me. I would suggest swapping that extra low on the Bestower back over to the mid slot...then it would be more balanced.

All in all it looks like an interesting set of changes. Two questions:
1) Has the question of the ore hauler also hauling compressed ore been answered yet?

2) Will any of the specialist haulers be able to haul moongoo in their special bays?

I was actually wondering about this. I'm general in the dreaded carebear new player meta-descriptor, so it's not like I know anything, but I didn't really see much point to them for what they're supposed to do. I'd think you're going to use the cloaked ones for any high value cargo, and for large cargoes, the few null sec people I've run with have either a character themselves or someone from their corp/alliance with a Jump Freighter do the carrying. A DST isn't going to be able to get through nastier prate actions or gate camps on its own anyway for very long (I'd think determined pirates will have some extra warp scramblers the first time or two you bust through them in your DST.)

.

It won't affect be because I'm not in a null sec corp and all that, but the idea of using them as tenders for fleets would be interesting, though I imagine other ships are already used for that (Orcas?)

But the other thing about the T2s is that there's less of them - only two per race - and they're already super specialized. You have the small, fast, cloakers and you have the big, slower, tanky ones with some warp protection.

So while the idea of specialized bays is kind of a cool notion, CCP would really have to add more hulls to the T2s before being able to do that since they're already specialized as it is.

Though I'd like to think that they could do something like giving DST's some kind of jump capability or something might help out, I don't know what the full effects of that would be (the cloakers already can use the cov ops cynos, right?)

Hey sorry I've been missing for a bit - weekends you know.

So I don't have much to add here, glad that you guys are still feeling good about this mostly. A couple small updates though:

We are not going to do any name changes. There's just too much risk/cost in doing that with not enough benefit in this case. It is specifically concerning that we would change them based on current function, then change function in some way down the line and be left with names that make no sense. In general changing what things are called is pretty yucky so I feel good about avoiding it here.

As far as WHEN, I can't say exactly but its a good chance that it will be before the end of Summer.

Have fun see you o/

What will the mineral requirements be for these ships, will they be changing?

I would assume (granted i've never built one) that the mark II, III, and IV require less minerals than the Ity V?

Chances are if you're hauling ore that's all you're hauling.
Chances are if you're hauling PI that's all you're hauling.
Chances are if you're hauling refined minerals that's all you're hauling.

There really isn't any opportunity cost by using these three ships, especially when you consider that they're much cheaper to fit (no need to fill out lows with tech II expanders), are good out of the box with no rigs, and haul much larger quantities. Additionally, if the occasion does arise that you need to haul mixed cargo items you can slide into a itty 5 and haul nearly as much as a bestower. This is 'balance'?

Balance would be if they had actual opportunity cost for training galente. If the itty 5 and the itty 1 were both specialized haulers as well that may be balanced because you would lack the generalist haulers the other races get, but you would get to haul specific things. The fact that you get access to the much superior specialized haulers but retain comparable generalist haulers is a lack of balance.

As it stands there is little reason to train a non-galente hauler, but because these ships don't pewpew the devs could give a f-less. Just get orca's, they're better anyway.

iteron should keep highest cargo space because of those of us who trained gallente indy to 5 to fly iteron5

I find the changes to the T1 haulers quite good but i do have one question.

Why has the Hoarder unpacked volume changed?

None of the other haulers have had this treatment.