Most people think that hold capacity is the only factor to choose indy ship. Also they are not completely right, but cargo is important indeed. Orca has a big one - so it performs very good as an indy ship. But it was designed as a mining support! And in fact, it excels in that role as well!!1 On top of that, it's the ship of choice for WH collapsing. Combined, it means overpowered ship that everyone wants.

Some time before, it was balanced with skill prerequisites. "Thanks" to tiercide, this is no more. If it's not balanced now, then in 3 or so years CCP recognizes that and we'll get another 50-pages thread full of "REIMBURSE MY SP!!!"

There are too many industrials anyway, scrap most of them, and introduce something new. Stop trying to find slightly different roles for the current ships to fit into, just out them.

ITERON MARK IV - Ore Bay (Ore includes Gas, Ice, and Mineral Ore)

Gallente Industrial Skill Bonuses:
+5% Ore Hold Capacity
+5% Max Velocity

Slot layout: 2H(+1), 4M, 4L(+1); 1 turrets , 0 launchers
Fittings: 120 PWG(+50), 260 CPU(-490)
Cargo (capacity / Ore Hold Capacity): 550(-4700) / 50000
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 590(+355) / 710(-306) / 950(-223)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 120 / .94(-.06) / 12975000(+1725000) / 16.9(+1.3)
Signature radius: 205(-15)
Warp speed: 4.5au/s

First page all positive, I'm outta here

Yay! Most of this is completely awesome, but 2 things:

2. Given how enormously bulky ore is, I really think you ought to increase the base ore bay capacity. Maybe increase to 65k m3, and increase the bonus to 10%/lvl, whereas the other cargo capacity bonuses only get increased to 7.5%/lvl?

I just think that there's insufficient oomph here. The mineral, charges and PI versions are fine, but this one... not so much. I really think it needs a buff.

..., I am assuming here that if you have a specialised bay then you can put nothing else in that bay accept for the goods that it specialises in, nor are you able to put those items in a regular bay. because if you are, there is no need to a specialised one right?

1. Please consider giving a larger cargo/bay capacity bonus than 5%/lvl, so as to give a greater reward to those who take the time to train the racial industrial skill(z) to 5. Such as 7.5%/level. Maybe in exchange for lowering base cargo/bay capacity in proportion?

First page all positive, I'm outta here

As always, thanks for the feedback o/

Today's update:

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.

Specialty bays that are smaller then the max cargo hold of the largest general hauler is absolutely ******* pointless they would have to carry 1.5 to 2x as much load for them to be worthwhile at all to own.

The special edition ships are kind of odd.. Right now I have them set basically as Iteron Vs that are slightly better. I think they should probably stay that way since having a specialized hold seems strange for a ship that goes out for special events to a broad set of players.

[...] converting the special bay haulers to ORE [...] would either require an enormous investment by our art teams

Do you seriously want to imply that creating a single ship model (or even repurposing an existing model that is not used as a player ship yet - i would expect you to have whole FOLDERS of these after 10 years) falls into the category 'ENORMOUS INVESTMENT' by your art team?

It's not like the 4 special haulers couldn't all base on the same model with different colouring.

The sigil simply fails to be the tanky industrial because of slot layout. The simple reality is industrials are shield tanks because cargo low slots and cargo rigs are disharmonious with armor tanking. After playing around with the numbers a little it really looks like the the specialty of the sigil is lost under real build conditions.

CCP's Art team is their most backlogged department.

I've read somewhere it takes about 6 months for changes/new models to be completed, partially because they have so much work stacked up already.

If it were me, I'd hire more art dudes, but hey.

You're claiming the current artdudes do not love spaceships?

I agree, good artdudes>bad artdudes, but logically more 'good artdudes'>less 'good artdudes'

I think the current artdudes like spaceships, and do their job very well, and take it seriously, considering the beautiful game that is EVE that we're playing, which is why I said more artdudes. We need more of those awesome artdudes.

Dem dudes.