Tallian Saotome wrote:
You mean a rorqual with a clone vat bay and a SMA full of hulks?
i'd love to go to work designing a whole new supercapital "planetary harvester" ship, it would be bigger than a titan - think 50-100km long. It would just park itself in orbit above a tasty looking planet then deploy some beams from its super hardened belly section. Capable of slicing in excess of 50km deep into a planets crust to extract massive portions of mineral wealth. Of course activation of such a planetary harvester causes the planet to turn barren and produce no further minerals for at least 1 month. The ultimate in your face in null sec, capture a system move in the miners and take thier planets for all thier worth!
Weakness? Once engaged in mining the ships must be watched, ships of the owning corp/alliance must always be present and the ship must always have a pilot. The pilots can be rotated out. Mining cycle duration is 1 week upon the conclusion of the planet refresh timer begins. If the mining is interupted (the harvester is destroyed) the planet loses 1/4 of its available resources but the mining ship loses any and all minerals acquired (obviously the ship died). The planetary harvester cannot under any circumstances be told to stop mining once it has been activated. It must complete its cycle due to the nature of the extraction process and power constraints. Furthermore despite the size of the vessel it cannot in any way function as a base or outpost nor can it be anchored upon. Pilot rotation is the only possible function aside from mining, ships have to be on station piloted by players (they too can be rotated out so folks can sleep). The ship is too large for any gates, and jumping it requires extensive charge up time follwed by an extended post jump cooldown period. The ship cannot be jumped more than once every 48 hours due to stresses of moving such a large object
Piloting a planetary harvester requires extensive training in capital, supercapital and a new Hypercapital class skillset. Each pilot who intends to rotate into the ship must have the required training to do so. If an unskilled pilot enters the ship for any purpose the vessel will be destroyed.
This vessel cannot be built in 1 piece. It must be assembled in components before being assembled in specially constructed gantries that must be attached to the highest level POS. The components are too large to be stored inside a POS of any class and must be placed outside. Production times vary according to ship building skills but final stage assembly will be fixed at 2 months.
As hinted already a planetary harvester would be completely unarmed, its belly lasers fixed facing downwards and unable to track or lock a ship or fixed orbital target (ie a POS). It would by default have a thick skin but not be inpervious. Also it would not carry slots for defensive upgrades. The vessels core powerplant being slaved to the engines, jump drive and the mining function when activated (hence why it cannot be moved once initiated!). The vessel has an exceptionally thick underbelly, attacking ships that inadvertantly orbit below the vessel will suddenly find themselves dealing next to no damage. THis underbelly is to protect the harvester against planetary reactions via the mining process as well as surface to space cannons (come on how many years have they had to build a potent defense grid in this universe!)
Note Attacking ships that attempt the thwart the dont orbit below method will find thier weapons degrading in effect as damaged plates and components from thier fixing firing spot begins to diffuse thier weapon strengths. Orbiting is required but with alot of human imput to avoid wasting time/ammunition.
and now i have to start coming up with a design concept then go build that sucker in max. better install my new max 2013 tomorow