rollin' rollin' rollin' reported by CCP Chronotis - Massive changes to transports

[Oregon sinful]

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=598

rollin' rollin' rollin'
reported by CCP Chronotis | 2008.10.28 23:15:42 | Comments

Much has changed in Eve since many of the hauler or mining class ships were introduced. With Quantum Rise we felt the time was right to review these ships and make changes where necessary to refocus their roles and ensure they can still perform in the age of New Eden's Great War. Оf all thе ships‚ we found the transport class to be the most lacking in distinct roles, so much of this blog will focus on the changes to those and then we will briefly list some of the other improvements to some other ships.
Blockade Runners

The Blockade Runners (Crane, Prorator, Prowler, Viator) are meant to be rather good at getting through gate camps and navigating through low and null sec space with more impunity than the other industrial ships. Several changes such as the introduction of interdictors, heavy interdictors, and force and fleet recons have had an impact on their ability to run blockades with much success at all. As a result, we wanted to try and balance things to better focus them towards their role in light of many changes EVE has seen since they first were introduced.

To improve them we refocused on stealth rather than agility. They will gain the ability to equip covert ops cloaking devices and therefore can warp whilst cloaked. In lieu we removed the +2 warp strength and one or part of their active tanking bonuses which were not really being used anyway as much. They will also gain the ability to utilize the black ops jump portals.

By switching to stealth and cloaking as their primary defense in navigating through space and getting through gate camps they gain a significant edge in being able to cloak and move away fast if within a bubble. The ability is use the black ops jump portals is a fringe benefit allowing specialised operations where you would need cargo capacity moved around for a variety of reasons.
Deep Space Transports

The Deep Space Transports (Bustard, Impel, Mastodon, Оccator) havе good tanks and good cargo capacity but really no focused role beyond the good tank. The most important part of moving your cargo around is arriving safely at the destination. The DSTs have significant drawbacks as they are less prone to getting through the all critical gate camps like their Blockade Runner cousins. If warp scrambled‚ it was a matter of how long their tank might last in order to have a remote chance to survive the encounter.

To revamp their role we gave them the +2 warp strength of the Blockade Runners and also a bonus to the power needs of shield extenders (Bustard and Mastodon) or armor plates (Impel and Оccator) to incrеase the ability to fit for a HP tank which is much more useful than their active tanks in many situations where you are receiving a large amount of damage over a short duration. In balancing this out‚ one of their active tanking bonuѕеs was removed.

With these changes we hope that the extra warp strength and HP tank will greatly aid their use in all areas of space especially in empire where they have less to worry about with no bubbled camps to have to run through and only the heavy interdictors as their nemesis.
Mackinaw‚ Procurer, Skiff and Rorqual

The mackinaw getѕ somе love with an additional +10 cpu and +1000 cargo capacity to allow it to be more effective at ice mining. It always under performs a little compared to the hulk and these changes should allow it to specialise at ice mining better.

The Procurer and Skiff both received minor boosts to their agility as we wanted the smallest barges to be at least agile if completely outclassed by their larger cousins in most scenarios and nudge them towards more of a ninja mining role a little. It might also be good for you all to know the Skiff has always had a +2 warp strength bonus but this was never detailed in the description so we have updated the description to highlight this rather powerful bonus as a good selling point.

The Rorqual will be receiving a minor boost to its corporate hangar capacity. This is done to allow the hangar to be used as a shared and secure container for mining ops and also increase its utility for carrying cargo around.
In Summary

These changes are not final and are subject to change following feedback here and from public testing on Singularity. By no means are we finished and we will continue to look at the industrial line of ships in the future. We plan to focus on improvements to help them fulfil and expand their roles. Specialised cargoholds is one improvement we are looking at in detail for the future. For now we very much want to hear your constructive views on these proposed changes.

Ave - Chronotis

Three things come to mind. Awesome boost to both blockaid runners and blackops.

Going to make it easier to transport valuable things to and from jita.

People will get brave and bring more valuable things into low/null sec regardless of camps \0/