Industrial Tiericide Mark II

Recently the T1 industrials were hit by tiericide which was followed by a lot of criticism on how it was handled.  A little while later we got Round 2 of the industrial tiericide.  This second go around at industrial rebalancing was received with a whole lot more enthusiasm than before.  Even though there are still a few things I don't like about it, it has turned into a far better improvement for the game.  Industrials are a workhorse in Eve and there is no getting around that.  I think most everybody has trained some racial industrial to at least 1 just so that they can move small quantities of things without having to use a courier service.  One of the major problems that haulers had was that they didn't really give a whole lot of cargo space, and the amount of m3 that modules or ore can take up can be pretty hefty.  If you wanted to move anything in semi-large quantities without training an Orca or freighter everyone told you to train for the Iteron Mark V.

This was always disappointing for me because quite frankly I hate the look of the Iteron(s).  So I never trained Gallente Industrial and instead trained Amarr.  But to give a bit of perspective on the disparities between the Itty V and the Bestower; I present to you a comparison with all level 5 skills and full cargo optimization.

Bestower:  Cargo-24,115 m3, Align-12.6 s, EHP-2,770

Iteron V:  Cargo-38,433 m3, Align-11, EHP-3,552

But if you don't tank your hauler then you deserve to be blown up right?  So let's add on a Damage Control II, Afterburner II, 2x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II, and a Medium Shield Extender II, 2x for the Itty because it has an extra mid.

Bestower:  Cargo-18,914 m3, Align-12.6 s (AB turned off), EHP-8,739

Iteron V:  Cargo-30,144 m3, Align-11 (AB turned off), EHP-14,145

This is still  a huge disparity for something as simple as moving stuff around.  What I like with this new tiericide initiative is the homogenization (yup, I said it) of the cargo capacities.  Now everything is a whole lot closer to each other and so if I choose to now use a Bestower I can get 39,201 m3, and the Iteron V can get 37, 152 m3.  Now, plenty of the min/maxers are going to cry foul, but to me you still won't be able to show the disparity that existed before.

But what about racial diversity?  Not all races are the same you say, and you're right they need to have some diversity but making cargo size the major factor is downright stupid.  I'm totally fine with there being a cargo disparity but a 37% difference should not exist, sorry to say but I doubt the other races' engineers were dumb enough not to realize that just by adding more containers you add more cargo space.  You really can't cause too much of a difference with hauling, because that is just what it is hauling and with the approach CCP took by creating two classes of haulers (a speedy one, and a large capacity one) you won't be able to create the racial disparity that you demand without vastly outclassing the others (notice, this is what happened before). 

The only complaint that really comes to mind is how they handled the extra four haulers.  The idea was to give some specialized bays that allowed for the transport of large quantities of goods that belonged to a specific class e.g. Ore, Ammo, PI Commodities, and Minerals.  While I have a few misgivings in the actual use of some of these bays, my issue is that they still require their racial's industrial skill, but with a 10% to special bay capacity each rank you are getting a big increase for each rank trained.  So that even if you have (insert racial skill) Industrial to 5, you'll still end up training Gallente or Minmatar because of the disparity if you want to move any of those other types of commodities in bulk.  While I'm glad that I'll be able to move my ore and minerals without having to train and purchase an Orca, I'm still disappointed with how the disparity in the number of ships  available to each race was disproportionate in the first place.

To offer my opinion they could have handled it several ways, some of which may not be the "best" but that is always up for debate.

·         The easiest would be to just remove them.  This would cause problems over which hull skin should be cut etc and we'd lose out on the specialized hulls which is greatly needed.

·         The hardest would be to give all the races 3 or 4 more hauler hulls.  While it would be neat, I find this solution a waste of resources.

·         The best would be that ORE bought the rights to these four ships and they are now under ORE ownership.  I think this is the best because you get to keep the art assets that already exist, you move the skills over to the ORE industrial skill that has its own set of ships that people will want to work towards; while currently that would be the Noctis, Orca, and Rorqual it leaves room for future iteration on the industrial line.  If you want more of an RP reason other than ORE has tons of ISK and bought the rights, the Gallente and Minmatar are currently caught up in wars and maybe they needed a quick ISK boost.

While I can live with the changes, I find they could have built a better foundation for the industrial line for future expansions a lot stronger.  ORE is already developing new types of ships as the game has progressed over the last 10 years.  The Venture was just released with the Retribution expansion, I sure hope ORE is continuing to develop new and better ships for the New Eden universe.