CCP released the info on the long rumored new Rorqual Conduit Jump.
I logged onto the Test Server and gave it a try. Here are my initial impressions.
tl;dr:
- good stuff, people will like it
- why does CCP hate the Porpoise?
The Rorqual has a few new capabilities:
- Bridge mining ships like a titan can do
- Conduit Jump mining ships like a black ops battleship can do
- Jump or Bridge to an Industrial Cyno Beacon
The basics of these capabilities was first noticed in hoboleaks last year and discussed in various Dev Team chats since.
A huge change is allowing the Rorqual to jump and bridge to Industrial Cyno Beacons. This has been requested often in the past and will be of real help in not just mining ops, but in the thankless world of logistics where this improvement makes space work a little less painful. A cargohold rigged Rorqual is still way limited compared to a Jump Freighter, but it does give the Rorqual a bit more utility and get them into space more.
The basic operation of bridging is basically the same as titans and black ops battleships. Right-clicking on the Rorqual shows the Jump option.
Again, the conduit jump mechanic is almost exactly the same as the black ops battleships, except it works on mining ships instead of covert ops.
The opportunities for organized mining fleets and other hijinks will allow simpler group activity to get rolling and more people into space.
The one drawback to the current design in that Orcas and Porpoises are excluded from the bridge and conduit jump features.
While it can be understandable that the Orca is excluded since is a capital ship (kinda) and has moon ore compression capability, there is no reasonable excuse as to why the Porpoise is excluded. The Dev Blog dances around this in a non-answer of basically, “If we let the Porpoise use the bridge, the big brother Orca will have it’s feelings hurt.”
It’s clear that the design intent is to get Rorquals into space by any means to provide targets for the poor, underserved whaling community and that by excluding Orca & Porpoises, pilots will blindly put their Rorquals into harm’s way.
But EVE pilots always route around poor design and will simply put a Porpoise in the Rorqual Ship Maintenance Bay, jump into the target system and have the Porpoise pilot in a Venture come along. Once landed, the pilot simply swaps ships and gets the Porpoise into space.
Again, the players are going to get the Porpoise on field, despite the Dev Team’s concepts, just adding a little more headache to the game for no real effect.
Just let the Porpoise take the bridge/jump.
No need for more weaponized inconvenience.
Industrial ships for hauling are also excluded, which is not horrible, but again runs into conflict with previous design changes. CCP made a big point to mention that they expanded the capacity of jetcans to make players happy. Yet jetcan mining has industrial haulers as a key part of the process. But with this new capability, they are excluded. Why? What is the thought process here?
As usual, players will work around this by either bringing hauling ships in the SMA or cargo depositing packaged ships & fittings into structures to be fit on site and used. This is just more inconvenience for an unknown purpose.
And that’s just the tricks I came up solo on the first evening. Once the EVE hive mind really gets up to speed I’m sure other options will pop up and be put into use. I’m sure someone will figure out a way to put the Clone Vat Bay into use in some combination with alts to optimize some of these roadblocks.
The build cost is probably somewhere around 400 million ISK, which is in line with other capital modules of high utility. I expect the blueprint to be quite costly. With the capital compressor module blueprints well over a billion ISK each, the Industrial Jump Portal will probably between the titan jump portal blueprint cost (481 million ISK) and a billion ISK.
Overall, this is a welcome improvement the game and should lead to increased group activity and hopefully some emergent gameplay shenanigans.
The Dev Team is trying to bring some new opportunities into the game and this will create some interesting situations, which is what players are looking for.
I hope the exclusion of the Porpoise will be reconsidered, as it really wouldn’t create any issues. Unless the Dev Team fears a new aggressive fleet doctrine of Battle Porps, which I would argue would be a VERY GOOD THING for EVE.
P.S. Reinforced Carbon Fiber and Pressurized Oxidizers are Composite Materials not Intermediate Materials and deserve their own unique artwork.
