The  Union of Independent Territories  presents to its most loyal members (+1000 UIT, dislike or better with Serco and Itani) the UIT Behemoth Harvester.

Name: Harvester
Faction: UIT
Faction level: 1000 (-599 or better with with both serco and itani)
Level: 4/4/4/4/4
Armor: 1000 (To confirm: 1k)
Shields: Light shields (enough to repel a single arklan guardian)
Cargo: 100
Ports: 2S, 1L , 1T
Mass: 20000 kg
length: 34m
Thrust: 500N
Turbo Thrust: 900N
Max speed: 65 m/s
Spin Torque: 19.0 Nm
Turbo Speed: 175 m/s
Turbo Energy: 52/s

Shields on small ships were discussed in a previous thread. The trade offs on this ship, include the low armor and the turbo energy that prevents infiniturbo with all but one power cell (the Extreme Drain).

well thought out

+1

-1 for several reasons.

I don't understand the justification for making this UIT specific. Pick some other minor UIT faction. I am partial to Orion, as it fits into their backstory and provides a place in greyspace to purchase.

Also, the amount of shield and recharge rate are not clearly stated. Arklans are the most powerful non-capship bot in the game. They use two Gatling turrets according to the wiki, but I am unable to locate stats for them. Assuming they are similar to the gat cannon mkII, the shields would need to be able to resist up to 4,000 x 2 = 8,000 damage per second (http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/Weapons:Large). That seems a bit high.

The obvious intended use is to mine in a bot sector. Basically, makes mining risk free, as bots only tend to attack a player one by one. Do we want to add more ways to play without risk?

The other intended use is to deter potential pirate attacks while trading. 2S, 1L, and 1T provides a ton of defensive firepower. Add in a shield, and basically makes it so lone pirate attacks are likely to fail. Without knowing shield strength and recharge rate, it makes it difficult to know what a potential pirate would have to be packing in order to break these shields.

There needs to be more drawbacks to having shields on a smaller ship. My proposal would be to not have the shields recharge once they are knocked offline. A player would need to dock in order to have their shields regenerated.

The obvious intended use is to mine in a bot sector.

No, the obvious intended use is to farm SSS. Hence "Harvester" instead of "Miner", hence shields specific to withstanding arklans.

The other intended use is to deter potential pirate attacks while trading.

It's still slow and the shields are weak. And it carries only 100cu. I would much rather fly around a normal moth than this thing.

If you want to farm SSS, farm transport bots in a sector with collectors. There is no need to farm arklans.

We don't know the shields are weak because no stats. If it can resist the best non-capship bot in the game, it's pretty decent.

1- it does not take long in a sector with Arklans for them to come at you with more than one at a time, so it would be useless for farming SSS in those sectors - I will not even go farming there with Goli for that reason - I have had up to six headed in all within 1km of my Dent and had to fight fast and hard or loose shields on Dent

2- if it requires a POS with UIT, then it should be UIT only and not allow Itani and Serco to buy them at Dislike. I would agree with other post that it be made a different faction that all can be required to have POS to get. This would make it more fair to all. You are really just punishing UIT for being UIT to require such a high standing to get them and let the Itani and Serco basically go in with barely enough to keep UIT forces off of them.

3- there are other ships that can be used to farm Arklans. I used to farm a lot of them in Taurs. You just have to be more careful now that AI has changed.

/me throws in the customary argument that non-capships shouldn't have shields

Crusader, you misunderstood his stats - only UIT can buy the ship, and they cannot be hated with either faction either. Itani and Serco cannot buy the ship at all with the stats originally posted.

Captain Spry, I don't see the point in not letting the shields recharge. It's got paper-thin armor, so if you do drop the shields, it should be trivial to kill it. Denying it a recharge on the off chance it somehow escapes just seems silly.

+1 fer the more ships

I'm trying to mitigate the issue that Inc brings up in why he doesn't want shields on non-capships: "Similarly, it would totally alter the mechanics of taking on NPCs and the like. Instead of having to actually kill a target, before being killed yourself, you could then play-for-time and go fly around mid-engagement until your shield recharged, creating an even more exacerbated "running" problem than we already have (except instead of just being PvP, it would be all the time). This would require all NPCs to be rebalanced, practically."

By making the shields not recharge, it negates the "play-for-time" mechanic.

yeah moths are totally going to be able to run around and recharge their shields in sector

I decided to wait a week or so before making replies, so the thread doesn't get unnecessarily long.





There are two reasons why I specified this ship being UIT only.

1. The faction system. Maintaining +1000 UIT is much harder than maintaining +1000 Orion (or any sub faction for that matter). For example: currently, if a +1000 UIT pilot shoots and kills a neutral pilot(of any nation) in monitored UIT space, and the victim does not forgive the kill, the aggressor will lose standing. Its only a 10 points or so but it is a clear loss of standing. As we all know, getting standing back to +1000 gets harder the closer one gets to +1000. Regaining POS is a pain in the neck time wise.

Conversely, if a pilot who is +1000 Orion (to use your preferred subfaction) shoots and kills a neutral pilot anywhere in the galaxy. Including the four (i believe) Orion station sectors, they don't lose any standing. With current factional system, this was no bueno for what I wanted.

2. I want the UIT to have more than one UIT only attainable ship. Currently the Itani have 5 ships that only Itani pilots can buy, and the Serco have four. The UIT only have the UDV. In my mind, the UIT having a nation specific moth makes sense.





I have deshielded Goliaths with just an energy hog. Why would a pirate have a hard time against even weaker shields on a moth?





I mean sure, why not... but remember, damaged ships take longer to jump. With 1k armor (paper thin in the VO universe) 1 shot from most weapons has already made jumping hard. And since the Harvester doesn't infiniturbo with most power cells, it will probably be dead before five minutes is up anyways. The idea of these shields, is that the pilot is trading armor for shields to get around their ships jumping slower when damaged. The moment they lose the shields, they are up the creek without a paddle.

I think a better option than forcing them to redock to regain shields, would be to reduce the armor same level the lowest powered weapon in the game. Which i think is a training weapon at 15 damage. Or a shield turret at 1 or so.





wut? Serco/Itani can't buy this ship. It is UIT only.





With 2 posis, a gat and 60-80k armor, I think the Overseers would disagree with you.

If you want to farm SSS, farm transport bots in a sector with collectors. There is no need to farm arklans.

Do you not know how to SSS farm? A friend in a Trident with LMINE taurs and a few friends in an arklan sector is how to efficiently farm. Plus you get avalons.

ah see you assume I have friends. When I farm sss, I farm it solo, as I assume most people do.

Yes, i have many friends, some of them even make me think they are real!

I've never farmed bulk SSS solo, if you want progress, use a friend and some lmines.

I picked a few things up from TGFT.

-1 Non capships shouldnt have shields.
@Hellcat nobody cares about TGFT

You over-read my statement and saw 'TGFT' and commented.

Please re-read 7 times and actually infer what i was trying to say before commenting.

Kthxbye.