Is there a specific reason for not having a small port on the Behemoth, or is a varient Behemoth going to have a small port?

Just wondering cause if it did have a small port then it would replace the Centaur as the best mining ship. :D

What if we made a heavy mining laser with an integrated scanner which was a bit too massive for a centaur?

Can I get a Yes?

Yes!

You know what I'll say a1k0n?!?

YES! YES! YES! :D

I liked the idea of their being ships that excel in particular parts of the game.

So I would rather keep the behemoth as a transport ship and have a variant that switches a large port to 2 small ports... Or perhaps turn both large ports into 4 small ports for a mining vaorant... 3 small mining lasers with 1 scanner would be pretty cool... that and it would be the biggest change as far as variants go.

Please no S port on Behemoth.

I like the Behemoth because it's a good transport and that's what it should be. Transports shouldn't be good at combat (i.e. Centaur, Atlast, etc), nor should they be good mining ships. They should be transports.

I think that by making ships multi purpose you are discouraging group game play. If transport ships were lousy at combat, then pilots would be required to hire escorts. Players should be able to hire NPC fighter escorts for cargo missions.

In the case of the Behemoth, you would need 3 players to mine effectively. One Behemoth to store the minerals, one player to do the mining, and another to gaurd.

Anyway.. just thought I'd toss in my 2 cents.

big fat nasty mining laser with integrated scanner = good.
(Dont forget the variants!)

Firstly Dargon, the news item about the Behemoth said it was supposed to be great for both mining and transport.

Secondly, I live in Australia so when I get the time to play, there are hardly any people on, which makes any kind of group activity really hard to do.

Anyways, a mining beam with a built in scanner sounds pretty good to me.

Maybe the specialized mining beams could have built-in mineral scanners, that could only identify the ore the mining beam was specialized for. Like the Heliocene Mining Beam could only identify Heliocene ore content, the DeniPhase Mining Beam could only identify Denic, Pentric, and Lanthanic ore content, etc. So if I had a Heliocene Mining Beam & targetted a 'roid, I would usually see:
Unknown Ore(s) 100%

And occasionally see something like:
Unknown Ore(s) 68%
Heliocene Ore 32%

And the High-Density Mining Beam could have a built-in scanner that could identify all ores.

Now that is a suggestion that makes me get MY box of stamps out!

AWESOME IDEA! Beolach

I love the idea of a mining beam with a built in scanner. And to Dargon - adding a small port would *not* make the Behemoth a good fighter. It would be useful only for the mineral scanner. I promise. It's not even very helpful to have AGTs on it because it turns so slowly. A small port weapon wouldn't hit anything. Unless after the next update we start seeing the new Tunguska Behemoth Aggresso ;)

An integrated scanner sounds like a neat idea. Although I didn't really have big trouble with mining in the moth. I just got into the practice of scouting around in a fast hog/vult equipped with a scanner and mineralbeam and dropping of ore next to interesting roids. *shrug*

But please make the integrated scanner worse than a seperate one. Range somewhere around 250m or so. The moth could really encourage group mining in its current form.

Well I'm definitely in the camp that agrees that the mining beam with an integrated scanner would be perfect for this, but, I'm sure something like that will only be available for those with a high mining license. SO, to that effect I really think that at least (1) varient of the behemoth have a small port. However I disagree that the range of a scanner build into a beam should have less range, it's obviously higher grade tech, why make it less effective, simply to make it harder? Anyone who mines with 3 small lasers, who has the capability to use two large, is fooling themselves if they think its more effective to mine that way, so placing (4) or (3) small ports on the 'moth would not be an improvement, but could make it an interesting missle/rocket rammer. This ship will never be a fighter though, and anyone trying will just be picked off quickly.

I want the jettison menu to be able to block ores. I don't want to eliminate the ores being mined, but more that the ore is automatically discarded, just becuase having to punh the jet menu all the time is more annoying than it is a challenge, and the roid still heat up the same because you still mine the ore, it just never enters your hold.

There are some good ideas in this thread! I esp. like the ore blocking or filtering idea even though mining is pretty boring most of the time and using jettison is not too difficult.

One question about the specialty mining beam. What's to keep me (or you, you rascal) from equipping it into a large port on ANY ship ?

Wouldn't it just be easier to add one small port to the Beemer than to redesign the mining beams and make existing mineral scanners obsolete? IIRC, isn't an enhanced mineral scanner a perk for completing the Prospecting missions? This redesign of the mining beams would make it redundent.

But then its just a bigger Centaur with a different graphic, I like that this one only has large ports :) forces you to work together, bring a scanning crew.

Scanning crew is going to get really bored.

:) mining crew:

2 Behemoths
1 Centaur

The centaur still can mine, but it find the rocks. You could even switch this around and go with 2 centaurs, to make scanning faster.

EDIT: and since when is mining fun anyway?

Some of us actually like mining and trading.