Listening To Feedback

When the proposed changes for industrials came out as part of the continuing tiericide initiative, there were a few problems with them:

- Mammoth was not the biggest hauler for Minmatar, but rather the butt-ugly Hoarder was

- A lot of industrials lost the second high slot hurting their ability to fit a cloak and probe launcher for wormhole work

- Each race got a fast hauler and slow but tanky hauler, and the Gallente and Minmatar with their extra haulers just got balanced inbetween the extremes

Faced with a playerbase that was upset by the demoting of the classic Mammoth to also-ran status, the first issue was resolved very quickly. Then today after a weekend of going over feedback in the forums and 'other sources', he posted a change of heart:

-Special purpose bays - This will be for Hoarder, Iteron Mark II, III, and IV. We wanted to do this originally, but held back because of concerns about racial inequality. Based on feedback I'm now hoping you guys will be fine with this inequality, as long as it isn't so favored towards Gallente that no one would ever train another race for hauling.
-More separation between the two basic hauler types - I want to achieve this through several means including giving the faster haulers better warp time (up to 6au/tick instead of 4.5au/tick), taking a mid slot away from the cargo focused versions to highlight the tank on the others (this will partly be counter-acted by giving back the second high to the cargo versions), along with other small changes to make some of the tankier haulers stand out a bit more.
-More quirkiness overall - I won't go into specifics right now, and it won't be anything extremely drastic, but I want to try and get each ship within a role set apart from the others as much as possible to avoid any feeling of homogenization (though I still feel that the very simplistic hauling system doesn't provide a lot of room for variation that wouldn't severely handicap some ships).

This is a great step forward for this class and I'm sure I'm in the majority that having some uniqueness in the races is fine as long as its balanced out overall in the long run.

I can't wait to see what the special purpose bays are going to be. A special Ore only super hauler? A Planetary Interaction maven ship like the limited edition Primae? A hauler with a Ship Array that can carry 1-2 destroyers? The possibilities are intriguing.