Oh Look, The Primae Hull Is Back

Real life got in the way last night, but I had to write a brief post involving yesterday's dev blog, Mining Foreman Revolution. The newest ship in the EVE universe is the Porpoise.

"The Porpoise-class Industrial Command Ship is the most affordable and mobile mining foreman platform ever released in New Eden. This new ship fills the hole at the bottom of the mining foreman ship progression line. Although it shares a group with the larger and more expensive Orca, the Porpoise is as cheap as a tech one battlecruiser.

"Thanks to ORE’s tireless work advancing hull materials technology to reduce mass, the Porpoise is light enough to travel through small-ship wormhole connections.

"This new ship should be perfect for mining operations in more dangerous space where lower cost ships minimize exposure to loss for the operation. It’s improved agility and warp speed also make it the best choice for providing coverage of mining groups at multiple locations with one ship."

The Porpoise, coming to an asteroid belt near you

A pretty good looking ship, and a good color scheme. A lot of people will notice the resemblance to that old standby ORE ship, the Noctis. The dedicated salvaging ship has seen hard times as players migrated away from the ORE industrial ship's powerful tractor beams in favor of Mobile Tractor Units. I think a lot of people will welcome seeing the hull more frequently in space.

The hull, however, didn't originate with the Noctis. The first ship of the class was the Primae. Introduced in the Tyrannis expansion in May 2010, CCP intended the ship to work with the new Planetary Interaction feature.

"The Primae is a repurposed ORE design intended to ease the task of extracting resources from planetbound environments. Initially devised as a deep space salvage vessel for large-scale ore retrieval from destroyed ORE fleets in pirate-occupied areas, its previous incarnation was made all but obsolete by the arrival of capsuleers on the interstellar scene. Realizing that the ship could, with a few minor modifications, be made into an efficient resource harvesting aid, ORE wasted no time in revamping the design.

"A low signature radius (a holdover from its earlier manifestation) adds a layer of defense to the Primae's already decent plating. In addition, the ship's two large bays have been re-engineered to hold equipment for planetside resource extraction and processed materials, making it an especially useful complement to any planetside harvesting endeavor."

The Primae had two strikes against it's widespread use. The first was the Primae was a limited run ship, given out to each account with the launch of the expansion. The second was a ridiculously small 1000 cubic meter bay for holding PI products. Using any other tech 1 industrial at the time not only meant less risk, but more efficiency as well. Capsuleers finally got a decent dedicated planetary interaction hauler when the Iteron Mk. III was converted into the Epithal during the Odyssey expansion in June 2013.

I have to say I'm excited about the mining boost changes coming to EVE in the November expansion. The dev blog is massive and I couldn't devote the time to do a proper write-up last night. However, I couldn't let the introduction of another Primae hulled ship pass without an early comment. I really look forward to flying a Porpoise now.