Bullshits of EVE - Ventures.

You know what's bullshit? This:

You guessed it, that's a Venture mining gas. What's the problem? Glad you asked, let me explain. I was not sure if I should do a rant post, but what the hell...since I came across one, I might as well get it off my chest. I know this is 2 years too late.

Mining Ventures are bullshit

Before Ventures were introduced, it was not so easy to mine gas.  Most common ship was a battlecruiser, preferably with maximum high slot layout. For example - Brutix. Now it was not your standard battlecruiser. It had high slots filled with gas harvesters and lows with cargo hold expanders. Even then, you would hit the limit of 2000 m3 of cargo hold, which is enough only for like 1/5th of site. I myself used to multibox 4 Myrmidons to harvest low-sec gas. Now, battlecruiser is not that expensive, but not that cheap either. It took a while to mine out the gas clouds, so you were at constant risk of being ganked. That was life. You risk medium ship for getting that expensive gas. Then, some bright minds at CCP, decided that it would be great idea to introduce some very risk averse ships and gameplay in general (more on that later). And thus Venture and Prospect were born.

A Venture, that costs 200 thousand ISK, now can mine gas clouds in just few runs. 100% role bonus yield plus 5% per frigate skill level, gives output like Brutix with full rack of gas harvesters and 5000m3 ore cargo hold lets it store gas as 2-3 Brutixes with maximum cargo hold expanders. Currently gas mining in a 200 thousand ISK ship is much better than in one that costs 50 million. If we assume average fitted Venture is 5mil, CCP decreased risk of gas mining by 1000%. Wow.

As if 1000% decrease in risk (your potential losses if you get ganked) was not enough, they felt +2 warp core strength natural bonus should do the trick. Let's not forget the low slot, which then if fitted with extra wcs, it is immune to best faction scrambler. Don't have a double scram in your cloaky gank ship? Then you are shit out of luck. Better hope he is not watching d-scan when you bring your interdictor to kill that useless 200k ISK ship and, most likely, empty pod.

After done with t1 variant, they realized they needed a t2 version. A Prospect. Since Venture was already doing everything better than any other ship used for gas mining, it was a challenge to create something even better. But CCP made it through... by throwing a covert ops cloak on already hard to catch frigate. 5% reduction of gas harvesting duration per level is now like Brutix on steroids a.k.a warfare links. Oh, they took away +2 warp core strength bonus? Don't worry. Here's 4 low slots to fit warp core stabilizers. They will for sure make your ship unusable in a site that makes you fit modules with 1500m range and that you need to lock target only few times with a 10k m3 cargo space. A price? A whopping 15 million.

Now, of course, there are sleepers that spawn to "defend" the site. Unfortunately most of them are cleared with a Tengu in 1 minute and then back to gas mining. Yes, there are few most lucrative sites that make you bring big guns, but even then they are easily dispatched compared to their class level.

In the end, I think Venture is a great ship and has a place in EVE universe. But only for c1-c2 class. It is ridiculous that such cheap ship can mine such expensive gas everywhere. Best solution would be to introduce small/medium/large gas harvesting ships with same size modules. Make gas sites different that only small harvester can do c1-c2 sites, medium for c3-c4 and heavy for c5-c6. Wouldn't it make sense?