Rigged For Her Pleasure

There's been an announcement that the upcoming mini-expansion is to include changes to Ship Modifications, the so-called "rigs".

So in the near future we can expect 3 classes of rigs, for the 3 (sub-capital) ship sizes: small for frigs and destroyers, medium for cruiser and battle cruiser hulls and large for battleship hulls.

The main change will be price, by what I feel is an enormous factor of 5. This means that using current prices for salvage, a medium rig would cost 1/5 of the price for a large rig, and in turn a small rig - 1/5 of the medium rig price. For example, a Trimark Armor Pump I costs around 15 million 20 million, so the medium and small variants should be at 4 million and 800K respectively.

What this means is that some ship classes will be getting a boost - especially T1 battle cruisers: one typically costs 20 - 40 million, and for PVP they are often used unrigged. Being able to equip them with 3 rigs for under or around 10 million (usually 20-40% of the hull value) is simply fabulous compared to the 45-50 million it would cost in the current system (over 100% of the hull price).

Another class of ships that would greatly benefit from the rig changes would be assault ships. Imagine for example a Trimark rigged Ishkur, with Warrior II drones hunting interceptors. The additional cost would be pretty small, a few million at most, but survivability would be greatly improved.

One possible disadvantage however is the fact that the increase in rig usage, combined with the alleged ability to transform T1 salvage into T2 salvage, might cause a significant increase in the salvage materials' prices - and as such a significant increase in the prices for battleship-sized rigs, compared to what we are used to currently.

There is an ongoing discussion on this topic on the Features and Ideas Forum