Make the Y8 worth its size

Grunanca · Jun 3, 2026

Currently the Y8 minig ship is a ship you almost never see, which is really sad as its the closest you get to an actual capital ship in space. The ship might be made for mining, but as the alliance has shown, refitting ships for a military purpose can work in most situations. Unfortunately the ship as it is is quite big and outperformed by pobs or gunboats in all roles, even its dedicated mining role.

SagoMactow · Jun 21, 2026

I agree that something needs to be done with the Y8. It is almost impossible you mine effectively. The only way to use it is with a full crew. Bu8t people do not want to go up and "mine" asteroids. I heard there was a way, tried it and it didn't work.

Shewp · Jun 21, 2026

Even crewed you're better off mining in starfighters as a group. The Y-8 is in a pretty poor position, but i disagree turning it into a gunboat is the solution to this. I'd rather see changes to make it a more effective miner.

Chrpica · Jun 30, 2026

Two different thoughts:

I think it's an interesting idea to make the Y8 a combat ship, I'm not enough of a space PVPer to say how that would work, so I'll focus on the mining aspect

The mining is something that absolutely could improve. For example, if you take the Y8 up to mine, if you're parked close enough to the asteroid then I say have it auto-mine, sort of like sampling. You'd still get a better return with people on the guns, but at least if you're a crafter or something you can do that on your ship and run to a gun if necessary (I actually haven't tried crafting in space so don't get hung up on that).

Yes, AFK mining would be a thing. A few fighters solve that. Or, have the effectiveness of the auto-mine fade out over time until it barely returns anything per tick, so you'd need to come back later or find a different asteroid to keep mining for a while.

A player who invested the time and credits to gear up a Y-8 should get a benefit from it.

Polyvinyl · Jun 30, 2026

Chrpica said:
Two different thoughts:

I think it's an interesting idea to make the Y8 a combat ship, I'm not enough of a space PVPer to say how that would work, so I'll focus on the mining aspect

The mining is something that absolutely could improve. For example, if you take the Y8 up to mine, if you're parked close enough to the asteroid then I say have it auto-mine, sort of like sampling. You'd still get a better return with people on the guns, but at least if you're a crafter or something you can do that on your ship and run to a gun if necessary (I actually haven't tried crafting in space so don't get hung up on that).

Yes, AFK mining would be a thing. A few fighters solve that. Or, have the effectiveness of the auto-mine fade out over time until it barely returns anything per tick, so you'd need to come back later or find a different asteroid to keep mining for a while.

A player who invested the time and credits to gear up a Y-8 should get a benefit from it.

I really don't hate this idea, I do think that i'd rather have the Y-8 mining be made better, rather than turning it in to a temu gunboat.

Veizyr · Jul 1, 2026

Chrpica said:
Two different thoughts:

I think it's an interesting idea to make the Y8 a combat ship, I'm not enough of a space PVPer to say how that would work, so I'll focus on the mining aspect

The mining is something that absolutely could improve. For example, if you take the Y8 up to mine, if you're parked close enough to the asteroid then I say have it auto-mine, sort of like sampling. You'd still get a better return with people on the guns, but at least if you're a crafter or something you can do that on your ship and run to a gun if necessary (I actually haven't tried crafting in space so don't get hung up on that).

Yes, AFK mining would be a thing. A few fighters solve that. Or, have the effectiveness of the auto-mine fade out over time until it barely returns anything per tick, so you'd need to come back later or find a different asteroid to keep mining for a while.

A player who invested the time and credits to gear up a Y-8 should get a benefit from it.

I don’t think turning the only active mining in the game into yet another afk activity is the way to go here. Regardless of how boring asteroid mining is to some, it’s at least not as ridiculous as putting a character on a spawn and checking on it every 30-40 minutes to bypass the afk prevention system.

I’ve tanked 10+ t3 pirates on the Y-8, ignoring them as I filled my cargo and occasionally doing a quick shield shunt, so in theory, the pirates wouldn’t be a deterrent to the afk issue. You could then make pirates become ridiculously hard hitting, but then you’re closing off mining to other people not using a gunboat which isn’t a solution either.

I don’t disagree with asteroid mining needing changes or the Y-8 needing them but this is not it, imo.

Chrpica · Jul 1, 2026

Veizyr said:
I don’t think turning the only active mining in the game into yet another afk activity is the way to go here.

I agree, which is why I tossed out some suggestions. Some things already in the game that the devs would probably be able to hook in to can make this a semi-AFK, which sounds right for sitting and doing nothing while you're logged in.

The biggest example of allowing semi-AFK is having Entertainers listen for Tells. They can definitely switch to another monitor, and I hope they do so they're having fun. Yes, players should do some work to make credits, but they also miss 99% of the content if they just sit there and wait.

Workarounds that we already have in place are:
- the AFK system
- ticks of resources, docking, and proximity. We could let Y8s dock to asteroids, something exclusive to them. If AFK becomes a real problem, send a pirate POB if the player is under attack for 10 minutes without dealing with it.

Ultimately, I think most people will agree that the Y8 is pretty disappointing in performance. These aren't concrete ideas I would never budge on, but if we want improvement then we have to start somewhere.

FullMingo · Jul 1, 2026

I'd rather a y-8 specific tractor beam that gives more mats than the normal one, or gives it some sort of bigger cone for catching chunks

Turning the y-8 into any from of afk-able mining would be terrible on the asteroid market

Maxal · Jul 5, 2026

Open Senate Sponsored Space Post in thread 'Let Y-8 Graduate to Gunship'

May 9, 2026

kcwsooners said:
The Y-8 is less efficient at mining than a starship, a less efficient POB, and has the potential to be a Decent (Even if outclassed) Gunship. Let it at the very least be more useful. Yes it functions, yes with a crew it can mine just fine, but as a POB it is simply some weirdly lacking in-between of a true POB and Gunship.

personally i'd rather see a new mining ship added, maybe https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/YG-4214_mining_freighter as an advanced miner. would also be nice to see a full second set of gunships that give more options in that range.

A PV from a year ago had good support.

Veizyr · Jul 5, 2026

The one thing I can think of to make the Y-8 a better mining rig and not an AFK activity would be to stick a mining laser in the pilot weapon slot and have consumable "drones" that you'd launch from a turret slot which would stick around for X amount of time (based on quality of the craft) and mine the chunks you shoot off. This would prevent the current system in which you have to bug the tractor beams in the right position to mine effectively solo, and it would prevent asteroid mining in a Y-8 from being an AFK activity. It would also be cool to add the drone schematic to DE to give them some recurring business and is fitting since they are, in theory, little droids that go harvest things for you.

They happen to be also somewhat canon, albeit a little bigger than the Y-8 itself. But using droids to mine resources in dangerous areas is not a new Star Wars concept, as we already have the DLC-13 model used on Mustafar to mine precious minerals from lava pools.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Asteroid_Mining_Unit

torusi · Jul 27, 2026

Veizyr said:
The one thing I can think of to make the Y-8 a better mining rig and not an AFK activity would be to stick a mining laser in the pilot weapon slot and have consumable "drones" that you'd launch from a turret slot which would stick around for X amount of time (based on quality of the craft) and mine the chunks you shoot off. This would prevent the current system in which you have to bug the tractor beams in the right position to mine effectively solo, and it would prevent asteroid mining in a Y-8 from being an AFK activity. It would also be cool to add the drone schematic to DE to give them some recurring business and is fitting since they are, in theory, little droids that go harvest things for you.

They happen to be also somewhat canon, albeit a little bigger than the Y-8 itself. But using droids to mine resources in dangerous areas is not a new Star Wars concept, as we already have the DLC-13 model used on Mustafar to mine precious minerals from lava pools.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Asteroid_Mining_Unit

I like this idea of making the Y-8 usable. A POSSIBLE way to keep balance (i just thought it up, so i recognize it could be a bad or impossible idea) would be .....
1. Make the collection droids a Munition, so you can load those instead of torpedoes etc..
2. Add a munition slot (or two) to the Y-8, but make no other changes.....
3. Add some Asteroid spawns that are extremely high risk.... patrolled by T8 pirates for example.. but offer higher return on collection.

I THINK this might be a good fix, because it would change nothing really, except for providing a possibility of getting a crew on the Y-8 (or a gunship if you wanted) to mine and protect themselves in a dangerous area for some better results in mining space rocks.