I-¦ll support this fine gentleman.

Can we / you also ban large towers from highsec? And while at it also medium?
Highsec: small
Lowsec: up to medium
Nullsec: up to large

2) a sub capital dread style ship should be introduced with terrible tracking and average ehp but able to fit a siege module to give its large guns the 6X damage bonus for seiging things in highsec

The first of the last conditions is probably more pactical but such a ship would be very cool however this is an issue that does need adressing and will further monks campaign to get highsec folks to learn to fight for something they have invested in

As a logic exercise, if fuel costs for large towers were increased in all space that would also drive industry POSs in nullsec into mediums as well, which would provide a way to prompt fights by reinforcing a softer target, which means that there isn't as high of an investment to develop a fight. Alliance support structures, like jump bridges CSAA POSs are going to stay up almost no matter the cost. This would have to be looked at much more carefully from a spreadsheets perspective, but at first glance, that seems like a decent solution.

4)And then, lastly, there's the possibility of lowering the fitting on such POSs, leaving less room for hardeners and EWAR batteries. Ships get frequent rebalances, so I don't think some POS rebalances would go amiss.

Large dickstars in highsec and C1's are an incredible pain in the ass. Your first instinct might be to say that you should bring more friends, but even entirely full nullsec fleets can have a large amount of ass pain hitting a large dickstar using only subcaps. The solution in lowsec and nullsec is to drop dreads on it, but in highsec and lower class wormholes that simply isn't possible. (Well, it's technically possible in C1's, but it's difficult enough as to not really be an option.)

My prefence would be that there were no large towers anywhere that you can't have Dreads.

This suggests two solutions immediately:

1) No large towers in these places. I would rather see solutions buffed than problems nerfed, and this feels like a band-aid solution. I would be happy to see that change implemented, but there are several other solutions I would much prefer.

What about increasing the CPU costs of hardeners and ewar batteries? The main issue is that while some reactions can be split up between two medium POSes rather than one large (e.g. running two of the same simple reaction), the logistics involved are much more annoying due to that god-awful POS management system, and some reaction chains *have* to be done on a single moon as a large -- for instance, 2x moon miners -> simple reactor -> complex reactor <- silos for other reactants -- or else you lose a large amount of efficiency due to extra silos, extra time spent hauling, etc.

Definitely support++ making dickstars less effective -- wormhole evictions in C1-C4 are too hard without investing in building a dread in the hole, giving incumbents in a hole a huge huge advantage.

So I gather that you don't like this solution, but in a world where it's on the table and heavily favored, would you at least be willing to defend the use of large towers in C2-C4 wormholes (as I believe you mean "can't jump dreads into these systems" by "these places" given the context)? I know there are mixed opinions about large towers in C1s, but C2-C4 space is where a lot of up and coming corps start out and get their feet wet with w-space, capitals, and living in POSes. Living out of a medium tower is not enjoyable.

Yes well this is an issue although I would argue that if you nerfed the tracking and such on these guns to the point they were only usable against capitals and towers it would still be balanced even in a WH as an immobile unaidble battleship is quiet possibly the biggest siting duck I could imagine

Micro siege module for use on mruaders only is inspired though +1 for that

One solution that fixes the issue in highsec only is to dramatically increase the starbase charter requirement for large towers compared to medium/small towers, but doesn't address the C1-C4 wormhole issue.

Malc:

Let's follow this line of logic for a second. Let's assume these things came to exist and large towers started getting hit in any wormhole where people thought they weren't liable to get murdered by ten thousand t3's and a Bhaalgorn. Two solutions to that present themselves immediately. 1) Wormhole corps have to start covering more TZs. This would mean larger grouping of wormhole players. 2) Wormhole corps would have to start splitting their operations into more towers, increasing the pain to siege a relevant amount of that WHs assets.

Both of these increase the barrier to entry and the workload on wormhole corps. From the couple of monthes I lived in a wormhole I can tell you that the amount of effort wormholers go through for their lifestyle is significant and I don't see any advantage for anyone should more get heaped on to them. So, yeah, that's a strike against the mini-dread. More and more the solution seems to lie in a POS rebalance or a fuel cost rebalance.

I'm still open to other solutions, though. Anyone else have kickass thoughts on how to solve this?

I'm still open to other solutions, though. Anyone else have kickass thoughts on how to solve this?

Tell your friends.

But, unfortunately, that's not how we've seen CCP work. The reality tends to be that once it's out of sight it's out of mind. :(

From the discussion I'm seeing here so far, it sounds like people want it to be easier to hit industry POSes in W-space or highsec, but want to preserve the current difficulty of hitting main staging towers in W-space to avoid the little guys getting stomped on. I can definitely see how it'd be frustrating to be unable to destroy someone's no-risk reaction farms in a C1 (especially a C1/high where there are zero risks associated with getting moongoo and fuel in).

I generally would agree with this train of thought; as a little guy (we dabble in a C2 on the side), it's a useful property that we can't easily be evicted outright from our C2 unless we make a serious enemy, and I'd be okay with it being easier to hit our industry under the farms and fields doctrine (we happen to put our reaction POSes in sov null though because we're better able to protect that).

I'm pretty sure though that increasing the CPU requirements of hardeners/ECM modules would be sufficient to make it an either or of "have useful CPU for running reactions" or "have enough useful CPU to harden"; CHA's don't require *that* much CPU, and SMA's require none, so staging towers can be dickstarred without issues.

Well speaking for myself, I don't want to make it easier to hit towers in W-space at all. Dreads are already a thing in W-space, and they're more than efficient enough to clear out any towers.

Well, that used to be the case with POSs before fuel blocks. CCP decided they preferred a more flat way of doing it, and undoing a decision is extremely rare here in space. But that's not the only problem. If you're being hit and you happen to be online it's fairly trivial to offline mods and simply online hardeners and EWAR mods. If the mods are already anchored transforming a POS into a dickstar can be quite trivial. The fuel cost would only go up for the time it was being shot at and go back down as soon as the danger had passed.

I'm not satisfied with that solution at all, honestly.

Malc:

Let's follow this line of logic for a second. Let's assume these things came to exist and large towers started getting hit in any wormhole where people thought they weren't liable to get murdered by ten thousand t3's and a Bhaalgorn. Two solutions to that present themselves immediately. 1) Wormhole corps have to start covering more TZs. This would mean larger grouping of wormhole players. 2) Wormhole corps would have to start splitting their operations into more towers, increasing the pain to siege a relevant amount of that WHs assets.

Both of these increase the barrier to entry and the workload on wormhole corps. From the couple of monthes I lived in a wormhole I can tell you that the amount of effort wormholers go through for their lifestyle is significant and I don't see any advantage for anyone should more get heaped on to them. So, yeah, that's a strike against the mini-dread. More and more the solution seems to lie in a POS rebalance or a fuel cost rebalance.

I'm still open to other solutions, though. Anyone else have kickass thoughts on how to solve this?