Thogn Thu
Space Crickets
League of Entities
0
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Posted - 2011.10.18 16:12:00 -
[1] - Quote
The thread was going really fast when I started taking this down, so apologies if I missed some responses that address some of my questions/issues.
At first glance, I really don't like this. This whole idea makes a fair amount of sense for null/WH space given their "frontier" status, but I don't think it fits for lowsec, which is still empire space when all is said and done. To me the Customs Office seems like it should fall into the same category as a NPC station in empire space. Players can't build them, players can't blow them up. In null/WH space, everything goes. If I'm reading the blog correctly, minimum standings on the CO could be set to deny folks you don't like. That essentially makes it a planetary sovereignty structure. If we can't claim sovereignty over a system in empire space, why should we be able to claim sovereignty over a planet?
I'm in a small and what is essentially a personal corp since most of the other members are fairly inactive. I do PI in lowsec because there's a good balance between risk and reward. Adding in the CO structure costs and potential defense costs makes for more risk and much less reward (at least in the short term), as does having to pay a potentially unfriendly entity who gouges prices. It seems like yet another way that a large entity can totally screw the little guy just trying to pull in some cash. The response that "little guys should be in highsec" is crap. From what I've seen, highsec planets are terrible compared with planets in low/null/WH space, and in my opinion, not worth the time.
The risk is even further increased with griefers who just want to blow up "that stupid carebear structure" just for some lulz, and no other gain. Granted, if the structures are hard enough to kill, that may be minimized, but there are still plenty of folks with supers that just love drinking up carebear tears and would do it just for laughs.
This just seems to be another game mechanic that will benefit the strong at the expense of the weak.
I agree with previous comments that there should be some sort of automated defense since you can't count on the "invulnerable because I have an outpost or ihub" factor.
General questions:
1) Why is there a two-step building process for deploying the customs office? From what I understand, you acquire/manufacture a gantry, anchor it, then upgrade it to a customs office where you supply additional materials. Why not just make the CO an anchorable structure on its own?
2) Will this introduce some mechanism for moving commodities between players (contract, corp hangar, trades, etc)?
3) Is there any consideration for making the amount of cargo you can launch into space without a CO larger? 500m3 is stupid small.
4) Will there be a new mechanism introduced to import cargo to a planet without using the CO?
5) The blog says 'The space port GÇ£hangarGÇ¥ is gone'. Does that mean the space port structure on the planet has no cargo capacity? Or does that just mean that the middle pane of the "move stuff to/from the CO" window is gone?
6) What is meant by "we have increased the bandwidth on all planetary links by a factor of five"?
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