May I have some clarification on this point? Does this mean that the AssetList call will LIE about the contents of silos to mask the presence of a siphon?

What level of "monitoring your pos" are you envisioning players should need to perform? Let's assume that you check it once every eight hours (which is rather reasonable: you check it when you wake up, when you go to bed, and also once during the day).

That's already a fairly irritating level of checking your pos. That means that in those eight hours, 20% of your output will be destroyed irrevocably. And if the player is paying attention (because they can pick when they start the siphoning) they get about 80% of your pos output for eight hours, for 20m isk.

This feature is poorly thought out. It's poorly balanced. It's another one of CCP's hamfisted nerfs of 0.0 that should go hand in hand with buffs of 0.0 that are pushed off until "SOON(TM)". It doesn't reward people who use their space: it merely penalizes them a little bit less. It doesn't actually place the people siphoning at risk physically or economically: the siphons make it hilariously easy to break even.

It's a neat feature. It would work well if it was balanced properly, and if there were buffs for people who DO live in their space. But it's sort of half-assed and fits into the general CCP philosophy of "nerf 0.0 now, buff SOON(TM)" and then get distracted and naturally never get to the buff.

If you want this to be used for it's intended purpose (rather than just aimless griefing by rich players), do this:

1) Price small siphons around 30mil, with 50k EHP
2) Limit them so that a maximum of 2 can be anchored on a single grid, but full ones don't count toward that limit
3) Add an alert mail to the pos owner once the siphon is 50% full
4) DON'T **** WITH THE API

Yes. We do. Those thousands of people are never on grid with a mining pos because they have no reason to be. That's my point. Those thousands of people, using our space, do not actually provide any meaningful advantage over an alt left logged out in the tower.

I'm all in favor of asymmetric gameplay, but AFK cloaking is terrible gameplay for everyone (HURRR I LOGIN A CHARACTER, CLOAK, AND DO NOTHING WHILE AT WORK ALL DAY THIS IS A GREAT GAME) and this feature highly rewards it.

See, this is the caliber of person that supports this: the kind that thinks that scanning for sigs or anoms is the same kind of scanning that would turn up a siphon.

Can we get the API data on that fudged too, please?

They will.

While I like the general idea of giving the small guy a way to annoy the big guys I have a few concerns here:

• Way too cheap. Siphoning units should cost at least 30m. Otherwise deploying and then losing them is completely meaningless. I think they should repay themselves in about 72 hours of siphoning.
• They shouldn't stack. If there are two of them on one tower it should only double their cargo capacity and not the amount siphoned per hour.
• 25 hours until full is not enough, make this 72 hours. Many players hate "having" to log in for something (skill queue, updating orders, checking siphon, patrolling POS) and even though it is a way to keep them log they tend to burn out quickly.
• Too small in cargohold. 20m3 for something that can hold 1200 when deployed? A frigate shouldn't be able to carry more than one.
• Having the API lie is a really bad solution. I don't have a great alternative either but I feel like all information given by API should be trustworthy.
• Have a skill that limits how many a player can deploy. Let's say 5 from the beginning up to a maximum of 10. Otherwise people will just fly around in a covops hauler and cover every single worthwhile moon in a region.

This actually hurts small operations way worse.

1. Find 1 man reaction/moon mining corp.
2. Find out his schedule, go to sleep, when he wakes up.
3. Wait for him to sleep.
4. You now have a timer to drop, and rescoop when it's done.

Reality, this hurts the small guy way more on an individual level. Because it's without risk if you know the guy's schedule. And while he's sitting in pos, waiting for someone to drop a siphon, he's not really playing eve, is he?

...explain which part of the process is meaningful PvP?

POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
Cloaky hauler enters system, drops siphon, cloaks.
POS alt logs in, sees siphon, blaps it with POS guns, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.
POS alt logs in, sees nothing, logs off.

It does. We're basically out of people to kill, and 0.0 is getting fairly stagnant and boring.

While I'm not sure why I would expect the person who thought anom and sig scanning uncovered things like this siphon would grasp gameplay mechanic issues, this will not lead to more small entities in 0.0. Because we'll squash them and then rent their space back to them.

playing whack-a-mole with moles that only show up for seconds on a HUGE playing field is not exactly fun. a well designed feature would have introduced meaningful interaction for both parties. the currently planned implementation avoids every possible interaction between players. that's just plain stupid

The reality is few people will bother with siphons outside of null conflicts, once they realize you are unlikely to profit from them.

Why? Because smart players will just fly around and loot Siphons placed by someone else and save themselves the 10m investment.

The simple reactants have to come from somewhere......

Fairly sure that is wrong, it will steal from the simple reaction as it is "unloading" into the silo.

Yup. And this is exactly why this change will end up benefiting the power bloc alliances.

what a good idea in theory! in practice forget it. Firstly you have got to get to the POS WITHOUT being insta killed, warp scrammed yada yada, then secondly the POS will take out the siphon unit in seconds once the pos gunner alt logs in. Seriously what is the point of such a stupid.

So either you will be dead before you even start to deploy it, or/and the siphon unit will be killed not long after. So again this wont affect any large alliances not even smaller corps/alliances.

Anything worth stealing and because of the changes recently (wont be worth stealing because of the paltry amounts you can take). Again another very high risk for the tiniest reward. Also the main r64 moons will be gunned up to the max.

You going to make nothing at all, all it could be (if you actually managed not to die) is a little flea in someones ear. But again log in ALT pos gunner, problem solved.

can you imagine romping up to a fully gunned out POS in your industrial to pick up the mins = poof bye bye ship.

Seriously ccp do you even think about this stuff or just make up ideas in your head and implement them without a single iota of real thought.

complete waste of time