The problems with this implementation basically boil down to two major issues:

1) Interceptors exist

Interceptors are currently bubble immune and cannot be locked before they warp off. They invalidate nearly any defense you'd put up to guard your ESS. A lot of the balance here assumes you can guard it, which isn't really the case. There's no real viable way to kill an interceptor before it gets there, and with the ability of the interceptor to steal, warp out, and warp back in in 40s to get its tags the inty is virtually unkillable. This may be more of an issue that giving bubble immunity to interceptors was simply a mistake, but it makes the intended balance here not work.

Hmm.

How about:
Cash out/share only by the corp/alliance of the person who dropped it. With the addition of being able to hack it, to get a spew of tags?

That should slow down the interceptors a little.

Based on feedback, we're looking at three things:
- Time to get loot - lot of good points that the time needs to be increased
- Interceptors too good - we're looking at ways to decrease the efficiency of using an interceptor to steal
- Too effective as warp bubble - we're looking at making it less viable

Thanks for the feedback so far. Any test feedback from Sisi would also be much appreciated.

Because the ISK coming into the game from Null Sec bounties every day is insane and we want to minimize inflation.

This is subjective. Some will feel the risk is not worth the gain, some will feel the gain is worth the risk.

I don't know, you find me a specific quote like I found and we'll discuss. But even assuming you find one (and I doubt it, I assume you've got no idea what you're talking about) tech was not an economic problem, which is EyjoG's specialty, it was a game balance problem, which is not. SoniClover claimed the bounties were an economic problem, and he's wrong.

Need to be careful in commenting on inflation versus money supply. Implementing a tax would take money out of the system thus reducing money supply, but would likely lead in the short term to inflation (defined as an increase in prices) as producers seek the easiest solution for maintaining margins. Eventually there would likely be a flow-through effect of reduced prices on minerals (and thus settling through into reduced finished good prices) as the value of the currency increases, but this would take time and wouldn't be a guaranteed outcome.

It is advantageous however in that producers have an avenue to recover their increased costs while ratters do not, short of the broken ESS. Producer price increases are also spread over a greater portion of the total system, rather than directly hitting a subset of players (mostly newer ones) for whom ratting is a sole income source.

Conclusion: This whole thing really needs to be re-thought, as it appears that there are conflicting and unclear goals driving the introduction of this device and associated flat nerf to ratting income.

Here's a quick update on the changes we've made to the ESS, based on testing and feedback. There is a dev blog coming out tomorrow detailing these (and other changes) to the deployables in 1.1, but here's a basic overview.

Additions/edit
* With an active ESS in system, bounties pay out LP in addition to normal ISK reward. LP reward starts at 0.15 LP per 1000 ISK and can increase to 0.2 LP per 1000 ISK as the bonus payout increases. As an example, a bounty worth 1 million ISK (total) gives between 150 and 200 LPs, based on payout level. This is to address the risk vs. reward concerns. Thanks to those that suggested using LPs instead of ISK for balance.
* There is now no timer to open the ESS window where the player gets to choose to Share or Take all, but both options now have separate timers on them. Share has 20 seconds, Take all has 180 seconds. Moving out of range while the timer is ongoing resets the timer. This is to reduce the feasibility of having an alt sit at the ESS and quickly empty the pool when someone shows up.
* Interacting with the ESS now puts a warp disruption effect on the ship interacting with it. Ships immune to bubbles are not immune to this effect. This is to reduce the feasibility of using ships immune to bubbles for stealing purposes.

Also, some of the stats have changed:
* Price lowered from 30 million to 25 million
* Hit points increased from 150k to 250k
* Volume increased from 150 to 200
* Increased minimum range from stargates/stations to 3000 km, from 300.
* Activation time increased to 120 seconds, up from 60 seconds

Some of these changes are already out on Sisi, the rest should be there soon. Thank you all for your feedback.