It is pretty simple and straight forward, and I really don't understand the negativity towards the ESS. Some complain its reward isn't good enough. Some complain defending it is too hard. While both valid viewpoints, these are things that are easily tweaked and changed with feedback. Neither of these imply the idea is terrible and salvageable!

So where might this deployable work? With some mechanics tweaks, hisec would be the perfect place for it.

Imagine you could drop one of these in a hisec mission hub or incursion system and for 1 hour it would collect 5% of all bounties/LP earned. After the hour is up the module fully onlines and becomes a warpable beacon for 15 minutes.

When you land in the site you have a faction warfare style button where as long as you are within a set range of it you collect a portion of the isk/LP pool. Everyone warping to the beacon can be shot without Concord intervention until they warp away and if you blow up a player's ship you are awarded 50% of whatever portion of the reward pool that player earned.

Just to keep things fun and more hisec noob oriented (we don't need lowsec v2.0 here) no forms of ewar or remote reps can be activated in the site and no fleet boosts/links are applied. However, once you warp to the site your ship cannot reactivate it's warp drive for 30 seconds so you are committed to the battle.

At the end of the 15 minutes any uncollected bounties/LP are automatically returned to the player who originally earned them and the process can start over if someone else onlines a different ESS. If the bounty pool expires before the 15 minutes are up the beacon goes offline, all target locks are broken, all ships in the site warp 1M km in random directions, and normal hisec aggression mechanics again apply.

Now you have a completely new conflict driver as well as opportunities for financially rewarding hisec PvP that doesn't involve griefing, ganking, wardecs, or being Falconed. Hisec players might actually have a positive PvP experience and look for ways to become further involved.

A deployable like the ESS could add content and value to the game if it is introduced into the right region of space with the right mechanics. Yes, we need farms and fields in nullsec but the ESS as it is currently designed doesn't create either. Nullsec is just not the right place for this deployable.

With the right setup this is defendable against those gangs meeting the 'Farms and Fields' plan. Perhaps the 'Farms and Fields' idea is bad and was made by people with "a complete lack of understanding of how null-sec personal income generation works".

What is this, you have to defend it 100% of the time?

Scenario 1: You are part of a big alliance ratting. Hostiles enter the area and are reported on intel channels. Warp to it and hit share all bounties, and suddenly there isn't very much left in the thing for hostiles to confiscate.

Scenario 2: You are are ratting solo in the system. A hostile enters system, one of you warps to the POS, swaps to an inty, warps to the thing and the hostile has 20 seconds to stop you from hitting share all and reclaiming your bounties. Sure, they may be in an inty that can warp to it too, but they will often fail to hold you as your "button pushing" inty is certainly stabbed.

Scenario 3: A random solo neut routinely attempts to steal the loot. Next time they come into system, you surprise them with a direct counter to their ship. If they turn out to be a hotdropper, you can setup to hotdrop them back....

Scenario 4: You and 3 others are ratting in a system. One of you puts a noobship alt at zero on the beacon. If a hostile comes into system, he can instantly hit share all if anything lands on grid with the beacon.

There are plenty of ways this can work, you just have to think for 10 seconds on, "How can I reclaim those ticks".

The time investment to make a small % of pay off?
It takes you 60s to anchor this at the start of your farming session.

Anytime a hostile enters system, or when you are done ratting for the day, it takes you another 60 seconds to swap to an inty, warp on grid, and hit share all, AND scoop it to your cargo.

That's 120 seconds of your life. I'll double it in case your slow. So, in 4 minutes you make 5-10% more isk per tick. What's a good return on 4 minutes of your time? 75m isk / hour would mean this must net you 5 million isk to be worth your time. Gee, after 100 m isk in bounties, its paying that 75m isk / hr. At 200m isk in bounties, thats 150m isk per hour.

But it isn't worth your time?

And then there's the nonsense that only "large alliances" with "Secure isk generation" can benefit from this? Well, that just described half of nullsec. And the truth is, I already pointed out how a solo player could utilize this themselves. This is a straight up boon to ratting, and it is a great farms and fields device. The main animosity in this thread is from the 5% nerf to nullsec ratting that was brought up (and should be discussed independent of this module).

The main animosity in this thread is from the 5% nerf to nullsec ratting that was brought up (and should be discussed independent of this module).