Admittedly, i haven't read all those articles yet, but I do have one quick concern. What about placeholder POS's? They are offline but on standby in case someone wants to invade and has to make room for their pos. This may apply mainly to wormhole space, but I figured I would raise this.

Other than that possible issue, I like the idea behind it.

So in highsec, I presume your "standby" mode would require a wardec in order to shoot it?

Yep, in Standby, all normal rules would apply. You'd still need a wardec.

However, the minute it drops out of Standby and into Anchored, it is "white" salvage. No wardec, no flashy, first person to hack and grab it gets it.

Hi Bane - SSC, you will be unsurprised to learn, has full moon coverage in our home system. That means a bunch of placeholder POS. I do not speak for SSC management when I say this, but IMO, we should have to fuel those things at least once a month. and keep them stronted. I think most WH alliances can afford it if they can afford to POS every moon.

But in return for that concession to cost, I want us to be able to steal every POS that's not nailed down in the chain every night.

I think it's a fair trade.

Well, that's reassuring at least. Too many of the "offline POS" related ideas want "push button, receive moon slot" simplicity...

if left to wind down in standby mode on its own it does not require a war dec and anyone can hack and scoop. hacking should at least make u go suspect or something.

I'm going to offer a simple counter-proposal:

1. When a POS runs out of either fuel blocks or charters, it goes into reinforced mode if there are Strontium Clathrates available.
2. Otherwise, the POS and any modules immediately go offline, are unanchored and become available for salvaging. This incurs a suspect (but not criminal) flag and does not require a WarDec.

I appreciate that the OP wants to include a 28-day respite, but there is already so much abuse that abandoned POS have become a blight in EVE (regardless of the type of space) - and seriously hinder new player and corporation development.

The above mechanic ensures an automatic and expedient removal of these floating junkyards and instead turns them into profitable salvage for the keen observer. It also eliminates the ability to abuse the "placeholder" mechanic, one that affords corporations the ability to run boosting links from within a non-fueled POS as well as provide safe haven for ships. This also introduces a new warfare mechanic in the form of being able to implement a blockade to "starve out" a POS by preventing refueling.

In the blog comments and twitter we have been playing with a lot of back and forth when it comes to when the POS can be hacked with these proposals. There is a wide range of reasons that POS go offline. While take it because it is there is appealing is it going to be productive? Or are people going to be frustrated because they got the flu, went to a wedding, or had a week long power outage because of flooding? A POS is a large investment and a large project for many. That is one of the many things we are trying to consider in this crowd sourced proposal.

That is what his stront mechanic was for, if you are gone from eve for a month or more and no one else you know can fuel the POS it serves to real purpose.

So how will this effect people anchoring a POS to avoid another person taking the spot on the moon but leaving it offline?

As for the hacking part, would this be legal to any one or would it require a war dec?

How long would the hacking take? Would you hack just the tower or would you have to hack each individual module to take it?

Would you become suspect while doing this in high sec?

What happens if someone puts fuel in and tries to online while you are trying to hack?

Too many of the "offline POS" related ideas want "push button, receive moon slot" simplicity...

Regarding your proposal, it just seems too tedious overall. If I find a derelict tower on a moon I want, owned by a obviously dead/inactive corp, I'd rather just issue a dec and get me and some friends to shoot it in Oracles for a few hours and be done with it rather than play a 28 day game of status transitions.

I'd also rather see the tower have to be destroyed, in order to maintain the destruction/production cycle of Eve.

As an alternative, maybe a tower that goes offline could lose 1/2 or 2/3 of its HP? It seems that most people don't want to deal with the time sink of shooting a tower (for example, even I would rather find something else to do than solo a large caldari)

I think it would be more interesting to let multiple people try to hack it at once; may not be easy to code however?

I'm going to offer a simple counter-proposal:

1. When a POS runs out of either fuel blocks or charters, it goes into reinforced mode if there are Strontium Clathrates available.
2. Otherwise, the POS and any modules immediately go offline, are unanchored and become available for salvaging. This incurs a suspect (but not criminal) flag and does not require a WarDec.

I appreciate that the OP wants to include a 28-day respite, but there is already so much abuse that abandoned POS have become a blight in EVE (regardless of the type of space) - and seriously hinder new player and corporation development.

The above mechanic ensures an automatic and expedient removal of these floating junkyards and instead turns them into profitable salvage for the keen observer. It also eliminates the ability to abuse the "placeholder" mechanic, one that affords corporations the ability to run boosting links from within a non-fueled POS as well as provide safe haven for ships. This also introduces a new warfare mechanic in the form of being able to implement a blockade to "starve out" a POS by preventing refueling.

There is a wide range of reasons that POS go offline. While take it because it is there is appealing is it going to be productive? Or are people going to be frustrated because they got the flu, went to a wedding, or had a week long power outage because of flooding? A POS is a large investment and a large project for many. That is one of the many things we are trying to consider in this crowd sourced proposal.

and way more interesting than that for ppl to fight over it

edit- plus, when i leave my wrecks unabandoned in a belt or site, if anyone tries to take from them they go suspect whether i care about the wrecks or not.

I love most of this, but one nit to pick:

This is IMO a catastrophic regression from the present day. Right now, if you mess up and forget to fuel your POS, you have to pray that nobody finds it before you get back to it, because an offline POS has exposed incredibly valuable loot pi+¦atas (that is, your CHA/SMA or silos). Come to think of it, this applies to almost any tower but a bare staging stick: you're probably maintaining a POS as space-infrastructure, and that's probably got some valuable stuff on it.

Unless, of course, you're envisioning Standby mode including the POS shield, which IMO would *also* be a bad idea-- after all, then one could "fuel" a POS with Strontium Clathrates as a cheapskate mode, and one's valuable assets would be more protected than they are now against fuel mishaps.

I'd rather see fueling a Standby POS act the same as onlining it-- for whatever the online time is, the shield isn't up, then it springs to life at the end.

Admittedly, i haven't read all those articles yet, but I do have one quick concern. What about placeholder POS's? They are offline but on standby in case someone wants to invade and has to make room for their pos. This may apply mainly to wormhole space, but I figured I would raise this.

Other than that possible issue, I like the idea behind it.

*I've got a corpmate who removed a POS owned by a corp with 1 member. That member did not have a portrait, meaning he has not logged onto that character since Incarna was released.

if left to wind down in standby mode on its own it does not require a war dec and anyone can hack and scoop. hacking should at least make u go suspect or something.

Timers are no fun, especially a 28-day timer when they've already let their POS run down to empty.

I would be fine with the POS kicking over to Reinforced mode, then going into a salvageable state after if it is still at 0 fuel/0 stront - or even dropping its resistances and having lower HP.

But giving people an extra month for an emergency fuel run seems excessive - unless it's a month without the force field up. In that case, sure. :)

I'd be willing to bet that the number of offline and (under the proposed schemes) hackable/scoopable towers in eve would rather satisfy the tower market for a while

There should always be some shooting involved at some stage. If we can just risk-free scoop a player asset (vs an NPC asset) then that would run counter to the destruction/production theme of Eve. Towers just need a good kick down in HP once they go offline. I think that alone would make shooting them to get the moon a more palatable thing to do.

edit: I'd be willing to bet that the number of offline and (under the proposed schemes) hackable/scoopable towers in eve would rather satisfy the tower market for a while, lowering the value for producers of such items - because hey, if the market if full of scooped towers rather than freshly-manufactured ones, where's the incentive?

Offline POS don't have much HP, if the moon is at all worth having you can just 1-cycle it with a few dreads and no one will react in time (unless its somewhere busy).

I have agreed with Sugar and Rhavas on this. It seems I maybe the only one that does. On the blog posts it seems everyone is against this. I do not understand why.

The primary realistic argument to my original premise was that RL sometimes bites and you canGÇÖt get to your POS to refuel it, despite your best intentions.

At the same time, if an offline, highsec tower is operated by someone who hasn't paid his subscription in years, why should other players have to put up the wardec fee to remove it ?

Plus I want players to have an incentive to clear up towers even if they don't want the moon. Which means some reward for it.

Would the hacking having a chance of making the tower explode be an acceptable compromise ?

In highsec you don't get dreads at all and you have to warn the owner with a wardec. Allowing them time to fuel it up and stick defences on it.

Guess where most of the offline POSs I've seen are.

Don't like this at all.

Offline POS don't have much HP, if the moon is at all worth having you can just 1-cycle it with a few dreads and no one will react in time (unless its somewhere busy).

My main concern is selling any solution to CCP that involves touching the POS code. Any solution that remotely touches an existing mechanic is going to stop the idea dead in the water.

-snip-

Nice thread. Thanks Rhavas.

Don't like this at all.

Firstly we are in a game that requires more assets destroyed rather than fewer, even if POS are a minor fraction it would still be a step in the wrong direction.

Offline POS don't have much HP, if the moon is at all worth having you can just 1-cycle it with a few dreads and no one will react in time (unless its somewhere busy).

I just really don't see the point, its hardly as if there are no moons around to use.

Edit: Ooops I just noticed the date and that OP may not live in the same timezone as me April Fools!

One minor exploit I can see with that is that if a hisec tower has been in standby mode for 48 hours or more, rather than having to wardec the owners to reinforce the POS I could just put an alt in an Arty Thrasher (or even, theoretically, a basic noobship) and fire a single volley at the tower. I'd lose the ship to CONCORD and (I think?) take a minor sec status hit on the alt, but that would kick the tower straight into Reinforced, meaning rather than having another 26 days of slowly draining Stront in Standby mode it'd burn through it in about 1d14h of reinforced, then drop down to anchored (and therefore hackable) at the end of it. The same trick would work outside of hisec without the requirement of sacrificing a ship to CONCORD, though I assume in those areas it's more intentional.

Hacking deployable stuff.

No, because you're trying to avoid even the possibility of PVP with this scheme.

Yeah yeah, wormholes and lowsec and whatnot. This is why I suggested a precipitous, rather than a token, drop in HP (shield, armor and hull) once a tower goes offline. People don't shoot towers because of the extreme effort and time required, and active corps don't fuel a unused, offline tower they own for a variety of reasons, "no one will bother to take down this large tower" being one of them. . I see no problem in changing things to speed up and entice killing them. But I do see problems with just making it a risk-free hack+scoop.

And, no, suspect flags don't make it risk-free. Sit 5km from tower, hack it in a covops until someone comes on grid, then just cloak up and warp off. If you do manage to hack it, you get an alt in a cloaky hauler to immediately scoop it. If you think suspect flags introduce some sort of risk, you're fooling yourself. Any competent pilot can easily maneuver around this.

In general, +1 .

However I too believe that ~a month is way too long for this pos to sit in "standby". Also, I do not like the idea that a POS lacking fuel would display a timer to the whole system. That would not only be annoying for those of us that do not care, but would make finding a shut down POS too easy.

No, because you're trying to avoid even the possibility of PVP with this scheme. You can't make a blanket statement saying that every offline tower there is owned by an inactive corp. There are plenty of quite active corps with plenty of offline towers. If you don't like them having an offline tower in a particular place and really, really want it gone, then you just might have to have deal with them defending it.

Yeah yeah, wormholes and lowsec and whatnot. This is why I suggested a precipitous, rather than a token, drop in HP (shield, armor and hull) once a tower goes offline. People don't shoot towers because of the extreme effort and time required, and active corps don't fuel a unused, offline tower they own for a variety of reasons, "no one will bother to take down this large tower" being one of them. . I see no problem in changing things to speed up and entice killing them. But I do see problems with just making it a risk-free hack+scoop.

And, no, suspect flags don't make it risk-free.

I would love to see something as simple as once a pos goes offline you do not need a war dec to shoot, you will simply get GC

Hi Bane - SSC, you will be unsurprised to learn, has full moon coverage in our home system. That means a bunch of placeholder POS. I do not speak for SSC management when I say this, but IMO, we should have to fuel those things at least once a month. and keep them stronted. I think most WH alliances can afford it if they can afford to POS every moon.

But in return for that concession to cost, I want us to be able to steal every POS that's not nailed down in the chain every night.

I think it's a fair trade.

Re: High Sec space
It seems to me that people just want to find a "work around" that will allow them the ability to bypass the established system. In high sec, if corp abc123 drops a tower and corp/alliance xyz789 wants it removed, they must wardec the owners to prevent the involvement of concord and the adjustment of security standings. To do this, three things must happen, 1) a wardec is declared and a fee is paid, 2) a timer begins, 3) timer expires and the aggression against the towers begins with or without defenders. A non-shielded large or small tower will fall in a relatively short time.

Aggressors just want an easy button. Screw you. if you want what is not yours, to take or to kill, you should have to work for it.

A potential Highsec solution.

CCP develops a method of determining if a tower's owners are in-fact long term (say 6 months) absentees and then allow a dust connection, contracting a team to fight for the aggressor and in-game mechanic builds a team for defence.

The activity would be multi-staged progressing from a siege point (access point of the tower) requiring combat and REAL puzzle hacking for stage completion. the hack for the aggressor would take down barriers and for the defenders to raise barriers.

For the love of money...

Hiring a dust team will have cost relevant to the tower size. Winning the contest will flip the ownership of the captured tower to the aggressor.

Defenders will be paid an amount relevant to the tower size plus a bonus relevant to the tower size. Awards will be given to the defenders.

If there are periods when no such towers exist moc stations can be developed with payouts of bonus amounts only. This will be like npc ratting but with live players.

For CCP, this development for Dust will assist in the advancement for the in station activities for EVE Online.

That could work.

Determining long-term absentees wouldn't be too hard. Just keep track of how long it's been since the tower ran out of fuel.
Character activity or account status can't be relied upon because of W-Space where there will be offline towers that went offline because their owners couldn't find their way back to them.

I thought there was an existing mechanism for tower removal? Guns work well :D Seriously though if you can afford a tower you can probably afford to pay a merc corp to go eat the offending station...

... then there should be an easy way to get rid of that structure.

Another person looking for the "easy" button. Isn't pressing F1 easy enough?

I'm not advocating an easy button. I think a month timer is frankly ridiculously long. How many unfueled towers do you have, and why can't you be bothered to fuel them if it's so important?

As the owner of a wh, I have many non-fueled towers in place (hence the term placeholders) for tactical and strategical purposes. Their purpose is to prevent intruders from placing theirs, like placing a barricade to direct or prevent traffic. if you want to siege my wh and drop a tower, you are going to have to remove it. i am not an absent owner so there should be no means for you to "easily" remove it.

One the easy method discussion:
The 1st question that must be answered is whether or not the tower has been abandoned. Not having fuel CANNOT be the only qualification for progressing toward the determination of " if " a tower can be allowed to be removed by some future designed "easier" method.

hmmm, another thought hit me..... towers can have pos gunners. point being, a pilot, sorta, disengages his communication with the ship to control the guns.... how about a puzzle mechanic (a much better "thing" that relic data hacking) that requires a certain number of pilots to interact and complete in order siege the dead tower and take control. skills might even be created. for example, breaching the tower hulls.. getting in the door... racially typed.

With this mechanic and the association of the tower size, the puzzle difficulty will be scaled by general difficulty, the number of minimum pilots required to be involved in the puzzle "instance" (ie incursions) and a potential hazard such as if something fails badly, the pilot(s) is/are killed and sent to their med clones because they succeeded in blowing up the tower instead of capturing it and clone death was result of the explosion of the tower.

I will have to think this one out a little more.

A simple change would be to have the tower degrade naturally...Once it is powered down and unfuelled its shields go offline. Then it takes damage from space debris, gravitational wear and tear etc at a fixed rate that will eat it's armour and then hull in around a month.

This would naturally clear away old towers and make it much easier to remove a tower with guns if it's near the end of its structure and the owner hasn't realised yet.

1) If you don't fuel it it should be a soft target for violence and right now it takes far too much effort to remove compared to time to set up. The anchoring mechanic for towers has, for a long time, been the best example of CCP not thinking things through all the way. They have reduced timers over the years for setting things up and taking them down but have yet to revisit these ancient systems in the game - which leads to problems in sov warfare that are difficult to resolve.

Now if you could hack the tower (as I suggested...yes sure through the mini-game rather than activate module and wait) perhaps it simply now allows you to fuel it. Then you have to online the tower...only to have to offline and unanchor it again. This adds in some time that one is forced to wait around (in null, low and w-space) and adds some element of risk during the hack process at least if one is doing this in a system like yours where you may retaliate.

2) The difficulty should be higher with larger towers and also faction towers (maybe someday t2 towers ccp?). I like your idea about the tower detonating...maybe a timer similar to the ghost sites is appropriate. Clone death is a bit much...but the damage should be significant. Certain unprepared ships should die...but clone death should require some additional player action rather than a big screw you from what amounts to an npc mechanic. You could lose your pod of course if you go sit next to a buddy in your pod who also fails...but cascading damage or insta-clone death is lame.

I've never liked the idea of just getting free POSs when theyre offline.
It's too easy and lame. There are many reasons to put a POS offline.

I agree that it should be easier to kill an offline POS than an online one, to which end ive always thought offline POSs simply should have zero shield HP *shrug*.
much simpler change that solves the same issue without you being able to get free crap in a game where things shouldnt be free.

no need to introduce a largely complicated mechanic on this one.

I still think the most effective way, while seemingly trivial in cost would prove ideal:
High Sec POS holders have to pay the respective empire the POS is located in with Star Base Charters whether the POS is online or offline. If unpaid (including missed payments) for 30 days, the tower and all modules are unanchored automatically - or more fun: the respective navy flies out and blows it away.

Anyone keeping an offline POS can still keep it and suffer potential war decs over it as normal, but the player that walks away from the game does not keep the spot and thus cause a hassle for other players.

Largely I like your idea, however I see a potential stumbling block. If the offline POS has any modules it will be impossible to unanchor it. Any POS manager knows all modules must be offlined and unanchored before the tower can be taken down. Damn that stinking POS code!

Anyhow +1 for an otherwise great idea.

Allow Starbases to be anchored anywhere in high-security space and without standing requirements (minus some protected solar systems, like Jita or new player starting systems of course)

Why is war deccing the corp and blowing the tower up not a good enough moon reclamation mechanic?

In fact if you dont want to do it yourself you can pay mercs to do it for you.

Correct, A junked POS is no different than a rusty vehicle left along side of the road for months on end along a backwoods country road.

Obviously the owner is not going to return so it should be able to be taken and made money off of. A junked POS should be no different.

What about abandoned PI facilities which I am certain there are a few around as well?

[quote=DrysonBennington]Correct, A junked POS is no different than a rusty vehicle left along side of the road for months on end along a backwoods country road.

Obviously the owner is not going to return so it should be able to be taken and made money off of. A junked POS should be no different.

What about abandoned PI facilities which I am certain there are a few around as well?

The issue is that some people want tower removal with no effort and time investment. The mechanic should stay the way it is. you want that moon, work for it.

Offline timer:
You want something? Fight for it. Nothing should be free - and btw your skills are just a time sink, they're in no way representative of any quantifiable effort you actually invested. Saying you should be allowed to hack a tower in to submission is just a cop out excuse and is totally not representative of the energy required to launch a tower in the first place.

Why is war deccing the corp and blowing the tower up not a good enough moon reclamation mechanic?

In fact if you dont want to do it yourself you can pay mercs to do it for you.

The issue is that some people want tower removal maintenance with no effort and time investment. The mechanic should stay the way it is be revisited. you want that moon, work for it.

Fixed for you.