So starbase changes as a whole are specified in this blog here: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/starbase-changes-for-crius/

As per my earlier post, the section entitled "Structure cost scaling" has been cut, but everything else stands.

Most notable benefits that you still have for using a starbase in hisec:
- No NPC tax on the job cost (10% in NPC stations)
- Time multipliers between 0.7x and 0.5x for various research job types
- 0.75x time multiplier and 0.98x material multiplier for build jobs in most structures

The messaging on this has not been sufficiently clear because we (I) have been viewing the multiple-structure bonus as an additional little extra rather than a core balance driver, and weren't expecting people to view it as a make-or-break bonus in comparison to the above list. Sorry for not being clearer about this sooner :)

I thought it was corp management?

If I could ask one thing of the Devs in relation to the various avenues of feedback and announcements, it would be this:

For the love of God, could you please get all of the information into ONE place? I had to learn about the roll back of the stacking changes through TMC. You've got multiple threads up through the dev blogs, mutliple threads up in features and ideas, and, apparently, threads in the Test Server feedback. Can you please pull things together in such a way that players don't have to go to a bunch of different places to figure out what's going on? Maybe consider information streams that aren't categorized based on sub-forum layouts?

This isn't the first time I've learned about stuff through out of eve news sources because the information dissemination methods are so byzantine. It's very frustrating.

Thanks for listening.

Not make-or-break? Let's consider cons and pros of doing industry in a POS vs Station.

Station:
+Absolutely safety
+Ease of use
+High mobility (easy to pack up and move operation 1-10 jumps out for lower prices)
+Immune to wardecs (using alts or couriers for hauling)
-10% NPC tax on fees
-Having to pay office rent (although most POS owners use offices too)

POS:
+No 10% NPC tax on fees
+2% ME reduction (for manu only)
+0.5-0.75 time reduction on all activities.
-Fuel costs ranging from 100-500m.
-Significant increase in maintenance & operational logistics
-Inability to rely on alts/couriers for distribution.
-Major PITA to relocate to a different system with lower fees.
-Operations interrupted by wardecs (can't get to the POS to do industry)
-Significant increase in risk of losing billions worth of POS assets, materials and Blueprints (BPOs can be saved but BPCs in production & the rest are screwed).
-Hard to defend as the attacker chooses if, when and where to strike.
-Invitation for wardecs (Big static object screaming "We do industry here, come shoot at us!")

I see lots of risk but very little reward. And with this latest announcement, it's just disheartening.

The excuse that we can't work around online/offline shenanigans is just silly and another example of CCP punishing everyone because of some predicted bad behavior. I honestly can't imagine too many people adding "sitting at a POS onlining/offlining crap before installing industry jobs" to their activity. If there was a point in offlining labs/arrays, that means they need that PG/CPU for other stuff, like defenses, and that many batteries take hours to online . So yeah, I can maybe see it on months long production jobs like super caps & caps in LS, but otherwise it shouldn't be an issue at all.

And increasing the fitting requirements of labs/arrays is going to be another downside. POS are pretty soft targets as it is. Having to shut-down your entire production in order to ensure minimum safety for your POS every time you get a wardec is insane. You don't know whether they're after your POS or not, and by the time you find out it's too late to offline/online anything. The POS will be already in reinforced or the batteries will be shot down as you're onlining them.

I know CCP loves to troll us, but c'mon, have some decency and respect.

If the value proposition for industrial starbases is broken, then that is a thing that we can address much more directly and effectively through other channels, and it's absolutely something we're open to discussing.

If the value proposition for industrial starbases is broken, then that is a thing that we can address much more directly and effectively through other channels, and it's absolutely something we're open to discussing.

the ROI on POS modules does seem a bit poor...

its probably a bit out of scope now, but a while ago i posted a suggestion that allows corps to grow the number of arrays organically as they can now; it also fixes the online/offline problem...

Give all POS arrays a 10% reduction to job cost then make the job 1% more expensive per job in that array.

the obvious FOO strategy is one array per job of that type you want to run, but this runs into CPU issues and requires more shuffling around of materials, so you have tradeoffs.

the other idea i had was to give each type of array a "job cost reducer" module with a long-ish online time to prevent online/offline shenanigans

the added advantage to this approach is that you can make it cost appropriate so the ROI isnt insane and youre not messing with assembly array's online timers...

thoughts?

Fixing POS code is next on our list after industry, as per the EVE Keynote at Fanfest this year.

Great Decision! Thanks for listening to all the player feedback.

For those of you that are writing angry posts in response to this decision, please consider how tedious your life would have become managing 13 arrays to get the same bonus.

Until Crius, much of the value of having a POS has been associated with the availability of copy slots; the ones in NPC stations are a severe bottleneck in the production pipeline. Additionally, the POS has provided a risk-free way to copy / research BPOs that stayed safely in corporate hangers.

Post-Crius the value of overcoming limited NPC copy slots has been eliminated and we've moved from risk-free time reduction to risk-intensive time reduction from POS labs. The relative value proposition for industrial starbases (fuel prices aren't going down!) as compared to stations has taken a severe beating with precious little to offset it.

Fixing POS code is next on our list after industry, as per the EVE Keynote at Fanfest this year.

If the value proposition for industrial starbases is broken, then that is a thing that we can address much more directly and effectively through other channels, and it's absolutely something we're open to discussing.

Fixing POS code is next on our list after industry, as per the EVE Keynote at Fanfest this year.

I thought it was corp management?

Hi everyone,

Update on multiple-structure bonuses for starbases.

We've just had another discussion about this system as-implemented, and based on your feedback, the technical challenges involved in implementing it in a fully user-friendly way, and the somewhat limited upsides of the feature, we've decided to cut it from Crius.

Having multiple starbase structures of the same type at a starbase will no longer grant you any bonus above those inherent in the structure itself

The only substantial downside to this is that it makes it much easier to weaponize an industry tower, so we are considering upping lab/array fitting costs substantially in a later release. We likely will not do this in Crius itself as people will need time to reconfigure their setups.

We are looking into what we can do to mitigate the expected glut of labs resulting from this change; more info as we work through this process :)

Thanks for all your feedback,
-Greyscale

If the value proposition for industrial starbases is broken, then that is a thing that we can address much more directly and effectively through other channels, and it's absolutely something we're open to discussing.

Let's not forget they are a steaming pile of shite to work with at the moment in general so one could argue mechanics that discourage their use are more than welcome.

Oh, I'm sure you are. Open to discussing it and discussing it and discussing it and discussing it and discussing it ad nauseum, but actually fixing POSes is always in the next expansion.

Tax rate at a POS makes no sense, since you can only install corporation jobs that get paid from the corporation wallet, you would only be taxing yourself.

Personal jobs at a POS may come with a POS rework in the future.

Apologies if I missed somebody else saying the same thing, but I couldn't let this go. Will continue reading the thread and see who else said what.

With all due respect, you couldn't be more wrong. Many corporations have a usage-based model for their members when it comes to POS jobs. Why else did you guys include a per-hour fee payable from one corp wallet to another in the first place under the pre-Crius system? Sure, it's annoying to have to move personal funds into a "pos job" wallet, but it works. To remove the ability for a corporation to pay for fuel by means of its members paying as they use the facilities will force CEOs to manually administer ranks based on who paid some guesstimated fee that month since nobody can predict how much each member will actually use.

Corporations NEED the ability to charge their members for usage of facilities regardless of whether it's an outpost or a POS.

If I could ask one thing of the Devs in relation to the various avenues of feedback and announcements, it would be this:

For the love of God, could you please get all of the information into ONE place? I had to learn about the roll back of the stacking changes through TMC. You've got multiple threads up through the dev blogs, mutliple threads up in features and ideas, and, apparently, threads in the Test Server feedback. Can you please pull things together in such a way that players don't have to go to a bunch of different places to figure out what's going on? Maybe consider information streams that aren't categorized based on sub-forum layouts?

This isn't the first time I've learned about stuff through out of eve news sources because the information dissemination methods are so byzantine. It's very frustrating.

Thanks for listening.

Hi everyone,

Update on multiple-structure bonuses for starbases.

We've just had another discussion about this system as-implemented, and based on your feedback, the technical challenges involved in implementing it in a fully user-friendly way, and the somewhat limited upsides of the feature, we've decided to cut it from Crius.

Having multiple starbase structures of the same type at a starbase will no longer grant you any bonus above those inherent in the structure itself

The only substantial downside to this is that it makes it much easier to weaponize an industry tower, so we are considering upping lab/array fitting costs substantially in a later release. We likely will not do this in Crius itself as people will need time to reconfigure their setups.

We are looking into what we can do to mitigate the expected glut of labs resulting from this change; more info as we work through this process :)

Thanks for all your feedback,
-Greyscale

I honestly can't imagine too many people adding "sitting at a POS onlining/offlining crap before installing industry jobs" to their activity.

Encouraging to split up production into several arrays is a terrible idea. If you ever dealt with such production you would know.

As stated before, I really doubt anyone would waste time with online/offline crap except capital producers in lowsec.

Unfortunately I cannot think of any good solutions to that problem atm but scrapping the entire thing because of that is.... unnerving.

Really I would think that corp management needs to be fixed 1st as one of the major issues with POSes is corporate roles. You have to be a complete idiot to do industry in a POS that isn't a corporation of one beyond compression and refining. It's near impossible to give a member of a corp the ability to anything meaningful with a POS without opening the rest of the corp to major risk.

Not make-or-break? Let's consider cons and pros of doing industry in a POS vs Station.

Station:
+Absolutely safety
+Ease of use
+High mobility (easy to pack up and move operation 1-10 jumps out for lower prices)
+Immune to wardecs (using alts or couriers for hauling)
-10% NPC tax on fees
-Having to pay office rent (although most POS owners use offices too)

POS:
+No 10% NPC tax on fees
+2% ME reduction (for manu only)
+0.5-0.75 time reduction on all activities.
-Fuel costs ranging from 100-500m.
-Significant increase in maintenance & operational logistics
-Inability to rely on alts/couriers for distribution.
-Major PITA to relocate to a different system with lower fees.
-Operations interrupted by wardecs (can't get to the POS to do industry)
-Significant increase in risk of losing billions worth of POS assets, materials and Blueprints (BPOs can be saved but BPCs in production & the rest are screwed).
-Hard to defend as the attacker chooses if, when and where to strike.
-Invitation for wardecs (Big static object screaming "We do industry here, come shoot at us!")

I see lots of risk but very little reward. And with this latest announcement, it's just disheartening.

The excuse that we can't work around online/offline shenanigans is just silly and another example of CCP punishing everyone because of some predicted bad behavior. I honestly can't imagine too many people adding "sitting at a POS onlining/offlining crap before installing industry jobs" to their activity. If there was a point in offlining labs/arrays, that means they need that PG/CPU for other stuff, like defenses, and that many batteries take hours to online . So yeah, I can maybe see it on months long production jobs like super caps & caps in LS, but otherwise it shouldn't be an issue at all.

And increasing the fitting requirements of labs/arrays is going to be another downside. POS are pretty soft targets as it is. Having to shut-down your entire production in order to ensure minimum safety for your POS every time you get a wardec is insane. You don't know whether they're after your POS or not, and by the time you find out it's too late to offline/online anything. The POS will be already in reinforced or the batteries will be shot down as you're onlining them.

I know CCP loves to troll us, but c'mon, have some decency and respect.

I feel like you dont really do a lot of industry...

A 25% reduction in manufacture time is a 33% increase in production. This means the same number of characters can produce 33% more stuff... assuming your profit margins are anywhere in the neighborhood of worth your time, you should make WAY more isk with a POS than without one.