On a different topic, would it be possible for an abbadon to take down an offline small pos provided there will be no defenders? If so, approximately how long will it take?

Small tower AFK in a few hours.

I've managed to take down a medium DG tower in about 26 hours, minus downtime, solo before. Of course being a DG tower it had extra hitpoints. That was also with an alt that had large energy turrets 3, amarr BS 3 or 4, and sentry drones 3.

Skill up a little more it would take a little less time. Soloing a large tower, thats gonna take a while due to the shield regen rate even though the tower is offline, but it is still doable.

Obviously one can pay a fee, war dec the corp and blow up their unprotected small tower pretty quickly, but that's not really the point: it costs them nothing to leave a tower anchored in space, effectively claiming an area which another player could use.

most of those offline towers arent there to block people from taking them. they are there because the owners dont want to grinding/buy the faction standings to set them back up when they return to the game/area. ccp should allow these towers to get unanchored and claimed by someone else after a certain amount of time of being inactive.

Sounds pretty good... how about something like this so we can have a numbers discussion:

30 days of inactive, then they become hackable (l4 or l5 required).
You hack the tower, and it becomes yours. You have one hour to fuel it or it goes boom (or something, I dunno).

flying up to a tower, you won't know if it's hackable or not, so you just have to try with all offlined towers. If it's not hackable, you fail with some specific message that you're not able to gain access to the tower's computers (i.e. something really specific so you KNOW you'll never succeed). Otherwise, you just get normal failure notes (stuff along the lines of "almost had it ... maybe if I tried ...") or a success message.

Two things. First, just wardec and take the moon. It's only 2M and a bit of ammo.

Second. No, offline towers should never be simply removed. Some corps (like my own) have a POS but don't constantly use it due to fuel requirements. We do online it when needed, but it's not always needed every month. And we don't want to take it down due to the standings required to re-anchor it (requiring people to drop and rejoin the corp is just painful if you don't have to).

There really isn't a problem here. If you want a certain moon, take it. Otherwise don't complain about it, the system is fine as-is.

I'm seeing the potential for a new sort of merc corp here. Pay someone the war dec fee, plus a merc fee, and they take down the offline towers around hi sec.

People do this for fun believe it or not

I am sure there are indeed empty moons within a few jumps of Jita, but it's like hunting a needle in a haystack. Most moons are occupied by offline towers. And yes, I can destroy an offline tower, but that is not the point. The towers are occupying moons - i.e. conferring a strategic advantage - without cost to the owner.

• If the corp is dead then its infrastructure should decay;
• If the corp is occupying a spot but not using it then it should pay for it (or the infrastucture should decay);
• If the corp is occupying the spot in order to 'ransom' it... then it should have to pay to do so (or the infrastructure should decay).

No doubt I will have to waste a few hours shooting one of these dead towers in the end, but I don't think the current system fits with the ethos of the game and it ought to be changed.

I have an offline tower in wormhole space that has been there for nearly a year, and would self destruct if I could, the periodic notifications I recieve about it are annoying. I would definitely like CCP to put in some mechanic that causes offline towers to unanchor after some period of time.

Shouldn't all towers in high sec require empire charters to stay anchored? (Note anchored not online.)

If that was a requirement then you could have offline towers with charters in them to hold moons and if you forget/corp dies/people don't play, etc then the towers would unanchor and be "repossesed" by the empire they are in, (or perhaps, go back to the corp at the nearest station to the lost tower.)

This would take care of the issues of people "camping" a tower on a moon just to hold it, and not hurt those that do not want the tower constantly online.


Note this mechanic would only apply to high sec empire space, where you need charters to run a tower.

I actually like this idea. If you need to have charters in your tower in high sec it should not matter if it is online or off line. the charter is you right to anchor in that factions space. without it you tower should auto unanchor in a set amount of time.

I would not bother with any repackaging or removal. just un-anchor and let it drift around the system.

If someone happens by the moon shortly after it unanchore they can scoop up the pos. if not it may show up in system scans and then then be found and scooped. say a month after it un-anchors it self destructs.

It doesn't take long to scan a system for an empty moon.

If it is a small system less than 28 AU across, and you can get to the middle of it, then the entire system will show on dscan. Smaller systems don't require you to warp. Dscan and count the towers. Right-click in space to see how many moons each planet has. Note any difference in counts.

In larger systems you can warp to a planet and dscan (limit your dscan range if necessary to avoid overlapping planets you already scanned). Even really large 100 AU systems only take a few warps and dscans for complete coverage.

Once you find a system with free moons, warp to a planet and use dscan at progressively increasing range to cover one moon at a time (1 AU is approximately 150,000,000 km).

Clever people will do a binary search: scan half, decide if the target in the scanned half or the un-scanned half, adjust range and repeat. Using a binary search, it takes 6 dscans or less to locate 1 moon out of 64.

The risk of losing the investment in the POS is a cost. The risk of a wardec from people wishing to remove the POS is a cost. Just because the cost isn't in ISK doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

1: If the corp is dead, wardec and bash away risk free.
2 and 3: They're paying with risk

When I hear the words "Scanning Moons" I start sobbing uncontrollably. Hisec has it easy. Pick moon, place POS. Everywhere else you have to toss a probe at every single moon (pop goes the CovOps if someone's got their POS settings wrong), then sit and wait for all the results and screenshot them or type them up.

30 days of inactive, then they become hackable (l4 or l5 required).
You hack the tower, and it becomes yours. You have one hour to fuel it or it goes boom (or something, I dunno).

flying up to a tower, you won't know if it's hackable or not, so you just have to try with all offlined towers. If it's not hackable, you fail with some specific message that you're not able to gain access to the tower's computers (i.e. something really specific so you KNOW you'll never succeed). Otherwise, you just get normal failure notes (stuff along the lines of "almost had it ... maybe if I tried ...") or a success message.

Briliant idea, i'll second that. I've come across so many abandoned towers in wh space, and have always thought it to be completely mad that the only thing you can do is blow them up. Stealing them after 30days inactivity seems far more eve-like to me.

Make it 60 days, I think that'd be a farer middle ground. I can see 30 as a bit too short. Also how do you classify inactivity? What of those that have a second tower (offline) in case they're business expands? It's really pita to get the standing to put a new one down (half my alt drag down standing). This for high-sec ofc.

I definitely agree that offline towers shouldn't litter space forever.

if you online it for an hour (or a day, whatever) -- it's not inactive. if it's been sitting offlined for however many days -- it's inactive