1) It should be the same or similar time investment.

2) The little guy will shut down his hi-sec POS and do it all on hi-sec cities on planets. Or he can keep his POS. I don't care either way. The costs of setting up individual networks with slots will be the same as a POS. Only drawback would be that the POS uses fuel where individual networks dont, but the networks will cost isk to operate each month where the POS doesn't. If on the other hand, that network joins a city, it'l be very much like a POS in terms of cost. So it'l depend on the player and what he prefers.

3) POS fuel prices should remain largely as they are now, if not suffer a reduction in prices. Cities will consume POS fuels, as well as make more of them via bonuses to industrial networks spitting them out, so there should be a bit of an equilibrium thing going.

4) There will be an increase in t2 production and moongoo, in the medium to long terms. SO expect a decrease in prices associated with those items. This will also open up invention and moongo items to the little guy and take the monopoly away from 0.0 alliances and coalitions who hoard up all the techmoons they can find.

5) More slots, no more cues for slots = more research.

Hmm... and, considering Dust will not take effect in wormhole space, how would things work there? Cities and all that don't really make sense in frontier space.

Cities will be setup as it is in empire, low sec or 0.0.

But cities can only be wiped out by sub caps and capital ships in teh whs, since Dust wont work in whs and incursions dont happen there, leaving it up to the Eve players to do all the work.

Industrial networks can provide ice for wh towers from ice planets, thus eliminating the need for wh players to bring stuff into the wh. They would still have to go sell their lewt in empire, or they can use the cities to turn their wh into a new drone region, where they recycle and use everything. They could even start constructing super caps in whs.

Cities would allow wh alliances to entrench themselves even more in a wh, making for more good fights in order to serve eviction notices.

So it makes perfect sense.

I find myself intrigued. :-)

One last thought (for now...)

The transition to getting something like this set up from current would be expected to take how long and at what expense? People that rely on PI for their own pos fuel... would there be a significant period of fime of clenched bowels trying to get things running again before the pos goes belly up?

If the answer is to stock up prior, you're creating an artificial spike in prices as people take advantage of the transition.

(Note: not being critical at all, just trying to think of side-effects that may not be thought of initially.)

The homeless thing... I don't like that. Too much extra to worry about when all I want is to make fuels.

Now... if they can be converted into biomass or something... A billion isk for a city? People are running 20+ planets... that's insane. As nicely thought out as the idea is, it's really too much of a pain in the ass imo. PI is already a bit of a chore, but not so much that it's not worth doing. I'd fear something this elaborate blowing up to the point where you log in and spend hours dealing with all this stuff only to find you never had time to undock before bed. This is almost worthy of a game itself, not a side activity.

So go make POS fuels with your 20 separate industrial networks only.

Nobody is going to stop you or change the way you do it, make it more difficult or more time consuming. Unless some bigger alliance doesn't care for you doing this in their backyard out in 0.0.

Enjoy clearing them one at a time for the rest of days as well.

I'd rather do them all et mass by combining everything into 1 - 6 cities. But that's just lazy old me.

stuff.

As I say to everyone who brings up similar ideas, CCP has game designers already. They are usually good at their job, and are almost always far better than players are at this sort of thing. The chances of them seeing a proposal like this and fully adopting it are basically 0.

I've heard that so many times, and while I agree that ultimately game design should be entirely left up to CCP, I don't think it would hurt the game at all if some of CCP's game designers put their ego's down for a minute and took into consideration some of the kickass game design ideas that some players spend lots of time and energy devising. Seriously, what would it hurt? Eve's player base is full of smart people and if I were CCP I would make it mandatory for game designers to at least rummage through these ideas and see what good stuff can come from them.

Edit: I recall this original idea from another thread and I supported it then, so I can't imagine why I wouldn't now. Thanks for putting it all together into a PDF, I'll digest it over the next few days if I can. I'll give a pre-emptive +1 based on what I recall from the original thread. Great work!

Bare in mind, the new t3 bcs with large guns... I'm pretty sure that's a player created idea that's as old as eve itself.

Even the ships we ended up getting were player designed.

So this CCP adopting and implementing player ideas thing does happen....

Looking good! One nitpick... "Trail" accounts, in reference to SPI Banking. Not only a typo, but also a bad idea; I would suggest that it makes abundant sense to simply make loaned money one of many features that Trial Accounts are simply not eligible to engage in.

After giving it some much needed thought, I believe your right.

It will close down the funding mechanisms for new players, but it will definitely close down the all the loopholes for magic isk for SPI banking corps/alliances.