EVE Search - Sticky:[December] Ending the deployment of new outposts and upgrades

Andreus Ixiris wrote:

CCP Lebowski wrote:

Thanks for that response, appreciate you taking the time to highlight that again. I'll bring this up with the team and see if we can get some traction on it, at the very least in the form of an official statement on this subject.

Seriously, for Structures 2.0 to be at feature parity with the old system, I would very much appreciate it if we could get CCP clarification for how the following issues will be addressed:

Price point. For the new structures to reach feature parity with starbases, you need to have a structure that does everything that could be done in a small POS in a package that costs roughly the same as a small POS, and the same is true of medium and large POSes as well. Now obviously there's things you can do with the new structures that could never be done with a POS: docking, cloning, tethering, markets, contracts, infinite hangar space. However, you can't scale up the price by too much or you put them beyond the reach of at least some individuals and corps who currently run starbases.

Fuel consumption. Heavily related to price point, obviously, but the same principle applies - the fuel cost for what can be done in a POS should be the basis for the fuel cost of what you do in the new structures. By current calculations, depending on fitting, it can cost nearly as much per month to run a small engineering complex than it does to run a large POS. Again, there's not an exact equivalency because it has infinite manufacturing slots and functionality a POS doesn't, but again, if you can't find a solution to this, it's going to shut a lot of people out of private manufacturing.

Scalability. Both of the above problems relate in some way to the loss of granularity in the way structures are configured. Starbases could have one manufacturing array or many, meaning you could customise your POS' manufacturing capacity based on what you needed. New structures, by comparison, have either zero or infinite slots, with the only granularity being the rigs and the cap/supercap manufacturing modules.

Reconfigurability. Structure rigs, like normal rigs, inexplicably crumble to dust when you pull them out (it might be time to re-examine that entire mechanic, but I won't go into it here). This is a massive issue since a starbase can be reconfigured at no permanent cost - switch out the modules and you've got a totally different starbase. Obviously, new structures can be reconfigured instantaneously which is a distinct advantage over old starbase structures which had a lengthy anchoring and onlining process. However, there is a very significant permanent cost to reconfiguring new structures.

Defensibility. This comes down to the fact that citadel defenses are very much weaker than starbases in general, but also more specifically that weapons do not scale. You get (a few) more slots for each size upgrade, but you're always using the same launchers. While I'm not advocating for a system whereby you can create an invincible doom fortress, deathstar POSes allowed smaller groups an equalising element in fights against larger groups. The low defensibility of engineering complexes is particularly worrisome. It also makes sense that economically vital structures have so little defense while citadels - which have little value other than as staging and power projection - have vast defense grids.

I look forward to CCP's address of these concerns.