CCP needs to be convinced.

                The player owned starbase revamp needs to happen. CCP says it doesn’t affect enough players to make it worth the time spent on an entire expansion. Word around the internet is CCP doesn’t think it is marketable enough to warrant an entire expansion on it. The player base has already done a pretty good job of disproving that mindset by pointing out example of Wormholes in the Apocrypha expansion. It was one thing that spread throughout all aspects of New Eden. There are many good ideas out there. I want to reiterate on some of those and add some of my own, as well as tweak them so they sound more plausible in our EVE without making anything totally game breaking or something that would require an entire rewrite of the code of EVE (just the large amount of POS code). If my feeble single brain can hammer this out then I am sure with some effort the great minds at CCP can make this happen. CCP Unifex just has to believe that the time and money should be spent on it. A POS revamp can be fun and exciting for all those involved in PvP and PvE, not just a select few. The logic starts with what everyone else in all the blogs and articles has been touting, POSes are used by few because they are not wanted, or they aren’t fun. The same point was made with T1 frigates and Cruisers. Fix POSes like they fixed T1 cruisers and frigates and viola, you have everyone using them or wanting to use them.

                I used to run POSes. I ran 14 of them back when Dysprosium and Neo were the hottest moons to have, before Tech became the bottleneck. I remember the archaic interface, and the mind numbing fueling and hauling (before jump freighters). I made good ISK doing this but after awhile it made me want to quit EVE. The three other players that funded and ran the POS farm with me all took a break afterwards. It was almost the death knell for our accounts and our characters. I vowed to never run a POS again. They weren’t fun, they were a necessity. CCP knows this and the players know this. I am going to explore some ideas that might make me and the rest of the player base WANT to own one of these things.

                I am going to start with PvP and then move to PvE and cover everything starbases could be or could enhance as part of this grand game we all play. Of course my list isn’t a final suggestion as to what the new POSes could or should do; they are just examples to get creative juices flowing. I am not an expert in game design but I have played this game enough to know what might work and what probably will not.

                The Force Field: Why do we currently have it? Well, we need a safe place to have our ships. We need a safe place to run to if there is trouble. The current POS is a tower encased with a force field and some modules strung about, in or around this bubble. The new talk of Modular POSes looks to be something that foregoes this. We would dock at these new POSes just like stations. With a dockable POS we no longer need a force field and all the silly mechanics that go along with it. So let’s make subcaps, capitals and even supercaps dockable in a POS with the right additions to the POS. Yes I said supercaps. This is a major game changing mechanic but I think it is needed. I mean if a CSAA can build a Titan why can’t it dock there too? Why should we regulate the characters that fly these space coffins to ONLY fly the supers and never able to safely get out of them without risk of losing their ship from a thief? Perhaps there should be a limit to how many supers can dock depending on how many Super Capital Docking ports are installed on the POS (Look I just made up a POS component!) This would make it more realistic and non game breaking.

                Since we do not have a force field anymore, we can now put the guns on the actual structure of the POS itself. Same goes for any modules and hardeners. In fact, since we are proposing to make POSes modular, let’s make them fitable like a ship. You can fit defense nodes on a POS that increase fuel requirement the more you put on. If you want to spend the fuel, you can have one that is nearly impenetrable with enough guns to take down a 30 man dread fleet. Or you can have minimal, or no defenses at all. Each defense node would give a certain amount of PG and CPU to fit guns of all sizes. Each node could have 8 slots of highs, mids and lows. You can fit them with whatever size guns or missiles and hardeners you want, and of course webs and scrams and ECM. Each node would have bonuses depending on the type of node and the race of node. You can have ECM bonused nodes, weapons bonused ones or tackling bonused ones. It would be just like ships. Everyone likes fitting ships and seeing what creative things they can do. I think people would like to set up their POSes just like people like to fit ships.  I also think this is very balanced as fuel costs can get expensive if you want a deathstar or they can be minimal if you just need basic defense.

                Now let’s talk about gang bonuses. Right now, people use POSes they have in a system for an advantage. You can set up a gang linked command ship or Strat Cruiser in the bubble and give bonuses to your fleet in system with no risk at all. I think that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gives people that have a POS in the system an advantage. So now we don’t have a force field on our new POS so what do we do? Let’s make the POS able to fit its own gang links. You can fit a defense node that gives bonuses to gang links. It won’t give mindlinked, max skilled bonuses you can get from a booster T3; but maybe 50% of that for anything off grid. That sounds fair right? Then we can make it give a stronger bonus on grid with the POS. Maybe like 75% of a mindlinked, max skilled booster. This would give actual defense of the POS more advantages for the defender. You have to make it less then what you could get from an actual player in a ship. A piloted ship should always give the most benefit for a fleet then a tower’s bonuses.  

                What kind of roles could we give POSes for small sub cap roaming gangs? Well incapacitating all the guns would make it too easy for the attacker. Let’s make the guns take some real firepower to incapacitate, like what dreads can dish out. Let’s have sub caps be able to take out some of the other services in the POS. Now I know what you are thinking, “We already have this type of mechanic on stations and it doesn’t really work well!” You are right, you need dread or supercarrier dps to take out the current outpost services with any speed and that’s boring as any other structure grind. If the EHP of the services on the new POS were what a gang that has about 4000 dps, could take out in 4 or 5 minutes that would be quick and easy. The balance is that they can’t take out the guns on the defense nodes, so they have to tank them with speed, local tanks or logistics. This would also put stress on them if they had defenders to deal with. Like pirates and anti pirates getting in a fight on a low sec gate, the pirates (or the attackers) have to deal with sentry fire as well the dps from the other ships. If the POS had a bunch of defense nodes that have capital-sized guns on them, then the sub cap gang of attackers can come in and just keep moving to not damaged by the slow tracking guns. If the defender set up a bunch of nodes with smaller guns the sub gang will be in trouble, but a capital gang can tank it with ease.

                Next up is PvE. How about a module or node that you can put on the starbase that tells you what kind of exploration sites are in system? Then you don’t have to waste time doing that part you can just scan them down. There could be a module that increases the scanning strength of the ship you are using. This could be a passive bonus just like gang links. How about creating a module that opens wormholes? It could open a wormhole to a random system once per day in addition to the naturally occurring wormholes. That would give explorers something else to do.

For mining and production/invention, you HAVE to nerf high sec first. Nothing else will work unless this is done. It should be more expensive to do things in the confines of safety. NPC stations should charge a lot of ISK to run production on their slots and to refine in their stations. Null sec should be the cheapest because you have to front the ISK for the equipment to do so. I don’t know why CCP hasn’t done this years ago. Refining in null sec should be the only place you can do it with 100% efficiency with some good skills. Everywhere else should be maybe 90-95% with perfect skills. Invention and research doesn’t really have to be changed much from high sec as availability with slots already encourages POS usage, but maybe increase costs more in high sec too.

                I remember CCP Greyscale talking about POSes warping around and some other crazy stuff. Why not? Have some beacon that has to be anchored at an empty moon and a 24 hour spool up timer. After the spool up timer the POS will jump to it like a capital ship. The beacon pops up on everyone’s overview like a cyno and can be warped to. The beacon has the same hp as a POCO so a medium sized gang could destroy it but a random passer-by cannot. This would make the beacon have to be defended by the owner of the POS if he wants to move it. Make moving POSes difficult, especially into hostile territory. If you are moving the POS into an undefended system that no one cares about, it will not be that hard to move it. Just like it is not hard to erect a tower in a system like that now.

                The artwork groundwork has already been explored by one talented player here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9543&find=unread Many of my ideas and the ideas floating around out there is based off of this theory of revamping the POS.

                So we now have a POS that can be built as large or as small as the owner would like. It can defend a small gang or a capital fleet. It can dock Titans and Supercarriers or just subcaps. It can be tailored to help the avid explorer find riches in the depth of space and a drop off for his loot. He can open a cyno into a remote and undefended corner of New Eden, set up shop for a week, and then move out. If the owner of the space find him and wants to kick him out, they can disable the POS and force him to leave, or if he stays after that, they can destroy it and all his riches inside. The industrialist can set up a large refining and production POS in the heart of his alliances space. He and his friends can mine, refine, and build ships for his alliance better than anywhere else in New Eden. His counterparts in High sec may be safer and not had to front the ISK for the POS, but they won’t make it as cheap. After some time the industrialist will undercut his competition in high sec and low sec to actually pay off the investment of his POS and start making a profit. Inventors can use the best labs with the best chances of making T2 and T3 goods. PvPers can roam around enemy territory and plan raids against vulnerable and poorly defended POSes and make the defender either fight or live with greatly reduced capabilities of their POS. The defender can pay out the nose for fuel to keep a POS running that can deflect all but the largest and most organized fleets. Large alliances and coalitions can move their deathstars into enemy territory by defending their beacons with enough time to move into hostile territory. If they make it in, they now have huge advantages they would normally not enjoy. Instead of spamming towers across territory you can simply up and move them closer to enemy lines. This sounds fun to me. This makes me want to own a POS again, even after the horrible experience I had running 14 of them before. I hope it might make you want to own and operate one of these things too.

                So there you have it, I just linked the new modular POS into something that will affect everyone. I am sure balancing issues would need to be done and some of my ideas are crap or some ideas are better. But if one person can do this based on the idea I got from reading of the other players ideas, why can’t CCP do this? Well they can, they just need to be convinced it is worth it.