Tar-Palantir is going to focus on the lack of asset safety for abandoned structures. Don’t have any problem with the concept of abandoned structures and see it as useful to solving the problem of citadel/structure spam. Will skip arguing about how long it should take to enter abandoned. However, the asset safety change has far reaching consequences, many of which seem rather negative for the game.
When Citadels were first introduced, one of the major design goals was to make sure players would actually put assets in them - especially when they had unkillable stations that they could use (since the Null-sec Player Built Outposts and Conquerable Outposts still existed). Asset safety was a key element of making the risk/reward equation for using Citadels one that made it worthwhile to use one. You were at risk of loss, but not complete asset loss. 15% isk fee to get your assets back made it viable to put valuable assets in a player controlled structure that the owner might later deny you access to or may get destroyed by attackers or might be removed by the owner because they no longer had a need for it. This applied across high-sec, low-sec, and null-sec.
Changing this so that essentially Asset Safety is a limited safety valve greatly changes the risk reward equation. Asset safety ceases to be a powerful way to protect your assets in a citadel/structure and becomes a rather limited escape value for the active and vigilant. For the inactive - of which there are many in New Eden (likely far more than there are active players) Asset Safety is now empty/meaningless. For those already inactive but with assets in Citadels (or those who had assets in player controlled stations when they still existed) this means that the game mechanisms that they knew about were removed while they were gone, and potentially all of their stuff was destroyed. They knew the mechanics of the game at the time. They made rational decisions about what to do with their assets in structures around New Eden before they went inactive. They did not read Dev blogs while not playing the game. They come back - and if their structure went thru the abandoned process and was blown up - all their stuff is gone by a mechanic that didn’t exist when they went inactive. Such a player might not be inclined to become and stay active again after that. They certainly might not be inclined to trust any CCP mechanics to protect assets in the future since CCP changed a asset protection mechanism on them once already.
With Faction Citadels that used to be Player Built or Conquerable Outposts, this brings up related poorly thought out consequence. In the old Player Built or Conquerable Outposts your stuff could not be stolen by the “Station” owner and it could not be destroyed. The current owner might block your access to it, but it was still there. You could Jump clone to the structure (since owners couldn’t block JC in those unlike in Citadels), or fly a cloaky ship to the system and then sell stuff on the market/contracts (since again - the owner couldn’t block those unlike with Citadels). When they were converted to Faction Citadels - all the assets were moved to the new Faction Citadels. Now the old mechanisms couldn’t be used, but you could use Asset Safety to recover those assets. So the mechanics changed - but basically you could still recover your stuff or sell it and get at least some isk value from it. The Faction Citadel owner can’t prevent this or get your stuff. With the abandoned structure mechanic, the Faction Citadel owner could now potentially get ALL the stuff that piled up on inactive characters/corps in those “Stations” over the years if the had never unanchored it since its conversion (many have been unanchored - but there are others still in their original spot). It is a dice roll for the Faction Citadel owner - they do have to blow up their own structure - but for the potential loot inside it might be worth it. From the point of view of the player that left stuff in the F20Y-X Player Built Outpost back in 2009 when they went inactive they don’t care that the owner had to blow up a potentially very valuable Faction Citadel to loot their stuff - they still lost all their stuff that had been safe under the mechanics of 2009, and all times since up until the Forsaken Fortress patch.
This idea of the owner of a structure using the new lack of Asset Safety on Abandoned structures as a mechanism to loot the hangars of other players who left stuff in the Citadel is not limited to null-sec. It applies to any citadel anywhere. High-sec market hubs now become a massive potential theft target. You can actually get/loot the stuff of all the people using your market hub if they don’t catch you in the 7 days it takes to become abandoned. So you might just decide to shut down your market hub, offline all the service modules, and hope that enough people using the market hub won’t check/notice in time, then blow up your own hub to loot the hangars of all of the people who had used your market hub. One can say - as people in this thread already have - that people who don’t notice deserve to lose their stuff. One is welcome to believe that. However - that this can happen GREATLY changes the risk/reward calculation of using a high-sec citadel/structure that someone else runs - like a market hub. Before the market hub owner could hurt you - but not profit from it. They could lock you out and make you use Asset Safety and take an isk loss (fairly small one when you transfer to another structure in the same system). They could shut down the market hub and force you to use Asset Safety and take an isk loss (fairly small one when you transfer to another structure in the same system). But the owner couldn’t profit from it. Now, if you don’t proactively Asset Safety you stuff in a shut down market hub in 7 days, the owner may be able to loot all your stuff. They have a profit motive, and you lose everything. With such a risk/reward calculation - it seems the rational choice to stop using player built citadels/structures that you don’t run for much of anything of value. The very active and vigilant can still do so - they still have 7 days to Asset Safety their stuff after the owner locks everyone out and shuts off all of the service modules. If you aren’t the type to check weekly - best to stop using player built structures at all and move back to NPC stations. One can say “so, use them” - but the question for CCP is - is that really the outcome you want? After spending 4 years encouraging people to use player structures, do you want to change the risk/reward calculation so that it actually makes more sense to use the NPC stations rather than player controlled ones.
Even for the active, this mechanic means a great deal more work if you store stuff in Citadels/structures owned by a corporation other than your own. If you are not the owner of a Citadel/structure, the only way to know the power state of a structure is to be there on grid and check. So now you need to fly to/jump clone to every structure that you/your corporation store assets in every 6 days to check and see if it is in low power. This is even if you trust the owner and they don’t try to steal your assets using the Abandoned mechanic - because mistakes/AFK/got busy/got lazy do happen. Yes, this could happen before Abandonment, but previously if the owner let it go to low power and it was blown up, your gear all landed in Asset Safety. You took a hit, but it wasn’t a complete loss. Now it would turn into a complete loss. Or you could just not store your stuff in player controlled structures - which may just be the route one takes.
This also leads to what Tar-Palantir considers completely rational but silly decisions. When you got inactive for a period of time, it is actually rational to Asset Safety all of your assets in a Citadel/structure that might possibly be abandoned while you are gone. There may be some structures you are pretty sure won’t end up abandoned (though with the looting possibilities mentioned above - you might be surprised when a structure owner might do). For anything you aren’t sure about - it is rational to asset safety the stuff right off the base. The logic being better to lose a guaranteed 15% of value when you go inactive than risk losing 100%. People will make different decisions on that point - but that pre-emptive Asset Safety is actually a sane - likely even the best choice for players who unsub/go inactive for a period time is just… really odd.
