ALL content in Eve is geared towards team-based play, and ALL team-based play is based upon the premise that more people = iWin. Good luck to your small corp mining moon materials and upper-end ore in an Athanor in low/null/wh space. You wonât stand a chance against a 30-man fleet of Thrashers let alone an organized T2/T3 gang with / without Cap escalation support.
With the changes to vulnerability for Upwell Structures, the field is WIDE OPEN for bashing and other nasty âjust because I canâ trickery and vandalism. The notion that youâre doing anything meaningful with small-gang mining operations is a pipe dream. NO, youâre not going pull out you 10-15b isk Rorq, because that would be inviting the Gank in the form of HotDrop or just straight up assault. PvPers LIVE for those kind of kills.
So what are you left with Upwell moon mining? Not fâing much. If you don['t have air cover and tactical support from a LARGE organization with control over the system, you might as well just fly gate to gate on autopilot in nulsecâŚin a pod - itâs about the same risk profile, and there is not enough reward to even be worth the play time.
Deploying moon mining Upwell Structures is only designed for the PROTECTED players who pay for protection or are part of a larger organization. Anything else is just you providing Content for larger entities to blow up your investment and laugh at you. If the larger organization wants to displace you - IT IS DONE, and there is very little that you can do about it except War Dec and complain in Local.
That doesnât sound like fun to me.
I have deployed two Arthanor, and although I have moon mined:
a) I canât secure the mining area effectively in a .4
b) there are any number of neutral and hostile targets that can and will easily overwhelm me.
So thereâs no possible means to recoup the investment, from mining alone, let alone the operating costs to keep the thing marginally protected. Turn a profit? HAHAHA. Itâs a Money Pit.
I do build Drugs, and thatâs about the only thing an Athanor is useful for, in terms of mining or production capability.
The only possible resolution is to control the mining area around the Athanor and do a profit sharing model where the owner provides access to a huge mining resource and gets a cut from anything mined from his moon. THAT would be a viable model similar to how true Player Owned Stations work (docking fee + % reprocessing, % of sales). Likelihood of that happening: near zero.
CCP uses Carebears as fodder for PvP, and since the primary focus is team-based PvP, they have absolutely no incentive to change any game mechanics for Upwell Structures. In fact, theyâve recently just made them even harder to keep and defend. Thatâs by Design, folks.
If youâre deploying an Athanor, you must do it with the intention of having already lost the asset, or do it for itâs use for other things than moon mining. If you happen to be sitting on R4/8 moon materials, your chances of holding that moon are Nil. If itâs not the 100 man corp it will be the 500, 1,000 or 5,000 man corp, none of which you can possibly defend against.
