But it isn’t the way CCP really wants those things to work. Which means we will see balance changes, because obviosly the “solution” against raids shouldn’t be to just “raid” your own Skyhooks
That right there is my biggest gripe with how Skyhooks currently function. It seems nonsensical to me that they would intentionally implement a mechanic that requires >2 weeks to see results better than self-stealing, yet the ENTIRE thing can be ruined by a single 10-minute window in those two weeks where you had to go to the toilet, got disconnected, needed to sleep, etc. The risk/reward ratio there is completely busted.
I’m also unsure about the best way to fix it, but your suggestion that essentially mimics how reserve ESS banks might work. You don’t want Skyhooks to be a 100% safe mechanic for the owners, but currently its so far tilted in the favour of attackers that it borders insanity. When the only real solution for most groups is to self-steal (since its virtually impossible for even large alliances to police every system 24/7), you know you didn’t implement a good mechanic.
I’m not a big fan of the ESS mechanic, but at least with that you “only” lose, at most, 3 hours worth of your time/resources. If Skyhooks had a similar functionality implemented (a basic Skyhook raid can only rob up to 3 hours of production), that’d be better. Maybe make it so that if you want ALL the reagents inside the Skyhook, you have to ref it, or link up for 45-minutes. If attackers are doing a “basic” link, then you get a 2-3 system notification (like it is currently). If they go for the jackpot (ALL the reagents currently inside) you get a much larger notification (similar to reserve banks).
The issue is, that Skyhook production is passive, ESS-ISK-Bounty generation from ratting is active. If you could only steal the last 3 hours of skyhook production, they’d still be a passive ISK printer, even if they are all raided multiple times per day. So the Alliances would spam all systems and all available planets with them, because getting 50% a day still is great large scale for passive income of dozens or hundreds of planets.
I’d go for a way of being able to leech resources slowly, maybe even with a ramp-up increase over time, but don’t limit the time you can stay linked (also prolonging the time you are tackled there). A raider can basically empty the silo if he stays long enough, but if the owner reacts at some point he can at least save what is left instead of finding everything destroyed because he wasn’t there 10 minutes. You could also limit theft to the mature materials and leave the immature part untouched.
They also can add a mechanic that once a silo is raided (aka the link is broken) it “shuts down” for at least 6 hours, in which it cannot be attacked again but also don’t produce materials (to prevent a skyhook basically being harassed during off-hours of the owner, if he can successfully defend it once, it’s at least “safe” for 6 hours).
Alliances would just “attack” their own skyhooks at the end of their TZ and midway through off-TZ (not a huge problem considering you can probably do this on a single player with a few alts) in order to get them into the “safe” state. The end result would be almost identical to my original suggestion: skyhook yield scales with defensible TZ. Except now off-TZ raiders go empty, confronted with swaths of regions of “safed” skyhooks. And you have someone doing drudge work of “safeing” skyhooks every day. (Which, I guess, makes people “work for it”, but… that’s not an enjoyable game mechanic.)