Small Size Upwell Structures

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Greetings, fellow immortals!

I’ve been thinking about playing around with structures some and wanted to find something nice and cheap to use. I remember thinking about this years ago and noting that there were Small, Medium, and Large (normal/no size in name) POSes. While the larges could range in the 300M ISK range for faction towers, a basic small POS could be as cheap as 60M. For the price of a Battleship, a person could deploy a basic POS for a small base in WH space or a small personal research/manufacturing station.

This niche seems to be missing 100% from the current Upwell system. I noticed this a while ago, but assumed - since the goal is replacing all the functionality of the current POS system - that CCP would get around to adding Small sized Upwell structures eventually.

…and maybe they still intend to. Maybe the listening/spy/scanning structure or the office structure or the POCO/market/offices structure will include a Small variety. To be honest, I expected the refinery ones would, especially when I first read they were not going to include an XL variety.

So, to my idea! :slight_smile:

My idea is for at least one Small class Upwell Structure. It would use Small sized rigs and standup modules. To have some sense of balance, it should be limited in what can dock. Something like Destroyer and smaller hulls + Industrial (e.g. Iteron) hulls, or alternatively, Cruiser and smaller or Battlecruiser and smaller and allow Mining Barges to dock as well.

The best candidates would be a small scanning structure or office/POCO structure, if not a refinery. The former would make sense in a “Real World” sense (as many scanning/radar sites in the world are fairly small and remote stations with relatively limited capabilities).

Small modules and rigs would, of course, be weaker than their Medium cousins, and would offer minimal bonuses and to single systems (sort of like how the Mediums tend to offer smaller bonuses and to fewer thing while Large/XLs have larger bonuses and that apply to more things).

Small structures could also have a limited cargo bay in the same way that POS Personal Hangars do, preventing them from being used for the “infinite storage” that Medium and larger structures would.

These structures would serve as a step up from a Mobile Depot in that you can store some ships and some cargo (which you can’t really do in a MD), and providing you with some basic services like a Small POS could.

.

Note that I’m not asking there be a Small version of EVERY type of Upwell Structure. Indeed, it could be a single structure type with only a Small, or a Small here or there for some of the other types where it would make sense (of the current structures, a Small Citadel is probably the only one that makes sense, as a Small Refinery might be OP in terms of moon drilling and a Small Engineering Complex would be limited in what it could build…but then again, Small ECs could be useful for producing ammo and the like…)

…but I feel like that niche of Small POS is just…missing. For someone or a Corp that only wants a small investment and a small operation, there really is no option today. The cheapest Upwell structure is the Medium EC, which runs for 650+M, base, and does a lot more than what one would use a Small POS for.

Anyway, it’s just an idea, but it’s one I would like to see. I’m not sure if this would be OP in Sov warfare somehow, but we already have Small POSes in the game, so if they work like them, then it shouldn’t be…

Thanks for reading! :slight_smile:

3 Likes
2

Apparently, it is being thought about, but isn’t happening quite yet…

See CCP Fozzie’s post here.

3

Oh cool. I hadn’t seen that post. I’ve just been thinking of this idea a lot lately. I kind of want to play around with Small POSes for things, but I keep reading that CCP wants to phase them out, and I’m wondering if they’re going to give us a true replacement or…not.

Mobile Depots are just so…lacking. I like the idea of something I can deploy for myself (though I hate that I can’t give Mobile Depot permissions to a fleet-mates or Corp-mates), but you can’t dock/tether/forcefield in them, you can’t really use them as long-term “homes” as you can with Small POSes, etc.

So, cool to hear they ARE thinking about that. Sorry, I don’t go to the forums that much (though I read all the Dev Blogs), and so that one post in a single thread on the forums was too easy to miss. :slight_smile:

Hope to hear more info on them, because that would address my one main outstanding issue with the Upwell structures replacing POSes - that I want a Small size one!

…not to mention it’s always weird to me when things don’t have smalls. Like when fast food places changed their drinks from small/medium/large to medium/large/XL (even if they didn’t change the cup sizes, lol) It’s like “WHERE’S THE SMALL?!” :slight_smile:

2 Likes
4

no thanks, there’s enough cancer-cits in eve already.

5

People didn’t complain about the thousands of POS scattered around the game - most of which are still there. Presumably because they don’t show up in the overview. If you don’t want to see the public Citadels - simply turn them off! If you want them gone - they can be destroyed. Meanwhile, they soak up vast quantities of minerals, PI and salvage which is good for the New Eden economy.

I still miss my small POS. The Raitaru I built to replace it cost roughly 10 times as much, burns roughly 3 times as much fuel, and the only benefit I get in return is ease of use. If small structures are restricted to the point where they don’t overlap the use case for medium structures - I’m not sure they will be very useful. If they get the full functionality of a small POS a lot of small industrialists will be trading in their Raitaru’s!

2 Likes
6

The difference between POS and Cits is immense. For starters: If you didn’t fuel a POS, you could rob it blind rather quickly.

Secondly: A POS only had one reinforcement timer, meaning that removing one that you had decided should no longer exist against it’s owner’s wishes was fairly straightforward. Citadels have two reinforce timers. A armor reinforce and a hull reinforcement.

In addition, Cits at the moment are only vulnerable very rarely. While that’s slated to change, the changes are going to make timezone tank even more cancerous to compensate. Removing upwell structures is a needless hassle, especially considering the fact that they have a damage cap so they take a significant amount of time to actually destroy.

Before CCP implements new and unusual upwell structures, they need to focus on making them not cancer first.

1 Like
7

I also like the idea of having smaller structures, I had visited some citadels and a refinery and they basically resemble NPC stations in it’s size while their price seems to be prohibitive for personal use.

It would be great to have some sort of mini-base of each type, cheap and compact enough so novice players could have a taste and learn what it takes to own and maintain these bigger structures while experienced ones could still use them as a temporary encampment of sorts.
Just like having a tent in the wilderness, it doesn’t offer you much protection(everyone should be able to shoot at it without getting killed by concord, just like with mobile depot) but still provide a lot of utility when used well.

Basically, such structure could be more like NPC cargo platforms you see in tutorial missions, it may have a tiny hangar(item capacity would be rather small too) inside that could fit a pod or frigate but most of ships would “dock” outside of this structure, just like titans moored outside of citadels(like in dev blogs) but in a micro scale.

Also, to keep such structures accessible to small groups and individual players I would try to keep cost and features of basic structure relatively low for inexperienced players, while all extra modules used for fitting could be more expensive to balance low initial cost with features available after customization.

I would be glad to hear about other ideas how to implement this :slight_smile:.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that such structures should not be visible on overview the same way like bigger citadels, rather they would be visible on scans and on grid, just like mobile depots and old POSes.

EDIT2: That’s an example of cargo platform(with Navitas parked next to it) I had mentioned earlier in my post, I used this structure as an example because it’s function and size somehow match with our idea :wink:.

3 Likes
8

Here’s what it comes down to guys CCP has became greedy Jack wagons and they want to charge you for craziness

the cheapest you can buy as like 725 million for a Raitaru as a one-man Corp just building myself up because I want to do the corporation

thing to be a mining Corporation in the future I have no need for something that big

I need something I can put my orca my venture and my stuff in that I can keep fueled up and has decent protection for high security space

My proposal is something that is like this it takes 15 minutes to Anchor it takes 15 minutes to unanchor it has a storage space of 100,000,000 m3 that includes an item hanger and a ship hanger that would be large enough to store an orca

a couple Ventures and some material with a compression array and a reprocessing facility

this needs to be able to fit in the back of a porpoise or an orca you shouldn’t need to have to get it around preferably anyways that’s my two cents in the matter

now what CCP do something like that I doubt it because they’re greedy

9

Small sized upwell structures would be really neat for short trips in wormholes and the like. But what I’m hearing is: “I want to solo in an mmo an own everything I use, it has to be cheap, mobile, but be as effective as what people who group together to do what I do have.” The limitation on cargo as the only balancing factor (it does everything, it deploys really fast, stores what you need, cheap to fuel and is fairly defensible) is ridiculous. “It’s OP but can only be used by one pilot” is not a balancing thing at all, especially when you intend to use it solo. Did you come here after WoW refused to scale raid bosses to the number of players in your party so you could solo them and get the same loot?

It costs 1B to buy an athanor, it’s not that much isk… 17M for a reprocessing array. If you find a backwater 0.5 system to deploy in and a decent but not overly tempting moon to deploy by, you can add a moon mining drill to get fancier minerals than are otherwise possible in HS. That will pay back the Athanor pretty quickly. There is no reason to have anything smaller than medium structures in HS.

10

Okay let me rephrase this I really don’t care about the price even 1 billion wouldn’t be bad for the whole kit I want the portability of being able to throw it on the back of an orca or preferably a porpoise even and just go for the day or a couple days

1 Like
11

We don’t need smaller upwell structures. Raitarus are already cheap enough for even solo players, use them if you need services. And for nomads a new bigger mobile depot with a large ship maintenance bay (preferably big enough for a Orca) and a anchor time below 1h would be more then enough to replace a small POS.

1 Like
12

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.