New Eden and especially wormhole space is littered with thousands and thousands of control towers that nobody uses.
This could easily be cleaned up by players if you just let the Control Towers enter into an “abandon state” just like all other structures can.
But what also needs to be done is to make it worthwhile to clean up the structures. So this could be made into a recycling event where 10-40% of the structure materials drop when killing it.
control towers i think are one of the structures that are supposed to be on their way OUT of the game.
Control Towers are part of the Player Owned Starbases (POS) structure group. Only Upwell Structures are subject to the abandoned power state and core requirements. There are a LOT of differences between Upwells and POSes (POSes are intended to be retired in full eventually but have super messy code that is badly linked into a bunch of other components that is taking forever for CCP to gradually untangle).
Yeah, I’ve also heard that they are on their way out for many years now. But just a few small changes like removing the timer and making them drop something of value would eliminate them from space.
I don’t know much about programming but it feels like it’s quite a waste to load 10k+ extra control towers each day that just sit there and doesn’t do anything. 
and that’s not even counting all the shield batteries, cannons and other “pos” related smaller structures that are around .There must literally be millions and millions of those.
Aren’t POS abandonned when they run out of fuel, which turns off their shield and rf so that you can destroy them in one sitting?
They are not in the ‘abandoned’ state introduced in Forsaken Fortress that invalidates asset safety and drops loot - though in WH space that is a meaningless distinction since WHs don’t have asset safety anyway.
And POS don’t have any loot. Their mods already drop copious amounts of loot if you find a piñata ship array.
Right. The OP’s point, as far as I can tell, was that control towers need a reason to be bashed and was comparing them to upwells - my counter was POSes are not something CCP should be iterating on since they are deprecated content that is due to be replaced, so barring a game-breaking bug they are not worth spending effort on aside from that which is necessary to support their eventual removal from the game in favor of the upwell series.
not that, that matters…
Since what OP is asking for is already present…control tower with no fuel = abandoned state. Upwell is just now finally upgraded to do the same as towers.
I’m still kind of sad about the switch from POSs to upwells. I periodically set up a POS for some reason or another and always find it more pleasing to work with. Maybe it’s partly nostalgia, but I like how configurable they are, I like that you’re still out in space. And upwells just kind of seem too easy… They’re basically stations, and a station seems more like it should be a crowning achievement of a whole alliance than something a solo player should be able to create for a couple billion to me.
No, unfortunately there is at least a 24 hour timer to destroy a control tower that’s unfueled. That’s why they build up over time, especially in WH space since nobody has a WH open more than 24h.
This also goes for mobile depos because they also have a 24 h timer so if you drop 100 mobile depos in a WH nobody use you can be sure they will be there for years and years until someone moves in
No, it’s not present. A control tower, an artillery/missile/beam cannon battery or most other old anchored structure always has a 24 h timer to kill it. which means that for WH space it is almost impossible to take down unless you live in that hole since most holes aren’t open for more than 24h.
For K-space it’s much more doable but where is the reward for cleaning up control towers?
it takes you hours to shoot and you have to do it 2 times in 24h to get nothing. So most people won’t do it.
While the link to specific other system isn’t open, the wormhole system itself certainly is still around - if someone wanted to bash the structures they can camp out for the two days it will take to clear everything out, without having to live there forever. Not that I see any reason why they should do this - if they don’t live in the WH why would they care what structures someone else set up there?
I agree that they shouldn’t iterate on POS’s much more. So the changes I am proposing is rather a way of getting them more or less out of the game.
You could make it into a recycling event. Just put random gifts inside all abandoned control towers much like the Christmas event hacking sites (or let them drop a % of their reprocessing value) Then pull down their unfueled health substantially so that it takes 15 minutes to destroy with max structure damage applied.
But why? When the POS platform is sunset they will all get deleted anyway. What harm are they causing in the meantime to the average player? If the only people they inconvenience are those trying to claim the space: that’s a price of claiming space, you have to work at cleaning it up and making it yours.
My argument is that this would be a much more fun and rewarding way of getting them out of the game for players. Call it the recycling event or something
and they are annoying, to say the least. If I get into a WH with only control towers, there can be 10-15 towers that I have to scan down and check if they are online in order to know if I am safe.
They also clog up the dscan UI. Especially for new players that mostly just Dscan with default settings.
That is working as intended. You are never meant to feel safe in wormhole space unless you own the system and manage the wormholes aggressively. You are not entitled to instant knowledge of the presence or interests of other parties - and there are probably groups who leverage CTs and scanning behaviors like this deliberately in order to facilitate their hunting.
If this were the intention of CCP they would have built in thousands of NPC raitarus, athanors and astrahuses all around WH space that can’t be taken down but are only there to “fool” people into feeling less safe.
That’s not happening and I would with confidence say that that will never happen.
The control towers being littered around WH space is not “as intended”. It’s an unintended consequence of not updating the POS code so that those structures could be taken down just as easily as normal structures.
Since when? I was under the impression they only went into reinforce when they were fueled, and there’s no enforced 24 hours timer, it’s based entirely on the stront you put in.
Um no you don’t. Make sure you have forcefields enabled for your overview. If you dscan and see 15 towers but not 15 forcefields then you know there are 15 offline control towers.