Struture change suggestions in light of the CSM notes

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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In light of the CSM notes from today, I would like to argue in favor of certain suggestions that have been brought up before on this forum and the old.

The Cost of Anchored Upwell Structures: Currently anchored Upwell Structure has no operational cost associated with them when they lack or have offlined service modules. Unlike POSes the Upwell structures still offer full ship and asset security and defensive capabilities. There have been various tax proposals as well as questions of fueling. There is a distinct advantage and disadvantage to both which I will go over first:

The advantage of a tax: Can be paid from any location and requires no logistical operation. The CEO or responsible agent in the corporation can pay this from the other side of the galaxy without breaking a sweat.
The disadvantage of a tax: Requires no logistical support. Opponents cannot starve you out or blockade you.

The problem with the tax approach is not that it makes it hard on little corps to maintain their structures (a weak argument in any event), the problem is that it makes it too easy to maintain the structures. Anyone, regardless of the size of their corp, could maintain any number of POSes and were required to fuel them if they wanted them to operate. The limitation was how much you wanted to spend to maintain the POS and whether you could logistically support it. A tax on Upwell structures is a purely electronic transaction and fails to address how the structure stays online or allow logistical considerations to it remaining online. However, there are certain aspects of the Upwell structure that should be taxed logically: Asset safety

The advantage of a fuel requirement: Can be paid in fuel blocks. These can be obtained via corporate production (time generating the materials is isk not made from the market sale of those materials) or directly purchasing. It requires delivery of the Fuel to the structure creating a need for logistic roles in the corporation. The other advantage is from an enemies standpoint: you can deny access to the structure and thus starve it.
The disadvantage of a fuel requirement: Requires moving materials to the structure to maintain it as active. This can be an issue for people in Wormholes, but people currently living in wormholes have already been used to this with POSes.

The benefit of requiring Upwell structures to have a certain amount of fuel to operate is sensible: POSes had this requirement to provide any form of protection to both players and the structure itself. Tethering and invulnerability should certainly have strong ties to whether or not the structure has fuel to support it. Additionally the use of fuel ensures that there are no absentee owners: someone has to physically bring fuel in.

My proposal is a hybrid approach: which requires both a tax and fuel.
The first part is to maintain asset safety by requiring a flat tax which scales based on the size of the structure and service modules installed. If the tax is not paid, then asset safety is turned off. To prevent abuse from the “I got war decced” or “someone is attacking the structure” and then paying the tax there is a two week bureaucratic delay between the time the tax is first paid and the asset safety kicks in. The the tax is not paid and the structure is destroyed, then normal loot mechanics take place and the contents drop, just like in a Wormhole; even in High Sec.

The second part of the hybrid approach is to require a base amount of fuel to maintain the Vulnerability and Tethering which scales based on the size of the structure. It should have it’s own fuel bay separate from the service modules fuel bay and be limited to allow up 30 days worth of fuel. If the fuel is not present the structure will no longer allow tethering and the structure losses its invulnerability. In the case of the structure becoming vulnerable it can be attacked at any time, there are no shields, and the delay between armor reinforce and structure reinforce is reduced to 24 hours. In other words: you can kill an unfueled Upwell structure in 48 hours… a little longer than an unfueled POS, but less than a week for currently abandoned structures. And to prevent the “I got war decced” or “someone is attacking the structure” there is 72 hour delay between adding fuel and the structure’s tethering and invulnerability coming back online.

This hybrid approach should be easily maintainable by small corporations (as a small corp owner with a couple of structures, I am confident of this statement) let alone major corps. There should be an automatic alert that notifies the CEO, directors, and those with appropriate structure roles that the tax must be paid or that the fuel is running short. Like office rental, this tax should have an automatic pay option.

I applaud Noobman for promoting a small deployable structure with limited function that can be used as a beachhead. Something that can be deployed within under 2 hours, allows tethering and limited storage without asset safety and no timers would be a boon to any area of space you need to perform staging that POSes used to provide. That CCP was positive towards this suggestion is encouraging. I just want to further encourage CCP to follow the suggestion up.

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I mentioned in a separate thread tha if fuel is required for the upwells to run then service fuel needs should be reduced to balance this on an active structure.

If unfueled then maybe the structure should lose its self-repair and dps limit in the vulnerability window. Then if its out of fuel unintentionally (or otherwise…) then the residents would really have to fight to defend it.

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Good structure management can only be subsided so much. While on the surface it looks harsh, it is not as harsh as when a POS runs out of fuel.

Yes, thank you, I meant to mention this but had forgotten to: the service module fuel cost should get a discount based on the fuel use of the structure on it’s own.

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Asset safety simply can’t be tied to any costs, tax or fuel.
Otherwise troll citadels become common and the whole idea of public citadels being used dies.
Even assuming that it doesn’t cause everyone to go back into stations.

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Which is a valid concern. One alternate option is for Upwell to simply charge on an individual level those who have assets in a structure a fee based on volume. Much like insurance. The other option would be for asset safety to kick in once the insurance runs out: anyone with assets in the structure gets a notification that they have X amount of days to take advantage of Asset safety, move their items, or leave them to chance. Either way, Asset safety should not be free. Whether it is paid up front or to release items from impound, there should be a cost for the safety mechanism. WH space would naturally be exempt from this tax either way since they have no asset safety.

However, trolling people can already be done in structures which have Clone Bays. There is no safety mechanism preventing the structure owner from venting your Jump Clone into space.

A docking notification can be sent to remind people that their assets could be at risk if the owner fails to pay the fees.

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You mean like the 15% recovery cost…
Asset safety isn’t free.
Now if you wanted to introduce a smaller fee for asset safety to the same system of like 3%, so there is always some fee paid I could be on board with that.

And yes, trolling clones can already be done, so people are warned not to leave clones in citadels as a result. Add trolling assets into that and you probably kill Citadels as a major feature.

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Indeed, the cost should scale based on distance to the nearest NPC station (for null sec especially) or friendly citadel.

The simplest would be to have the tax on the corporate level, but the option of granulating the fee to the individual level, to a form of insurance that covers asset safety, would be more ideal to prevent abuse. Either way, there should be a cost to simply having the asset safety available.

Ultimately, whether the Tax is paid by the individual or the owner, the Fuel requirement is a necessity as far as I am concerned. That certainly should be paid for by the station owner and the lack of fuel should certainly turn off the function of the structure’s tethering and invulnerability.

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And if you implement that, you kill Citadels and people go back to using NPC Stations, with a bare minimum of stuff in Sov citadels that is 100% needed to be there. It’s simply not practical.

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Which part, the fuel requirement or just the tax?

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Anything tied to asset safety.
As well as anything tied to reinforcement existing.

Yes, I recognise there are issues around the current iteration of vulnerability windows, especially the length it takes to remove a structure that only has one window a week, but tying it to fuel takes us right back to the POS situation that CCP deliberately didn’t want Citadels etc to have, since Citadels are not meant to be a direct clone of POS, but a hybrid between POS & Outposts.

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I’m really curious if you can point to the part of the CSM meeting minutes that relates to this or makes it in any way seem like CCP are seriously considering it, because if you look at the relative costs of a POS stick vs a Citadel the POS has to be deployed for between 6 months and a year to just get to the base cost of an Astrahus and you don’t gain all that much compared to a POS except storage space and repairs.

You also seem to have missed one of the main problems with a base fuel requirement here. Pressure on the already fairly stretched fuel market. Between Citadels, increased capital use, wars, and other factors the Eve fuel market is already fairly stretched to the point that you can see small price rising and falling with current cyclical demand as people buy fuel at regular intervals.

The main reason people seem to want fuel requirements on these things is so they can run out of fuel and be easier to kill. That stops being an issue if they grind the hard edges off the current timers and attack mechanics.

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It was discussed on pages 21-22 of the CSM notes. Page 22, paragraph 2 in particular:

Jin’taan then moved onto the difficulty in removing abandoned citadels. They are almost
just as difficult to remove as a defended one, and there is no logistical upkeep required to
keep them online. TheJudge added that for his alliance, it was easier to gatecamp to deny
access to the structures than to remove the structures themselves. CCP Fozzie stated that
there had been much discussion inside CCP on some solutions around service modules
taking over core functions. Aryth posed that adding that requirement would make it much
more difficult for smaller groups to be able to maintain their holdings due to the logistical
requirements. TheJudge proposed instead of fuel requiring people to pay ISK.
There was discussion about how this would unfairly benefit rich organizations, as they would be
easily able to seed space with citadels and upkeep them remotely, but there was a general
conclusion among the CSM that this would be better than the current situation.

Plus paragraph 4 of page 22 as well. From here.

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I made this a separate and distinct quote as I wanted to verify my information before commenting on it: usually markets demanding more of an item will see an increase in the cost of that item. Looking at the market for isotopes and fuel blocks for the past year, it simply does not support your statement. If there is a shortage of Isotopes, then ice miners will be having a hay day. Also, while there will be an increase in Structures wanting to be fueled, there will also be a decrease in structures wanting to be fueled: Moon mining POSes will be gone.

Outside of that, the argument: it will require more isotopes and fuel so it is a bad idea is not really a good reason to be against it. It would be like saying CCP should not encourage more PvP because the mineral market is stretched. Miners will mine more and get rich in the process. Thats a win for any industrial corp.

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My idea is that if a citadel is without fuel for 1 week the shield will dissipate.
For the shield to the come back there has to be a service module running for 1 week.

This way abandoned citadels is much easier to kill same as pocos.
In addition, if a citadel doesn’t have a service module running for at least 1 week the invulnerability timer will be permanent. Though when armour is gone security measures are put into place as normal.

Loads of people are using raitaru’s as staging outpost. while there is nothing running in them they are basically using them as large mobile depots.

A raitaru cost roughly 500m to build it, and should not suddenly die due to decay. when pos’s don’t die to decay and they cost 20-100m (not including faction)

So to sum it up this is my proposed change to citadels/engineering complexes/refineries.

The vulnerability timer as long structure is fueled and has service module running is not changed.
Vulnerability timer if the structure is not fueled for 1 week, is permanent, and shield is gone, if armour is removed enter 24 hours reinforce mode.
If shield has been gone then 1 week of fueled service module will bring shield back on and vulnerability timer to the original state.

Asset safety, when structure goes into armour and into the structure, every single player who has assets in that station gets an eve-mail that states so and so situation.
That player now has to fly to that station manually and start asset safety on site.
There is no fee connected to asset safety as long they manually start it.
If a player does not start asset safety each of his items has a 50% chance of dropping when the structure is killed.
The other 50% gets moved to asset safety (lore reason is that interbus did not have enough time to gather all items). You then have to pay 10% of those items value to claim them in the nearest NPC station. Wormhole not changed.
Items on a market have 100% chance of dropping to combat abusing a mechanic.
Items in delivery have 100% chance of dropping for same above reason.
Items in corp hanger follow the same rule as regular hanger which is stated above.
Items in research, manufacturing, invention, reaction & copying also have 100% chance of dropping.

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I still prefer the more simple solution of needing the structure fueled to support the self-repair and dps limit during Vulnerability. No fuel means no self repair timer and no dps limit, making it much easier to put a structure into each reinforce stage.

Asset safety, vulnerability duration etc are tricky to change since anything less secure runs the very real risk of simply pushing all smaller groups into stations.

Balancing the station fuel requirements against a cut in service module fuel requirements should mean no additional logistics load. The cut in service fuel requirements should only apply when the station is fueled though to avoid large entities leaving unfueled cits deep in their safe areas as a means of cutting fuel consumption.

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That sounds a lot more like the CSM running into the same use-case issues that get brought up every time this discussion comes around, not CCP seriously considering anything like this. From Fozzie’s one comment in there it seems more like they’re considering making the Tethering a Service Module so it requires fuel to keep online. Again though, that still runs into the issues brought up previously.

I’m not sure what data you’re looking at or if the resolution you’re looking at simply doesn’t show price changes very well, but you can pretty clearly see the price on fuel blocks shifting as demand goes up and down just in the last few months, and you can see it go up significantly with cap deployments.

CCP still needs to be mindful of the economy with their changes, that’s why the average fuel use for a Citadel doing something is similar to a POS that might be doing that same thing.

Also as previously mentioned, Citadels are already significantly more expensive than even a full POS setup, to the point that you need one up for about six months to even break even on a similar POS. That’s also a concern, because while you get more with a Citadel you don’t get that much more and in most of the places where Citadel Spam can be said to be anything like a real issue the things a POS doesn’t do are taken over by either an Outpost or a Station.

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