Do you want a spool up mechanic? And a warning? Because they would be details like the OP was asking for.
I donât want asset safety to be player-driven at all - I think that goes against the nature of asset safety and should be avoided at all costs. I outlined some bare minimums to approach making it not totally game breaking, but I still will not advocate for it.
If it were just a fuel siphon without direct impact to asset safety (only hastening fuel consumption to try and move a structure into low-power mode), even then I would say it needs alerts to the station owner that such a device was deployed against them and is spooling up (the low power warnings will alert any players with assets who want to yank their assets after it hits that stage). And probably would need to be âmannedâ like station guns in order to keep running, though that wonât add a lot of investment - someone could fly to it in a shuttle or a pod to operate it with a clean clone, so their risk profile is still minimal. There also needs to be a way to determine how much fuel a structure has on-hand to determine if it is worth trying to deplete, and a maximum âtheftâ rate (not a % of fuel, but a hard m3 per second or whatever).
And you still donât really have any âriskâ for deploying it, beyond expense of the unit itself.
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Unless itâs going to steal fuel at an extremely quick rate (like emptying a full bay in a couple hours), requiring it to be piloted seems unnecessarily punitive. The pilot would simply be sitting in it doing exactly nothing. Moon drills donât need to be manned in order to keep working. It would just be silly.
Notifying the owner of the station that a siphon has been set-up goes without saying. And they have to organise a response for which theyâve got 7 days at the very least. They can win by either clearing hostiles and/or fueling the structure.
As to how much fuel a structure has; ship scans are used to get a structureâs load out, perhaps a cargo scanner can tell you how much fuel is left.
Like the old siphon, d-scan inhibitors, mobile cyno jammers; it doesnât need much extra risk.
Itâs defenceless and quickly destroyed on itâs own. It needs a fleet to defend it in order to last long enough to be effective.
Itâs not gonna be easy to block all attempts to fuel the structure under a siphon. But at the same time itâs not really sustainable to allow a siphon to go unanswered. So itâs a flag that says âcome fight or weâll loot your structureâ -A conflict driver- (Something we are in short supply of at the moment.) but the reality is that the defenders have plenty of time to respond, can even delay the process by ninja-ing fuel in or the defenders can give up and save what they can via asset safety.
As far as mechanics go, itâs a conflict driver that offers both sides a good amount of options and counterplay.
Itâs only a conflict driver if it forces a conflict response. As long as you can still asset safety out (which should NOT be driven by the siphonâs presence, as previously discussed) then a siphon adds no additional conflict vs use of reinforcement stages in combat. Itâs simply a way to try and circumvent having to bash the structure 3x by pushing it to low power.
Is there a conflict driver that this silly rule doesnât apply to?
Warp disruption is a conflict driverâŚunless it isnât because the target has warp stabs or 2 second align time. 
In my imagination it would take significantly longer to use a siphon to get a structure into low/abandoned than it would to just destroy it.
The benefit of the siphon isnât speed. Itâs loot.
All it takes to not get loot is the owning corp deciding to trigger asset safety. And weâre back at the start of the argument where it didnât trigger any conflict, didnât grant any loot to anyone, and nothing changed vs a normal war engagement. Since it doesnât cost anything to trigger asset safety (only to get assets back out of storage) you arenât creating any new motivation to engage the attackers/siphon.
Edit:
If the corp isnât motivated to defend the structure vs a bash assault, because hey, nothing irreplaceable is being lost, they arenât going to mobilize vs a siphon defended by a fleet, either - they will just asset safety manually instead of automatically. Thatâs zero change in outcome with or without the siphon.
All a freighter pilot has to do to avoid a gank is bring a web alt. And yetâŚ
Youâre gonna honestly tell me you think 100% of players will trigger asset safety 100% of the time when faced with a siphon? And you wonder why i think youâre being occasionally dishonest?
Look at abandoned structures today. Not everything dropped is from players taking a break from the game.
I think the vast majority of loot will be safetied out, yes. You will get exceptions where a corp doesnât care, but I do think that will be a very small population - certainly not enough to make developing this entire siphon mechanic worthwhile.
Thatâs ok. The vast majority of freighters pass by without getting ganked.
But the gankers still find the motivation.
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