Science & Industry

I've been doing some reading about putting up a POS in HiSec (although I'm still considering a 0.3 system to include moon mining) and I have a couple of questions. I've done the cost calculations for both install costs, charters, and running the POS.

For a (large) Minmatar Control Tower, based on current Rens average prices, it'll cost me about 500M ISK to purchase the POS and components; additionally, it'll cost 296M ISK per month to fuel the station. The primary goal of the station is research and invention. Along with that, here are some questions that I have:

1. Can I install/anchor more than one mobile laboratory within the same POS field? I haven't seen anything that says I can't, but I want to make sure. A couple chars and I will all be running as many slots as we can to maximize profit.

2. In hisec, what is the probability of actually being attacked? Should I worry a lot about a POS bash headed my way just because I've set one up, or should I not have to worry too much?

3. Is a POS invulnerable as long as it is properly fueled? I've heard different things about this, and I think I got confused. Probably a stupid question, but thank you :P

Finally, there aren't any modules/skills that will increase powergrid or CPU on a control tower, are there? I haven't found any, I could just be blind...

If anyone is willing to share some tips about maximizing profit from a POS, I'd appreciate it! I'm not looking for all your corp secrets, but I haven't found much from people who have actually done it - it seems that everyone just talks about it in theory. My research skills will be pretty good by the time I set this up - I'd like to do research, perhaps moon mining based on where I set it up, reactions, etc.

Thanks for all your help, I have tried to do a lot of reading but I am just not finding a couple of answers.

Happy days and fly safe!

What makes a POS in high sec appealing is that #1) the biggest thing that is going to hit it will be battleships, this makes it very tiresome to drop a large tower. You'd really have to go out of your way to **** someone off enough for this to happen. The way you mitigate this is by setting up a full array of defense components and leaving them offline until you get war dec'd. Once that happens, just start bringing your defenses online and shutting down any labs that are not in the middle of a 30 day research job.

The second thing that makes them appealing for blueprint research is that you can leave your BPOs in a npc station in that system (rent an office) and run research from there on your mobile arrays. This is much more attractive than running BPOs out to .3 space.

In short, train your Anchoring skill to V and have your pals do the same thing, then train up starbase defense so you can manually use the POS gun turrets, with just a handfull of people doing this you can make the cost of dropping a highsec POS extrememly not worth the hassle.

EDIT:

Yeah, sorry realized it later on when I was going to bed, mis-typed. It is Anchoring V not corp mgmt, it's under the corporation managment field.

Okay, so I'm clearly shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted, but is ther e a guide anywhere no how to configure your high-sec POS so that your corpies can use it - i.e. have access to labs, hangars, ship maintenance arrays, etc - but not, say, take all the fuel out the tower and steal all your stuff?

I ask because two of my lovely corpmates have done just that and cleaned us out and I'm not putting another POS up until I can secure the damned thing.

Cheers,

Xav

Wait until CCP releases a patch that reworks the roles and/or the POS system.

Roles are really simple.

Don't give out roles to anybody, unless you have tested with an alt of your own. If you've not read, understood, and memorized the function of the roles, you should not consider yourself qualified to assign them. There is no room for any doubt.

Titles are a shortcut to assigning people roles and access, as there are a lot of them, and it is easy to make a mistake if you don't use titles. Titles are additive; you cannot give away access with one title and remove it with another.

POS modules have additional access permissions selectable through the control tower menus, but the access is very coarse. Basically alliance, corporation, or people with Config Starbase Equipment (default). Do not give Config Starbase Equipment to anyone you don't completely trust; it isn't needed for most basic POS usage.

Some basics:
* Use titles.
* Don't give out custom roles unless people need them to do something very specific, and even then you are better off making a special title just for that.
* Don't give out TAKE access on anything you don't want people to take from. QUERY is often enough to make stuff work.
* Don't give out QUERY access on anything you want to hide from sight. Most things require QUERY to work.
* USE on ship arrays is for the fitting service. It doesn't give access to the array contents.

You can find the minimum for using labs here:
A guide to POS labs

Beware that it can take a few hours to online all the defenses. If you get wardec'd a lot, leaving some of them online will save you time. Choice is your's.

You only use as much heavy water and ozone as your tower is using CPU and power.

Example: If you are using 60% of max CPU, you only consume 60% of the max heavy water consumption.

If max is 150 heavy water per hour and you are using 60% of CPU, then the tower consumes 90 heavy water per hour.

Everyone is so helpful (this is why I love EVE)!

ONE more question - lets say I start up with a small POS and make enough eventually that I'd like to upgrade to a large POS - can the small control tower be taken offline, put back in a ship, and resold? Or is this something like an implant or skillbook that can't be put back on the market once it's used?

I get the impression that it can be reused, but I just want to check. Thanks again everyone!

Lots of good advice in this thread. I'll add two more thoughts.

Consider going with a Caldari tower as they have highest CPU = most capacity for labs - very popular in high-sec for that reason.

Second, see if a medium tower will meet your needs. It can save you a bunch of money on fuel and can still be fit out with a very adequate compliment of defensive equipment (most of it offline when not at war). You don't need a whole lot of guns to fend off a small army in high-sec though the starbase defense management skill will be key if you do have to defend it some day

Edit: didn't see your last response. Yes, good idea to start smaller and grow into a large. Check diff in fuel prices first to see if small is really much cheaper per month. Yes POSs are reusable and resellable.

Skip the guns, put ECM. You can put on even a small Caldari POS up to 27 ECM batteries, which should keep 20-30 BS occupied for an hour, before they'll be able to reinforce the POS (conservatively assuming only 1/4 of the batteries are effective and not counting force field resists).

At that point, you would have inflicted more damage (600M-900M ISK at 30M ISK/hour, in terms of opportunity cost) on them, even if losing the (small) POS at the end.

Boy, they must have been really pissed off on you in that case

Just to confirm your question the control tower uses the 'PI' fuels (Enriched Uranium,Oxygen,Mechanical Parts,Coolant, & Robotics.) when the tower is online. You cannot get out of using these materials unless you have the tower offline. When any modules/guns are online then the requisite amounts of ice-derived fuels are used to provide CPU/Powergrid to those modules/guns.

Gun batteries use the next size up of ammo eg Medium Autocannon Batteries use Large Autocannon ammo.