Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Search wasn't helpful so please point me to the thread in which has been discussed before if I've missed it.

Right. So. The Mobile Depot goes into reinforcement. I mean, they're cheap, not very spacey (50m³ in the hold), very useful and have to be probed down most of the time. Sure they're fragile, but that's offset by the last sentence's last point; you have to find them first. Which leads me to the thread title: the reinforcement timer. Am I the only one to think this is way overkill? POSes don't go into reinforcement for that long and they are way more valuable and have to be powered by fuel to work (both work regularly as well as fueled to go into reinforcement). Plus, to my knowledge you can't pack up a POS when it's reinforced, which can be done with the Depots.

The things have only been out for a week or two and already there's a great big bunch of them floating around (including, but not limited to) mission and trade hubs (not just around stations, I picked a system next to a mission hub to probe around in and there were a whole lot of abandoned Depots idly ticking their 30 last days away in New Eden). I'd like to clean them up (euthanize them, if you will), but this just gets tedious with the 2 day countdown.
Therefore, I suggest knocking it down to more acceptable levels, say 12 hours tops, preferably less. You don't leave POSes undefended for anyone to pick apart, so either one is around to fight whoever's attacking your Depot or they get to pad their killboards a tiny bit (and play space-janitor).



An alternative would be to have their natural space-lifespan be knocked down to a week/few days.

I understand the desire though, so you may have a like for that.

They should at least increase the cost. 1 million isk? Who thought that was a good idea?

They really are surprisingly cheap. However, it's better to leave them alone at this point. The last thing we need is more of that god-forsaken "extra materials" nonsense shitting up the BPO and making ME research pointless.

That being said, from what I can tell of the livestreams I've watched and the dev blogs and a couple conversations I saw on SiSi, CCP envisions the Depot as being more than just a pocket refitting tool. As such, it has a 2-day reinforcement timer because you might want to put one down and then go somewhat far away from it - the long reinforcement gives the opportunity to actually use it as a deployable instead of something you simply put down and pick right back up again while still having an opportunity to defend or collect it.

The 1-minute activation timer doesn't stop it from being shot, so in the middle of combat it's not a huge thing to shoot someone's depot before they can use it to refit mid-fight.

The thing is literally still brand new, so give the meta time to adjust and time for the novelty to wear off. Once they're old news we can get a better picture of things.

They are limited by their anchor ranges. It's been my experience that the majority of fights happen on:

1) gates
2) station
3) POS


IIRC, they can't be anchored closer than 40km from any of those, farther in some instances.

For everything else and what they are designed for, those are significant draw backs in a PVP application.


They could be refined though. Not sure if something like an Ihub or SBU/TCU is covered in their anchor limits, or if it should be. It is worth considering though.

Depots having to be scanned is kinda necessary, otherwise you'd have beacons everywhere saying 'Bacon is Here!' and there would be no point in having them for anything other than combat refit(which is again, limited by anchor ranges).

The problem with 12 hr timers is time zones. An American player shooting an Aussie's Depot would create a time zone issue for both. While that's the song of Eve, these are meant to be personalized. It's true that you can't plan when someone is going to shoot your Depot, but a standard unit timer, like a day, makes more sense, IMO. Depots also do not anchor guns, copy blue prints, mine moons, or build things. They just hold things.



I would tend to agree with you, OP, that they may be in need of some revising, but there are alot of factors to consider when making those revisions. All in all, they are some cool, fun little structures. IF slightly annoying around Jita.


*Insert comment about Wretched Hive of SCUM. and Villiany*

I don't get why you see it as a problem that people can have a 3-4k m3 personal storage space outside of an NPC station, that you can not destroy easily. Its a personal storage device that has a 48 hour reinforced timer so that you don't have to have ten people logged on in shifts to take care of the darn thing. Its not a prelude to sov-takeover nor does it make any isk. Its just a way of making some things less of a hassle.
If you're looking for something to shoot, go to low/null sec or make some ideas to make PVE more exciting.

I see your points, however I think the idea behind is also to make them aggregation points for ambush, fights, baits and so on. Putting them in reinforced force the owner to come back to recover is stuff in a determinated framework.

Removing the timer would also remove this function.

Because I don't want to be totally blind to them in other situations? This game, like the real world, has a clutter factor. I don't like container spam, and mobile depot spam is much worse.

Change timer to 1 hour. Done. Gives ample time for an owner to react, allows anyone with reasonable patience to kill one.

It wouldn't really bother me if not for the fact that they felt this reinforcement timer need to be a big red circle instead of the subtle gray bar used by EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME. I don't understand why CCP did that. There's no consistency anymore with anything anchorable. Why do you get to choose the reinforce exit time for POCOs for example, but not anything else? Why can mobile depots be scooped while reinforced and nothing else?