Player Features and Ideas Discussion

After having played now for many years, and during that time having had to deal with POSes either as an operator, or in combat actions to take them down, it has occurred to me that no one in Eve likes POSes as they are now, and when I say “No One”, I mean NO ONE at all.

The complaints about POSes are endless. Ranging from everything such as... “POSes are butt ugly” to …. “There is never enough Power / CPU to use them properly.” to.... “They take too long to take down.” and of course the ever present “They are just too weak to use.”

Lets face it no matter who you are in Eve if you have had to deal with a POS in one capacity or another you have some complaint about them, and I am no different.



Honestly the largest problems with a POS are as follows:

1. They are ugly. No doubt about that. A stick floating in space with a bunch of parts floating in a 30km or better range of that stick.

2. They lack any real expandability to allow it to preform more then one true function at a time. IE it can not be well defended and be designed to build ships at the same time, or do Research and Manufacture at the same time.

3. In some cases they do take far too long to take down. Some people have taken it upon themselves to build POSes that literally take hours to remove with a fleet of capitals. They do nothing other then soak up damage due to the shear number of Shield Hardening Arrays attached to the POS.

4. Yes they are also weak. Easily destroyed, a small fleet of well fit battleships can often easily take down Small and Medium POSes. Large ones are more often then not easily dealt with by a handful of Dreads, and maybe an hours time.

5. Last but not least, they lack multiple user functionality, and have none beyond that of the corporation or alliance.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I have scoured the forums, I have talked with people for years, and I have at long last come up with the answer to most of the issues surrounding the use of a POS.




1. We must start somewhere so why not at least make them look better:

There are a number of ideas about making POSes look better. They address some of the issues, but in most cases not all. As an example of some good ideas I point to Evelgrivion's post which was started back in 2006.

In Hist post he details and even makes a few basic 3d models showing his concept for repairing the looks of a POS. Honestly its a very good start, but I have to say in my opinion it does not go far enough. His suggestion involves using a 4 point system of inter-connectivity (sort of like a plus sign ( + ). To me this is a fine idea, but the POS its self should start with 8 connection points (More like a number sign ( # ) with the POS at its center.) This will allow for more parts closer to the POS tower its self. Sadly I am not a graphics designer, but I believe you get the idea.

All other parts would contain the 4 Connection points, thus allowing you to connect a virtually endless array of arrays to the POS. Now all that would be required is for corporations to simply snap fit arrays into place around the POS. Instead of the current method, a similar launching system would be used, but the array would simply mate with a close by connection point that's open, either directly off of the POS or an array that has an open connection point.

The only exception to this 4 point connection method for parts would be a Place to put weapons. Lets call them for lack of a better name “Weapon Mounts”. Think of them as end caps for the POS connectors. They would take no power them selves, but serve as a place to put weapons arrays onto.

I know some of you are already going.... “but weapons are outside the shields.” My answer to that is.. are your ships weapons outside its shield?... no their not. If you were to right now build a POS in real life, assuming you had the technology, don't you think the guns would be... attached to the station.. inside the shield... ya know like those on your ship are. Invariably someone will say... “but this is not RL this is a game.” Yes your right its just a game, but it is a game the Devs them selves have said they wish to give elements allowing everyone to easily immerse them selves into the game, as if it were RL. Putting the guns on the POS would be a good place to start with that, allowing everything to attach up nicely would also be a good start as well.

With this solution, the POS now at least looks like a single complete structure. It may be ugly, but at least it looks functionally ugly. Not just some group of disassociated parts.

To effect this change, simply give all towers that are deployed 7 days of invulnerability, put them all offline during this 7 days time leaving all the parts anchored, obviously replace all the parts with the new versions of them, but offline until its owners have redeployed all the changed parts. If after 7 days time, a POS has not been redeployed, well then its free game.

Those that are not yet deployed sitting in some station hanger, and their BPOs / BPCs change them to the new versions and simply leave them where they were.

3. POSes take too long to take down. POSes are too easy to destroy.

Lets face it some POSes just take forever, even with a well equipped capital fleet to take down. No one, no matter how much they wish to destroy the enemy wants to spend all day sieging a D*&K Star POS. We do have other things to accomplish, such as destroying enemy ships.

For this answer I will suggest the following:

A. Limit the number of Shield Hardeners to a total of 12. This would allow for 3 of each type, and still a decent amount of resistances for a POS, but not a virtually endless amount of resistances. Plus it would force POS owners to do something with such towers other then just waste gas. If you need an excuse, well... “the POS computer can not handle more of that type of system.”

To effect this change, send an Eve mail to all corporations that own towers, advising them of this coming change, then simply offline any hardeners that exceed max.

B. Shrink the bubble as it receives fire. I do not just mean shrink it, I mean really shrink it. The POS bubble shield is the towers shield. So its primary job is to keep the tower safe. As it shrinks, it will not loose power, but it will then leave arrays open to attack. There by allowing fleets to destroy / put into reinforced mode parts of the POS, thus making it easier to shrink the bubble faster, and kill it faster. At last when the POS bubble has collapsed into a normal shield surrounding just the tower, then the tower its self can be taken on and disabled.
This one change will allow fleets assaulting a POS to feel as if they are accomplishing something for their time and ammo, but allow the corporation effected to have a chance to save the POS.

C. All parts should be reinforcable. I have seen it said that POSes should not be able to do X thing as they only cost a few million isk. To this I can only say, you are seriously smoking something good man. POSes are expensive as hell. Sure the tower is reasonably cheap, but now add some parts, weapons, fuel, time and effort to put one up, ammo, etc, etc, etc.... POSes can easily cost Billions by the time one is done erecting it. Needless to say with the investment a corporation, certainly a small corporation should be able to have a chance to hang onto the bulk of their investment. Thus I suggest each part should receive reinforcement mode, and take a portion of the towers Strontium once it reaches this mode.

All of these changes will allow a POS to be more easily disabled, but also more easily kept from being destroyed.

To effect these changes just do them. LOL

Well... So suggestions? Problems issues... lets talk about this.

The ideas are interesting. There's really not much to add since I actually agree with most of them. Those idea are also very similar to the one discussed with the Dead Horse thread.

There's one that caught my attention though; the one about the shield diminishing as it lost health. I'm concerned about the effect that would have on the different modules connected to the tower. What will happen when the ship hangar is destroyed? Or the Science Lab - would all the ships/Blueprints be dropped as of now? That would leave no time to respond from the owner of the POS if it all happened in a few hours while he was offline.

I think one of the other concern with POS is the way every items in it is shared. Ships and items alike can easily be stolen because players have no individual hangar. If there was a redesign, it would be interesting to see this change.

Otherwise, there's an idea I'd like to discuss; being able to dock into POS in the same way as stations. This would change the way POS are seen. It will also be a shock to see it change, but I think it will improve the way we interact with POS. I actually miss the station view when I live in wormholes, and inside a station it's just so convenient. You get to do the research, refining, etc without having to bounce around the floating structures.
You would lose the ability to see inside or outside a POS though. I think it might be worth it - we can adapt to that change.

I like number 1 and 3 and somwhat number 2.

For number 4, i think youre getting the wrong idea about what "POS" truly means. It means Player Owned Starbase, not station since this is the role of outposts.

A star base gives some of the features of the outposts/stations but on a far much smaller scale. It act as a staging areas for ships when far from the home outpost or station, i.e. in wormholes or in contested space, in null sec.

So, giving them a docking feature would'nt make any sense. They are made so that everything is done while the ship stays in the space around the starbase. You would'nt be able to know what's happenning just outside it if you were docked in one of the arrays anyway.