Jita Park Speakers Corner

Just to get things started, I wanted to link to a blog post that summarizes my thoughts: http://twostep4csm.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-vision-for-poses.html

I'm loving the idea of a POS re-work.

Something that I think needs to be included (but totally understand that it is dependant on resources and priorities) is that the interiors of POS should be customisable in a similar modular fashion. Can the CSM ask that CCP at least consider including this in their long term plans for POS's.

Quite unbalanced. You are basically asking for the outpost (20+ bil) for the price of the POS (1+bil).

Can't even be arsed to dig up the Flogging the dead horse topic about PoS issues and suggestions.
Why start a new thread abotu something which has been discussed endlessly in another thread?

Are we going to get a new threadnaught which then get's ignored and re-kindled by a next CSM?

Use the search and get that old topic dusted off. I think everything is already said in that one.

@Two step
Where you there during the w-space round-table?
A lot of POS related problems where brought to table there, think CCP has already have a small list of useful things that need to be addressed. (not saying they all need to be implemented)

As we all know there could be easy quick win solutions that make POS life easier, the change of the anchoring/timers and fuelblocks has been a huge improvement but I always have issues anchoring stuff outside the forcefield.
It would be easier to have a sort of 3d grid where you can see if anchoring is possible/impossible, also a point to a grid (X-Y-Z) location and then anchor would be cool.

The part about security you mentioned in your CSM blog was addressed also, with the current problems in Corporation management new players to EVE cannot use existing POS setups because they are simply not trusted to have access.

(again) The change of subsystems on T3's at a POS, though I heard that this has some game mechanic problems.

Possibility to allow alliance members take part in the Starbase Defence Management of a POS, due to adding a checkbox and a right to do so.

It should be possible to sell (transfer ownership) of a POS when it's anchored.

That would create a whole new business around it.

Yeah, a log would be nice. Having to keep track of everything via spreadsheets is annoying, but necessary and it is good book keeping. A drop/remove log would be nice.

It does take away that mystery when you discover someone stole something though... it'd make bird dogging POS items very easy.

I very much like Two Step's suggestions.

As an addition, perhaps rather than "CHA" and "SMA" space shared, there are pos modules that allow for each pilot to be allowed a certain amount of space.

So there are small, medium, large (and larger?) modules that have a bunch of slots, and each slot allows a certain m3 of ships and an m3 of "stuff" to be stashed. A pilot needs at least one slot allocated to be able to stash anything, but can have multiple granted. Each slot granted increases the amount of storage for that pilot, instead of being another window to open. This would greatly simplify searching for your stuff compared to "hunt for that module in each tab of each CHA".

Slots could then be rented out at a cost, potentially there could even be configurable number of slots a corp could open up as "free-for-all", which first to rent would pay for, and then get access to station services at costs as well (or even as all-inclusive fee, as long as players could choose). This could be restricted to corp, alliance or even based on standings (allowing players to compete with NPC stations for custom, by allowing better or cheaper services).

For a POS, those granted permissions (and the CEO) would probably still need access to personal hanger slots in case of emergency POS move/defense/removal, but potentially this could be up to the individual to decide if they wish to risk others having access (and maybe even *who*), or not giving access but losing it all when the POS is blown up, or removed by the owning corp.

There is no need for one module to do both ships and stuff, there could even be modules that only store certain types of material, such as ore and minerals. For example a miner may want a tiny amount of ship space but a large amount of ore space. A carrier pilot may not care about much hanger space but obviously need to stash a large ship.

Of course, the slot system simplifies management, a totally configurable alternative would be:
slot for a pilot to land (that could be rented at a cost)
rentable m3 of space for pilot stuff (per m3)
rentable m3 of space for pilot ships (per m3)



As a recap:

The above allows a POS to still have limits on space, whilst still be upgradable and mangeable in a sensible manner. It means one pilot cannot use an unfair amount of space. Varying sizes of modules with slots/m3 could be produced, allowing for the scalability suggested by Two Step to be a reality. These could stack, or be replace in-situ. Rent can be recovered (if the POS owner desires), and players get some "safety" for their stuff as well as individual hanger space. It also opens up the possibility of granting access beyond a corp (to those who trust the corp), whilst allowing the corp to limit the use of the facilities.

Yo Two step!

Glad to have someone standing up for wspace. Living out of these POSs has been a real pain in the arse, so good changes are welcome.

I read over your blog and I have a few questions about your vision concerning the direction of the POS.

First off, I'll avoid quoting your blog directly so this doesn't turn into an even bigger WOT. I got the feeling by reading your ideas that the POS in your future is not only flexible, but also incredibly powerful. I do like the concept of flexibility and some POS mechanics annoy the heck out of me.

I personally would prefer that an array, any array, is expandable. When I have to worry about the range I warp in to a POS because I am worried about getting stuck on an array, I think that points towards a design flaw. My personal preference, as stated, would be expandability on existing frameworks. If I have an SMA, I would like to expand its space and capabilities by LEGOS rather than by orderly anchoring them into pretty configurations. It would also be nice if this expansion would extend off the POS itself, but that may be asking for too much. If you extend what I mentioned to other facilities, would this be in line with your vision? For instance, would facilities scale or would they just strap on to whatever?

As an example, I start with an LSAA, but want to build capitals. Instead of building a separate CSAA, I combine the two into an array that supports the construction of both, but it is still a single POS module. Would I need to build smaller arrays in order to get to the larger arrays? I believe the answer to this should and will be no, but depending on just how much the POS is gutted, this may change, too. I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

Another sticking point for me is, if I can build, why can I not repair? This makes sense to me in terms of combat, no matter how annoying it is. It would be awful attacking a gang defending a POS when all they had to do was go inside the bubble, rep up and come back out. Especially so in wspace. How would you balance this if the nPOS now had the ability to repair?

I am also not entirely sure I am on board with the nPOS having better facilities than an outpost. I only say that it will because in many ways an NPC station is superior to an outpost, so if the nPOS is better than an NPC station, it would automatically become better than an outpost. I am assuming that you have taken this into account, so what would your vision be for outpost facilities? Would in-space structures scale accordingly: Outpost > nPOS > NPC Station? Any frameworks you have in mind?

How would you suggest balancing this as well? Outposts already provide a lot of flexibility and versatility relative to their cost, so bringing the nPOS in line with one (or better) would appear to break the current balance. Is your intention to not necessarily break that balance, but to start from scratch with all structures in space? I have to admit, the idea is appealing.

Oh yeah, +1 on the ability to actually dock, but the current SMA size seems disproportionate to the size of the craft stored within. My Machariel and Nidh seem to be nearly the size of the SMA that can store them. If you were to submit the idea for docking, would you also request that structures are scaled in such a way that the size of POS modules seem reasonable/believable that they could dock ships? I know this may affect the amount of space within the POS bubble, but maybe POSes are too small to begin with. I can also see this requiring a lot of new art work and it would increase the amount of polygon load when warping to a POS structure, so I'm interested to hear any feedback on this.

Lots of questions, but I do believe this is the place for them.

Thank you much for your attention!

Quade

Nope, way too complex. I just used the "Atum delivered 20 bubbles" as an example. Maybe I dropped 50k veld into a CHA during a corp mining op. Then when someone looks at that stack of veld, it has my name on it. Makes it a little easier to see how something might have arrived, or what stuff should be yours. An alternative might be the creation of fields in the DB that read "item_instantiated_by" and "ownership_claimed_by" that when an object is created, both are set to that pilot's ID, but only the second is player-visible, and can be changed simply by right clicking and saying "take ownership." The first would be useful to CCP Sreegs and Team Security in chasing down bots (eg. this pilot could only have created that much scordite if they were mining for 20 hours... no human can do that!), while the second, with no audit logs, histories, or ability to defend short of blowing up the guy who's trying to claim your stuff, would make it (hopefully) easier when moving crap around a tower to figure out "Oh, out of the 23 manticores in this SMA, these 4 are the ones Cyvok asked me to move to his private tower," or "these four stacks of omber add up to the 160k Mittani claimed he mined for corp use last night."