Science & Industry

The last 7 systems I've looked through a decent distance from major trade hubs have had a POS, a large portion of which are inactive, at every available moon.

I don't have the resources to take down a POS, even an inactive one, and it is becoming rather frustrating that I'm unable to setup a research/invention POS. Is there an easier way to find an open moon than spending hours and hours flying around aimlessly?

Care to point me to someone willing to blow a POS out of the sky?

Thanks, I was unaware of how these new changes worked. This speeds everything up by an order of magnitude.

People place offlined POS's on any moon near most of the trading hubs in hopes of getting people to pay for the moon. Your best bet is to just move out a bit further away, otherwise you'll have to wardec them and take it down yourself, but chances are pretty likely this would be a bad idea and you'll find yourself at war with several additional corps.

The last time somebody posted one of these threads, I went out and found 3 empty moons within 5 jumps of Jita, and I wasn't even trying hard (not an exhaustive search of systems).

I was scanning the old-fashioned way:

1. Set overview tab to only show control towers and moons.
2. Set d-scan to use overview settings.
3. Use a fast ship (like a shuttle).
4. Warp to planet N (right-click in space since they are not on the overview).
5. Set d-scan range to cover planet N's moons (less than distance to to next closest celestial).
6. Count the towers. if moons > towers, there may be an empty spot.

If you see a moon for another planet, your d-scan range is set too large. If you don't see all the moons for the planet, your d-scan range is set too small. [1 au ~ 150,000 km]

It takes less than 10 minutes to scan a system. Narrowing down the exact moon can take longer, but you only do this in systems that have free spots.

There is mixed opinion about anchoring at moons with stations. Best advice seems to be to never try to anchor at the warp-in, and possibly even on a different grid than the station; the tower will always snap to the spot where it is allowed when anchored.

If you keep looking you will find a decent spot with an open moon. They are hard to find though. In my experience you need to look 8 or more jumps from Jita to find an open moon in a system with a station and reasonable office rentals.

My first POS was in Uminas 8 jumps from Jita. Office rental was only 10,000 isk but that station had no good services. i doubt there is an empty moon there now though. Though office rental is still cheap there. Generally 8-10 jumps from Jita in regions outside the forge have the best chances for an available moon and decent station.

I spent many months looking for a GOOD moon to drop a POS at. I ended up giving up and just picking a system with several stations where I could get a cheap office and all the services I needed. Then found a small offline tower to bash to get a moon. It may seem like a daunting task, but small towers are not that hard to take down. And being willing to take down a POS to get the moon will give you access to much better systems. Most personal POS owners run multiple accounts or have freinds to share the POS with. 4 high DPS BS's can take down a small POS in a little over an hour. 2 BS's can do it in about 2 1/2 hours. If it is a dead POS belonging to a dead corp nobody will come to defend it. No need for a tank, just max DPS. If you can not get 3-4 decent DPS BS's together hiring mercs to bash it should not cost to much as a small tower will go down very quickly.

I admit, I only have 3 hisec large towers, so I have no idea about "what the basic requirements are for a high sec POS".

I couldn't make an unsubstantiated claim that there were available moons, as that's just not how I operate. Hence I spent time scanning to confirm if there were any or not.

Now perhaps I'm being too harsh, and you really meant to state that I didn't know the OP's requirements, which may not be "basic". In that you would be totally accurate and justified in stating. I'd counter then that the OP's requirements may not be realistic then.

As for office rental, given that I earned over 25m from bounties for one level 4 mission last evening (AE + bonus room, and I didn't bother to loot or salvage), baulking at paying that much for a monthly office rental seems unreasonable to me, especially if it is a corporate investment.

I think what Bugsy was getting at is the fact that getting faction standings high enough for a hs POS can take months, even with datacenter handins, and that searching for a POS before you have reached these minimium faction requirements before searching for a moon that is available is a bit pre-mature and could easily be taken before reaching the requirements needed.

Took me 7 days and a hundred mil. Not sure what you're talking about.

So you know, a large ship assembly array can hold 18.5M M3 of ore in case you ever want more storage. I mine on average about 3m - 5m m3 per day (well on the days I mine), which means the assembly array comes in handing when I don't feel like hauling after all the mining.

Oh, and the 5.0 faction standing is pretty easy to achieve, and can be be nearly done just with data center tag handin's, the real grind come with the 6.0 and 7.0 standings.