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Question 1: Why was heavy water so cheap to begin with?
Question 1a: Is there an oversupply of heavy water?
Question 1b: Is powergrid used infrequently?

Question 2: Should heavy water be worth more?
Question 2a: What effect would more expensive heavy water have?
Question 2b: Would this actually raise the cost of running a POS or would other prices be depressed?

This issue is pushing me to now support leaving heavy water and liquid ozone out of the fuel blocks. It simply changes the ice economy too drastically. I think the objective of these changes should be to simplify pos fueling with minimal change to current game mechanics.

Summary of my positions (highest to lowest priority)

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1. I would prefer a change that affects the current economy minimally.
2. Do not include liquid ozone / heavy water in the blocks. Keep that separate for now due to economic issues)
3. Increase granularity of fuel blocks to 100/hour for normal large POSes in order to support bonuses and make moving blocks in small ships easier.
4. Include a limited fuel block manufacturing facility in the control tower.
4a. Manufacturing facility would be better than nothing, but a refining array type mechanism would be better (no BPO, no manufacturing slot)
4b. Limited = makes blocks just a bit faster than needed for itself but not for other control towers
5. I will accept a less than ideal change* as long as this is iterated.

* Less than ideal = not include lowest priority and harder to implement points above (e.g. no manufacturing facility)

Dear CCP Greyscale,

after reading you Dev Blog on the planned changes to the Starbase System, some of these changes we waiting ages for but some could be really better.

1. Using Jump Bridges
Currently you need an Password and no shoot configuration to use a Jump Bridge.

Better, adding more and clearly defined Access Roles to the Structures / Access tab in the POS Manager Menu. You have here currently View, Take and Use Rows, but Use is quit not in use.

Use Roles could be:

• Corporation
• Alliance
• Standing (+5)
• Standing (+10)

(Keep in Mind that refueling the JB, must be also possible by these Groups, make the POS Manager live easier)

2. Passing Force Field
The Old System with Password is absolute worthless, but with some changes it could be more Flexible too.

Force Field Pass through Options:

• Corporation
• Alliance
• Standing (+5)
• Standing (+10)
• * Extra Check box for extra Password security

3. Using Defense installations (Guns, Ewar, etc.):
Use Roles could be:

• Corporation
• Alliance
• Standing (+5)
• Standing (+10)

(Keep in Mind that refueling, must be also possible by these Groups, make the POS Manager live easier)

4. Improvements to other installation like Corporate Hangar, Ship Maintenance Array, Silos, (Adv.) Mobile Laboratories are also in bitter need, not only in fact of the access politics to them. (Repackage of Items)

5. Tower Setup Password security, so that not everyone can change the settings to an tower with only the right role.

6. Install Patterns for easier dropping and Anchoring new Towers automatically, with save Functionality like Ship Fittings.


I Hope i could give you some other good impressions what can be changed to the Starbase System, to make our Eve live more secure and more flexible, in special to the POS Managers out there .

I like the idea in general but i also agree with some objections/ideas made here and added some of my own:

Fuel blocks

• Fuel blocks could be produced in a volume of 100. This way faction towers don't need to loose their bonus. It also gives you more flexibility for future expansions or ideas.
• The fact, that you have an additional production step to actually make fuel is inconvenient. Especially for WH-corps. Maybe a cheap "fuel production array" just for assembling fuel blocks? I mean with really very low power/cpu requirements so that noone really has to care about them. Maybe add a function to directly move fuel to the tower on job completion.
• The icons are easily confused and in general don't make sense. I mean are all the fuel parts being mixed together to a mystical blue fluid? I guess that is not important though. But a better distinctness would be nice.
• Could this change have unpleasant effects on ice mining and the market?

There Also lies the ISSUE with IceRefine Ratios,,,, when you simplify you also throw in a new Balance

Agree that Ozone and HW need to be sepeate items not included in the block

If inclued,, then Ice Refine ratos also need to be adjusted,

so then determine the offset ballance,, so perhap the intent is to use blocks and adjust loading with the extra capacty

Nurfing the direct CPU and Grid will also affect and increased demand load on Ozone and HW and Nurf Isotopes because
the Refined Ratios are not proportionat with the Ice Refne Ratios

If Not ; So how do you purge this issue - why do I need to fuel Grid Power and CPU if not needed.

so if Ice refine ratios do not ballance with Blocks then all this simplification is Moot. Else remove HW and Ozone from Blocks

Heavy water is basically a by-product of the hi-sec ice refine process. Because hi-sec ice is lacking in Liquid Ozone, you have to mine extra blocks of hi-sec ice in order to get enough Isotopes to keep a POS tower running each month. Since HW isn't used for anything else, it gets thrown up on the market for whatever price you can get for it.

http://eve-marketdata.com/price_check.php?step=Show&type_id=16272&type=history&region_id=10000002

In hi-sec towers, PG is frequently the least-used attribute because most hi-sec towers are research towers. The bottleneck on a research tower is CPU from the labs. The only time that PG gets maxed out is if defensive batteries are put online to deal with a threat. Lo-sec / null-sec towers, are probably more balanced due to the need to keep defenses online at all times.

Since CPU usage drives Heavy Water usage, the amount of HW consumed by hi-sec towers really isn't going to change much. It might impact lo-sec / null-sec towers a bit more because those are more often capped out by PG (Liquid Ozone).

The bigger issue is going to be the impact on Liquid Ozone (which is a far more expensive ingredient per month already). There, you might see a bit of a price correction upwards and the fuel savings from the fuel pellet changes (less of certain types of fuels) might get wiped out by higher LiqOz prices. Most hi-sec towers probably had about half of their PG in use (so about 17M in LiqOz/mo for a large) and that is going to now cost them a full 34M/mo.

Funny, I was thinking it builds way to fast.

I like this.

I don't like two things:


1) Fuel Block Size/consumption. If the math sucks to have 10 blocks per hour because you don't/can't/won't do ticks on 6 minutes, shame on you. This introduces better variance and solves problems like sov bonuses and the one below:

2) Faction Towers. I haven't stood one of these up in a while, but you are talking about something that costs (as far as I can tell) about 2x the cost of a standard tower, and the big bonus is that it burns less fuel, which means the cost is recouped at some point. So now, you want to make them have a larger fuel bay? This is stupid. Reduce the size of the block and adjust your tick counts to burn a block every 6 minutes on standard towers, and 10 minutes on Faction Towers. Done (although the math might need work to keep Faction Towers inline with Sov bonuses).

Initially I had issues with the blocks being racially structured, but then I realized that keeping the isotopes separate makes a huge hauling/logistics mess stay in place. Maybe the trick is to have the racial blocks, but not integrate the Ozone and Heavy Water so the CPU/PG fluctuations can still be accounted for?

I must be missing something. There seems to be a slight adjustment in the amount of materials, but an extra step in producing the fuel which tends to mean more hauling. And without the faction tower fuel reduction, and the ability to drop fuel consumption by leaving grid/cpu unused, that means even more hauling... The maths is simpler once you've got the blocks but I have a tool for that.

What am I not seeing that has everyone happy?

Would be nice though to be able to be also to fuel the tower the old fashion way as some times you are just rying to gab components from corners of the Constilation to keep the POS running and may want to skip the production process.