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It just occurred to me but this shyphon unit in principle reminds me of people who ninja salvage wrecks in high sec.
and the fact that people in null sec are somewhat upset about it just spews irony.

Easy, If I park a Hulk in the wrong belt and go AFK I will come back to my computer and find myself in a station needing to pay to upgrade my clone and buy new implants and Hulk. And again I will still get no sympathy.

Now having said that, aside from the whining about AFK and POS's, I am willing to see your point. Looking at the Warp speed changes also coming in Rubicon, I am willing to believe that this change may also be imbalanced and from the other comments here I could see how it may have bad effects on the game economy. Lower moon goo production coupled with having a harder time finding pilots willing to fly a freighter, that will be even slower than they are now, to get the product to market is not a good thing.

Still dont expect me to show any sympathy for the AFK argument.

Speaking as someone who ran a small corp that had moons, I think this is a great idea! My corp ran sites in the same systems as our moons and our members knew the importance of the moons. If someone dropped these we would know within a couple hours and get them blown up.

This update may encourage huge entities to stop owning moons directly and instead rent them out giving more to smaller corps. Ahuge win in my book.

One recurring comment in this thread that I feel compelled to address is the notion that our poor, woefully helpless POS owners will be subject to "structure grinding" ("Oh noes!!!") should they wish to eliminate hostile Mobile Siphon Units from their moon harvesting POSes. This assertion is just completely baseless, and it undermines a position already anchored (if you'll pardon the puns) in tenuous credibility.

The new siphon module, having roughly 50,000 - 100,000 ehp will require roughly 3.3 minutes to "structure grind"... and that assumes a moderate level of damage output (500 dps vs. 100k ehp).

"That long!? Whatever will we do!? Heavens no!!"

While it is laughable to consider this interval of time "structure grinding", I'm sure that even our 20-page-thread-worth of teery-eyed, ****-posting POS-owning friends will figure out a way to speed the process along.

You see, I think we can all agree that this new 'requirement' for our API-fueled, logged off POS lords fits more aptly in the category of "POS-alt pvp aggrandizement" or "POS hygiene" than it does "structure grinding". Consider, for instance, that the aforementioned timeframes and damage rates are more akin to killing belt-rats than "structure grinding"... and that in exchange, the POS owner will get the satisfaction of a glorious Mobile Siphon Unit killmail ("Now with 10M valuation!!! Residual Goon saline sold separately!!!") on their normally useless POS-specific alt... an alt that previously would only get to enjoy brief intervals of being logged in once every two-weeks... and you'll see what I mean. Also, you'll have to understand that with this current rebranding effort from "structure grinding" to the "glorious pvp betterment of POS alts everywhere", that I'm just trying to help you see guys the upside.

"But what if our dirty rotten scoundrel enemies drop TOO MANY Mobile Siphon Units. What then!?"

Well, far be it from me to tell you guys how to nullsec, but one option you might consider is living in your ******* space and actually responding to movements in that territory... instead of bitching about how your ******* income source ought to be an entirely logged-out AFK-based activity.

When you put it that way...

we're not only blobbers but cowards who abuse any new feature ?!

1. This is going to hurt smaller POS owning corps who do not span all timezones. EVE is a MMO where groups of people are suppose to interact with friends. To interact with those friends you're going to want to be in the same timezone. This game mechanic works against this natural tendency and should not be implemented as is. Even small to medium alliances struggle to cover all timezones.

2. Using siphons to get some moon goo isn't going to be as important as denying the POS owner of their moon goo.

3. Siphons are laughably cheap.

4. Large alliance will no longer need to form a fleet of several dreads and support ships to siege a POS. Instead, they can send one guy with a blockage runner around to several POS' and drop siphons to achieve a similar effect.

5. Goons should send its 10,000 members into lowsec all with blockade runners and lay siphons at all the POS' they can find. Have them also target R8's and R16's. They can create an app to track when siphons are destroyed and what systems they're destroyed in. With the app, they can easily determine what timezones the smaller alliances and corps operate during and place new siphons as soon as the other alliances are no longer online. This could really screw up the T2 market if Goons pull it off correctly.

Perhaps you should add a 24 hour timer before the siphons activate and/or make some other changes.

It his highly unlikely that any actual live and undelayed interaction with real players takes place in this scenario. That is really bad game design for a conflict driver.

You put down the siphon(s) in a cloakie hauler without the pos-owner being around

You pick up the loot from a siphon without the pos owner (or even the siphon unit owner) being around

You destroy the siphons without the siphon owner being around, either with posguns from within the safety of the pos, or with drones from your covops SOE ship from outside)

Once again: this is a griefing tool and not a great conflict driver. It's about as exciting as dropping and shooting SBUs but with an added financial incentive for the attacker instead.

That's a whole lot of wasted chances for something that could have generated a massive amount of smallscale pvp interactions on Corp, or Corp + friends level.

So POS owners having porous borders and defense is my problem? If you want to play space empire, someone is going to have to play sentry.

Costs only 20m3 to deploy, but can take 1200m3 of minerals? Sounds a little bit fishy to me

Have you considered creating a version that siphons POS fuel?