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The BPOs will be released on Nov 29th - the fuel change-over won't happen until 3-5 weeks later. Which gives you plenty of time to buy a BPO, research it, produce a few weeks of fuel pellets, and stuff a week's worth of pellets into your POS towers prior to to the change-over.

When the change-over happens, you go out to the towers, remove the old style fuel, fill it back up with fuel pellets, then convert the rest of your stockpile over to fuel pellets.

Or even better: Make my life simpler -- reduce the m3 of the refined ice fuels. THAT will save me time and headaches.

This is really a crap idea for us wormhole dwellers.

You say you're making this change to make it easy for people?

Tell me how easy this sounds....

1. Go buy component assembly array
2. Wait for a High Sec K162 (could take weeks) to come into my wormhole. (Because it won't fit in my Prorator and yes my wormhole is a static low-sec)
3. Get ahold of the BPO?
4. Offline a gun that I paid for just to online this component assembly array (because my CPU/PG are maxed out)
5. Spend how long making these stupid fuel pellets from the fuel I already have?

Guess what? I'm still going to be hauling the same fuel back and fourth, the only thing that's changing is I have to go buy crap, offline crap, and spend more time producing these pellets?

Sorry guys but your idea of making it easier for people sounds like you missed the boat on this one.

As it stands currently, you'll get the bonus on large towers but nothing on medium/small due to :math:. Still thinking about that one though

3) is technically feasible but raises the technical risk sufficiently that it'd have pushed the whole thing back to a nebulous "later release" (again), so we skipped it.

OK so make it that instead of producing 4 fuel blocks at 50m3 each, it produces 20 fuel blocks at 10m3 each. Effectively you add a factor of 5 to everything allowing Sov fuel bonuses work.

Small POS uses 5 blocks per hour, medium 10, large 20.

Simples.

This would also allow you to keep a bonus for faction towers.

The fuel pellets give you the nice package everybody (well most people) wanted, just don't oversimplify it to units of 1 when you can use multiples and not nerf mechanics and try to come up with something clever that will probably not quite work how you hoped.

Good simple idea - just keep it simple and we're mostly there.

While we're waiting to do a proper rewrite of the starbase system...

[edit]Edited by: Evelgrivion on 29/05/2011 04:48:41[/edit]
Images have been replaced. Unfortunately, I lost the originals with the forum debacle, but the ones that were linked are an acceptable substitute.

To put it simply, the current POS system is Butt-ugly, lagtacular, overpowered, underpowered, and completely, totally whacky, and fails to live up to the expectations of those who wish to see them for the first time.

This proposal at the very least aims to solve the first and last two issues, whilst providing a way for those who do not have 30 billion to blow on a station to get a suitable level of infrastructure for new 0.0 operations.

In a nutshell, its a modular POS with most of the functionality of a station, depending on the modules attached. How would this all go together? Today's idea comes with pictures!

The heart of the system is a simple interconnecting module. From this modular structure, all modules are referenced, attached, and based within a simple grid system.

Exhibit A

The four corridors allow for easy expansion of the station, and scalable infrastructure can grow with the needs of the corporation. or alliance in possession of it.

Exhibit B

Much like the current POS system, the heart and soul of the station would remain the control tower. For this example, let me introduce Exhibit C, for a small Caldari styled control tower.

Exhibit C

From this control tower, everything else on the POS is referenced. Instead of giving us exact XYZ coordinates of every module in space, they can be instead referenced to the tower and the layout grid on which it is based. After deployment of the control tower, you can begin adding additional structures to the POS to give it the functionality you want it to have. Allow me to present Exhibits D and E.

Exhibits D & E (Large File)

Exhibit D is a storage container module; these provide the storage capabilities for the POS. Exhibit E is a refinery module, which would obviously provide refinery capabilities for the station. Up a certain point, additional refinery modules would provide additional refinery efficiency, though logarithmically decreasing with each one while consuming the same amount of poewr. This could allow larger, more powerful, and more expensive designs to have a place in the universe.

Up to this point, the accessibility remains the same as it is for the current POS, with one user hovering outside the module at a time. To alleviate the issues inherent in that, I present exhibit F; the hangar module. This system is not limited to 1x1 modules, and "supermodules" are a distinct possibility with this system.

Exhibit F

Providing a certain quantity of hangar space (Meters³) depending on size (and expense), the hangar module provides an interface to POS management just like standard stations, allowing simple refining, manufacturing, and possibly even clone bays, depending on the modules that you have installed.

Put it altogether, and you get a simple POS that is easy to manage, expandable, and ranging in capabilities and expense. In its most basic form, I present Exhibit G.

Exhibit G

Here is an optional, more contraversial change that this system would make. If CCP wishes, they could integrate much of a POSs defense into this module system; rather than having free floating, invincible guns, large weapons battery modules could be introduced to the station. Presenting Exhibit H.

Exhibit H

Fully realized, Exhibit I.

Exhibit I (Fully Realised Modular POS)

While this is just a simple example, the potential is there for leagues more complex and powerful bases than those demonstrated here.

We're going to kick the granularity up by a factor of ten and re-implement ~15%/~25% fuel use bonuses for faction towers (and remove the faction-tower-specific bay size increases at the same time).

WRT the faction tower fuel use, we were hoping that what we were being told by various large-scale fuel operators that maintaining the high refuel interval was the main benefit for most people, as all other things being equal a 1/2/4 scheme is easier to work with than a 10/20/40 one. Obviously we didn't talk to enough small-scale users for whom the use bonus is a bigger deal; this feedback thread has established that this is still a big deal, so we're dropping to our first fallback position and doing 10/20/40 instead.