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If goons are doing it, it is fine. But, if anyone does it to goons it is a broken mechanic and considered griefing.

Didn't you know?

I think this is really telling of the underlying issue here. There seems to be a worrying number of players with a somewhat romanticized notion of 'space patrols', as they imagine people roleplaying mighty space empires defending their borders from interlopers.

The reality is that regular patrols to counteract dozens of small, cheap structures is incredibly boring gameplay-wise. Eve already has complaints over getting players to go out and shoot immobile objects during periods of war, and now we're extending this to every day.
In 6 months time, what do you think the typical player reaction to the idea of a 'siphon patrol' will be? How excited would you be to login every day and roam around playing space whack-a-mole only for them to pop up again in a few hours?

Siphons do nothing to encourage player interaction. If anything, their ease of deployment from slippery/cloaky ships discourages it, as players spend their more of their online time sniffing out structures rather than fights. They're yet another game mechanic in the mould of "do this boring thing or you lose stuff".



Suicide ganking is really well balanced in comparison to siphons. Ship insurance is not paid out for high-sec suicide runs, meaning attackers have to deal with actual ISK losses on top of sec status issues restricting their actions. Ganks can be mitigated by staying to higher-security areas, carrying less valuable cargo, or fitting a decent tank.
Most importantly; several players need to be online together, active and well-coordinated to inflict damage to another player with suicide ganks.

In comparison:
Player-wise, siphons work in reverse to ganks. It takes one person dropping them to deny income to an entire corp, and they don't even need to stick around as they're fire-and-forget. 50mil ISK worth of siphons can deny 300mil* in raw material income with no further action required.
Siphons directly affect T2 prices for everyone in the game. Suicide ganking typically affects single players.
And the crux of the issue; two sides can engage in a resource-based war with siphons without their ships ever meeting in combat (or even passing each other in space). They basically encourage more dull structure-shooting with no incentive for an alternative.

* or more once r64 material costs start rising

Then use it to your advantage. People who ignore fleet commands get dumped to syphon-duty for a week. Or rent out the position. Charge people to keep your sites secure for some side benefit to them that makes the rent payment worth it. Yes, there is the risk of someone using it to their advantage, but that's part of Eve.

Or use the coordination of CFC to break the t2 market and then profit from the stocks while everyone and their mother begs CCP to remove the siphon units as they are exactly as broken as goons said they would be.

How many times do we have to warn CCP about broken mechanics before people stop with the whole stupid "if goons are complaining it must be a good mechanic"

I couldn't find a siphon feedback thread so I'm posting here. Just spent the day messing about with siphons and here are my thoughts:

Hopelessly unbalanced.

It takes 4 siphon unit to completely shut down production at a moon mining pos. I know that is their purpose, but the problem is how difficult (easy) it is to deploy 4 siphon units at said pos. First of all, they will fit in a shoe-box with room for your sandwich. Way too small. Second, no need to anchor them once in space. It was ridiculous how easy it was to deploy these units. I used a T1 frig, warp to the target pos at 50km, align to something, chuck a siphon unit out the back and warp off. Rinse and repeat. Finally, too many HP's. If you have a pos network and someone decides to attack it with siphons, you are going to spend your entire day shooting these buggers.

I predict some major player burnout coming.

yea, pretty much, even if i have to admit that sometimes goons complain because of a good mechanic will hurt them first, i have to say on this one, the mechanic is bad from start, seems a useless boring mechanic, easy to counter, useless aside for griefing, and pretty boring and inefficient at that.

boost it so it pays itself under 1h, now it would be viable for any entity to drop them, in the current state, they'll just join the other mods that noone use

Wow, looks like the Siphon units have already started to work even before deployment on TQ .... they seem to be collecting a nice quantity of goon tears here and not one ISK has been spent. Well played OP, well played!

I don't know about your figures OP, but it strikes me that Siphon deployment should require a little bit of planning to maximise the return on investment and time spent. It seems to me that deploying on any moon mining POS operations shouldn't instantly guarantee a return on the siphon investment, be that in moon mineral pillaging, pew pew opportunities or just goon tears.

I liked listening to the Goon Logistics guy during his Vegas presentation. He keeps repeating over and over, it's ok, we can handle it, we have the best logistics, we will be ok, but then he goes on about how siphons suck and ruin it for their systems.

I think it is great. I know a little about how people do tower logistics, and it will be awesome fun killing their sitter toons, and forcing them to spend time moving the toons back out. There will be logistics guys burning out in peacetime, forget wartime.

People will actually watchlist POS sitters now. Awesome.

Do you have any idea how quickly you can train a new character into an interceptor? You may be able to kill POS sitters, but you're gonna have to work at it

Yup, make them expensive but recoverable. Then we can actually contemplate breaking even with the cost of acquiring them.