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Rubicon Mobile Units Feedback: Small Mobile Siphon
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Kai Ovaert
BrainBox
Blades of Grass
#1 - 2013-11-21 17:05:31 UTC
Firstly, kudos to CCP on another smooth release (at least from a Capsuleer's perspective).

Here's a few initial thoughts on the siphon, bearing in mind we are only a few days into their availability:

Price

  • I think the BPO cost is about right, perhaps a touch high.
  • The market cost of the units themselves (~30M ISK at this writing) is almost certainly too high considering a realistic lifespan vs. harvest capability. In this case I believe the market will correct itself, and only loosely coupled to the BPO cost.


Balance

  • I believe the siphon should be (a) accessible only by the capsuleer who placed it -or- (b) "show info" should not show the owner's information. Reason: the owner made the (not insignificant) investment in the siphon and took the risk placing it. While anyone can steal from it, the target Corp's animosity will be focused on the owner.
  • I agree that the siphon should not be redeployable - it makes the owner think hard about using one.
Endovior
PFU Consortium
#2 - 2013-11-21 17:17:27 UTC
I am currently hunting these. It's a lot of work to check a whole region for them, which in and of itself is an asymmetry, since it doesn't take very long to deploy one of them.

As such, it's a damn good thing that we know who's dropping them; that lets us know who's to blame. Similarly, looting the goo is a 'reward for attentively defending your space' thing. If you want to be dropping siphons, you can do it... but you'll need to tend to it in order to profit, and we'll know you dropped it, and we'll be able to respond.
Kai Ovaert
BrainBox
Blades of Grass
#3 - 2013-11-21 21:14:07 UTC
One could argue that it is the POS that should be attended to, and siphoning is the corp's punishment for being lazy.

I respectfully disagree with your assessment about locating them - a capsuleer with mediocre skills and SoE equipment can find them in one or two scans. Across a region - yes, more work. But your response seems to imply that you are "hunting" on behalf of a corp (why else would you care?), and further implies that your corp has multiple POS' (why else would you search an entire region) in which case, your Corp should really be doing more work to encourage more folks to help you out to reduce the obvious strain this is causing. And at any rate, why even bother scanning, just check your overview when you fly into your POS.

Also, you assume the person who dropped it is the person who is really "behind" the placement; in reality it is likely an alt used specifically for the purpose of misdirecting you. So telling people who owns the siphon serves little purpose, and you really have no idea who you should be punishing, since there is no way for you to tell who really collected from the siphon.
Endovior
PFU Consortium
#4 - 2013-11-21 23:21:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Endovior
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, though I don't really get how you equate 'laziness' with regular siphonhunting. My 'reward' point was that, if you catch the siphon before the thief does, than anything that was in the siphon can be reclaimed... as opposed to a random chance of it getting destroyed, if the siphon was changed to be locked to its owner, and the only way of getting the goo back would be to pop it. Similarly, if it doesn't matter who dropped the siphon, by whatever logic, then it shouldn't be a problem for that info to be available, right?

Really, I don't agree with your rationale for changes being necessary.
Kai Ovaert
BrainBox
Blades of Grass
#5 - 2013-11-22 00:08:29 UTC
Fair points, all. And these are just my musings after three days of using them from the "thief" perspective Pirate

I hadn't seen any discussion on the Siphon units, so my intent for the thread is to have exactly this kind of discussion. CCP asked for feedback, so here's one opportunity to tell them how they did on the first go-round.
Kai Ovaert
BrainBox
Blades of Grass
#6 - 2013-12-19 17:17:45 UTC
OK - we're almost a month in now so I'm bumping this thread with some fresh feedback on the Small Mobile Siphon Unit.

I average about 1M worth of stolen goo a day - all low-sec, low-grade goo. It is worth noting that I haven't deployed any siphons since my original post; all my take has been from other capsuleers' siphons.

I haven't found any siphons in nullsec yet. I attribute this to the negative-ROI on a siphon, combined with the likelihood that anyone with decent moon goo pays closer attention to their operations. Market price has dropped by almost 50% - 16M ISK as of this writing. I still think this is too high compared to lifespan - I have yet to see a siphon live longer than 48 hours.

I think the "Small Mobile Siphon Unit" should be re-classed as a "Medium" unit, and the "Small" class backfilled with a truly tactical unit, with stats similar to:

Max lifetime: 24 hours
Capacity: 200m3
Material siphon amount per cycle (processed/raw): 5 units/10 units
Cycle time: 15 minutes
Lola Humpsalot
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2013-12-22 16:20:44 UTC
I've been testing the siphons too for the last couple of days and I can confirm what OP is advocating.

The lifespan vs cost/collect ratio is a bit out of wack.
I average at about +- 1 mil ISK / 24hr / siphon.

Either I've been lucky but the 5 units i dropped have been collecting for 3 days now and are yet to be
"stolen" from by another player or destroyed by the owner.