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Except it won't be a "small scale conflict driver".

the conflict just needs to not be "this ****** in our alliance put up an ESS, kick him out"

I get the point of the ESS is to promote more reactions from people living in null to small gangs flying through. I just think at the moment it provides not enough benefit to the people using it compared to the invading fleets (see single interceptor scooping all of the tags before any defence fleet could feasably respond by putting a disco ship in one of the structures, because lets face it that's the only way you're going to catch him now).

Instead, it should probably be re-worked like this. You put one of these mmodules down and it gives a 10-15% bonus to all bounties in the system, paid with the regular bounty payouts. But, if it is destroyed (not taken down), it disrupts the bounties in the system down to 75-80% (or less, idk) for a period of six-twelve hours.

Give the thing the EHP of a small capital ship so it takes a good ten to fifteen minutes to kill with a moderately sized gang (to give the defenders time to form up- with smaller alliances especially) and can't be abused by your random solo bomber and it gives a big incentive for people to come out and fight.

I wouldn't reccomend a very long penalty time though, otherwise you'll have gangs coming through in an alliance's dead hours and punishing people for sleeping on a regular basis.

Also I don't see the reasoning behind a 5% cut in nullsec bounties. If there was a valid economic reason it would be OK, but at the moment it just seems to be 'we want to make people in nullsec feel bad about how they play in the sandbox'.

I just want to take another tack with the ESS.

Think about what this will mean for nullsec ratter bots! MUAHAHAHAHA!

See someone botting the local rats? Put up an ESS and let him be (you'd have a hard time catching them anyway), you just stole 20% of his revenue for zero work and maybe even a bonus! Come back a couple hours later and collect a nice pile of cash, assuming nobody beats you to it, but still, there's places in null where the span of time between pilots entering the system is hours.

For the small gangs community, please detail the specifics of how this will get fights that you are not already able to get? I'm pretty certain that pages of posts have happened underlining how this WILL NOT get more fights, at least not the fights you are looking for. Ever.

Quick recap:
1. Not enough risk v. reward incentive to begin with.
2. Your hostile ESS will be ignored, since while you are in system, no one will be ratting.
3. You could have dropped an SBU.

There will be groups that already form up Home Defense and fight small gangs. There are groups that don't. I am still failing to see what the ESS will be doing to help change the current status quo in a meaningful fashion.

why do these small gangs think they should pose a serious non-ignorable threat to groups over 5000X their size.

1.) I acknowledge the risk is imbalanced: It is too quickly accessed (meaning the locals don't have time to defend it), and its bonus is negligible compared to the upfront bounty reduction, especially in regards to the difficulties defending it. However, these can be resolved as ccp tweaks the access time and the payout rewards.

2.) You would only put up a hostile ESS in a bot's ratting system (until the computer programs become smart enough to recognize and destroy them). The only way this concept works (in its current form) is if the ESS's benefits make it worthwhile for you to deploy for yourself (see point 1).

3.) SBU's are not small gang entities, and not relevant to this discussion.

How does this get you fights? It encourages the locals to form up and fight you to defend their ESS bounty pool. It also gives them a limited time for response which limits the magnitude of their response. Finally it has small rewards, which means any hostiles accessing the ESS for isk will be encouraged to do so in small, engage-able numbers.

1) ESS WILL NOT GET DEPLOYED BECAUSE THERE WILL BE NO ADVANTAGE FOR AN ALLIANCE TO DO SO. Why are you having a hard time with this? The economic incentive simply is NOT THERE. If a hostile installs one, then ratting will have stopped anyway until the hostile leaves, at which point fleet will form up for yet another null sec quickie structure grind. Said pvper will then be out 30M isk and crying to CCP about how these structures don't have enough hit points or how CCP should stop letting alliances form 40 man fleets to take them out fast.

2) Doesn't matter what you WANT. That's what EVE IS. Small gang warfare is prison **** warfare and I could probably look through many KB and see 4-6+ to 1 versus the target. THAT'S JUST HOW IT IS. You know it, and so do I. Stop trying to pretend that small gang warfare is somehow more "fair" than SOV warfare or more sophisticated or intricate. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's brutal, quick and usually for the poor man.

3) Prove me wrong. What null sec structures can I deploy in low sec? But you can gank in low and null sec can't you? Null sec is SOV fleets and warfare as I stated because you can't do it anywhere else. Does that mean I care if your frigate gang shows up for easy ganks? Not at all. But on the other hand, you should not be a "threat" to alliance space as your size is small. You want the advantages of being a big "threat" while maintaining small gang size and it just doesn't work that way.

It would be like trying to rationalize that Somali Pirates near Madagascar should not have to engage the U.S. 5th fleet, yet still be classified a major threat.

You strike me as someone that doesn't understand null sec or capitalism very well.

Implying it'll be deployed by anyone who's actually living in a system, and not by someone "just passing by".

This thread is full of people (including CCP devs) who don't understand nullsec very well and thats 95% of the problem