Assembly Hall

OK Folks, anyone who has had a POS thrown into reinforced knows that they instantly become a slave to the reinforcement timer. How many times have you tried to get your corp mates up at 3am to start the logistics needed to get your POS shields back up to 50% so you can actually do something with it again?

Proposal 1: EARLY EXIT. There is really no reason whatsoever that the person who puts POS fuel in the reactor, should not also be able to REMOVE THE UNBURNED STRONTIUM from the Strontium Bay, which means that the POS exits reinforced mode at the next 1 Hour fuel inject cycle. This allows the defending corp the option to exit reinforced mode early and start the logistics at a time of their own choosing instead of being a slave to a fixed public timer that is screaming out "Come Back and Kill Me in 1 Day and 16 Hours".
I mean really folks - if CCP is going to give a time option on when to exit reinforced mode for the owner of a POCO - the owners of a POS deserve the same consideration for their hard spent ISK. This allows the defenders to start the logistics and then work on their POS when their corp is online instead of trying to get everybody up at some godawful hour. The attackers, if they are watching (and who have the responsibility to watch since they are the ones BESIEGING the place) can always show up in a huge fleet and go to work on the POS as normal if they are so inclined.


Proposal 2: REINFORCED TIMER. Lets discuss the fixed public timer for a moment. Is there really a reason why my POS is broadcasting to the universe the exact minutes and seconds remaining until it runs out of strontium? You would think that "exactly how long we can maintain the emergency defense shield" would be a carefully guarded military secret. I am not saying that the attackers should not have some indication, but a minute and second timer is ridiculous. I don't have that precision fueling the POS, so why should an attacker have that precision when trying to bash it?
I suggest that that exact minute and second timer be replaced by a percentage power indicator - start off at "100% Reinforced" and drop by 5% increments as the strontium fuel bay is consumed. Attackers can still figure out when to come back if they watch, and when the thing gets down to "10% Reinforced" you know you are in that last 4 Hours of that 41 Hour Reinforced Timer on a Medium POS and can act accordingly. If you do 5% increments then the exit can be timed to a two hour window, same as a POCO.

No - I did not time it wrong, I am just damn tired of getting up at 3am to jerk around with this.

With all the tools available (watch lists, alts in system, etc.) do you really think the Attacker won't know what you are doing?
The only benefit the defender gets is to actually have his corp online when the POS comes out of reinforced. Allowing the selection of reinforced exit on POCOs sure has not made them "indestructible".

This becomes even more critical with the POS changes coming in Crius.

CCP - Do you really expect people to lay out Billions of ISK on all those arrays and a POS just to watch it get popped by POS looters 5 time zones ahead who will be there at 8am while your corp mates are asleep at 3am??

Good luck with that.

No, what you can do is take a GUESS and put in an odd amount of Strontium in the bay and hope that you miss the attackers peak time when it comes out of reinforced - not really the same thing at all. Being able to remove strontium from a tower in reinforced is not all that different except that you are guaranteed to be able to pick your peak time within an hour or two.

Again - you take the POS out of reinforced, the defender then has to rep it - which is not done at the push of a button. Yes, the buff is to the defender but it is a NEEDED buff, and will not stop a determined foe who can keep coming back to put it in reinforced again, camp the system, post cloaked scouts, etc.

DAMN - THAT IS A FAST POS REP! Too bad it is not available in HISEC, where a POS rep typically takes us all damn day with Basilisks. Maybe that is why hisec is littered with the abandoned small and medium towers of the small 5-10 man corps.

OK - now I understand that big objection from Nullsec - with a 10-minute rep, nobody would ever lose a POS.

This is definitely needed in Hisec tho - the exit window approach would be better than nothing. The hi-sec war dec pos bash for profit business is doing quite well and running out all the small corps with POSes. Even with this approach, I think we are going to need some kind of hi-sec POS shield repper that is a serious cut above the old Basilisk - I'll have to do the math as to how much POS you can rep in a 2 hour window using hisec equipment only.

Would the "exit window" approach radically change nullsec / lowsec? Would the change be bad??

I wouldn't say that if both the Attacker and Defender know when it comes out of reinforced. It will make the battle harder as you are coming in on the defender with his guard up this time, but aren't we all interested in having those huge epic big-fleet battles? I thought that was the reason you folks all spent all that time building capitals and supercapitals - so that you could use them to blow up the other guys capitals and supercapitals.

Giving us an exit window for POSes reinforced in Hisec is the LEAST they could do - if it is good enough for a stinking POCO it is good enough for a $2B ISK Dread Guristas POS.