Test Server Feedback

Tax rate at a POS makes no sense, since you can only install corporation jobs that get paid from the corporation wallet, you would only be taxing yourself.

Personal jobs at a POS may come with a POS rework in the future.

If I could ask one thing of the Devs in relation to the various avenues of feedback and announcements, it would be this:

For the love of God, could you please get all of the information into ONE place? I had to learn about the roll back of the stacking changes through TMC. You've got multiple threads up through the dev blogs, mutliple threads up in features and ideas, and, apparently, threads in the Test Server feedback. Can you please pull things together in such a way that players don't have to go to a bunch of different places to figure out what's going on? Maybe consider information streams that aren't categorized based on sub-forum layouts?

This isn't the first time I've learned about stuff through out of eve news sources because the information dissemination methods are so byzantine. It's very frustrating.

Thanks for listening.

Hi everyone,

Update on multiple-structure bonuses for starbases.

We've just had another discussion about this system as-implemented, and based on your feedback, the technical challenges involved in implementing it in a fully user-friendly way, and the somewhat limited upsides of the feature, we've decided to cut it from Crius.

Having multiple starbase structures of the same type at a starbase will no longer grant you any bonus above those inherent in the structure itself

The only substantial downside to this is that it makes it much easier to weaponize an industry tower, so we are considering upping lab/array fitting costs substantially in a later release. We likely will not do this in Crius itself as people will need time to reconfigure their setups.

We are looking into what we can do to mitigate the expected glut of labs resulting from this change; more info as we work through this process :)

Thanks for all your feedback,
-Greyscale

Encouraging to split up production into several arrays is a terrible idea. If you ever dealt with such production you would know.

As stated before, I really doubt anyone would waste time with online/offline crap except capital producers in lowsec.

Unfortunately I cannot think of any good solutions to that problem atm but scrapping the entire thing because of that is.... unnerving.

Not make-or-break? Let's consider cons and pros of doing industry in a POS vs Station.

Station:
+Absolutely safety
+Ease of use
+High mobility (easy to pack up and move operation 1-10 jumps out for lower prices)
+Immune to wardecs (using alts or couriers for hauling)
-10% NPC tax on fees
-Having to pay office rent (although most POS owners use offices too)

POS:
+No 10% NPC tax on fees
+2% ME reduction (for manu only)
+0.5-0.75 time reduction on all activities.
-Fuel costs ranging from 100-500m.
-Significant increase in maintenance & operational logistics
-Inability to rely on alts/couriers for distribution.
-Major PITA to relocate to a different system with lower fees.
-Operations interrupted by wardecs (can't get to the POS to do industry)
-Significant increase in risk of losing billions worth of POS assets, materials and Blueprints (BPOs can be saved but BPCs in production & the rest are screwed).
-Hard to defend as the attacker chooses if, when and where to strike.
-Invitation for wardecs (Big static object screaming "We do industry here, come shoot at us!")

I see lots of risk but very little reward. And with this latest announcement, it's just disheartening.

The excuse that we can't work around online/offline shenanigans is just silly and another example of CCP punishing everyone because of some predicted bad behavior. I honestly can't imagine too many people adding "sitting at a POS onlining/offlining crap before installing industry jobs" to their activity. If there was a point in offlining labs/arrays, that means they need that PG/CPU for other stuff, like defenses, and that many batteries take hours to online . So yeah, I can maybe see it on months long production jobs like super caps & caps in LS, but otherwise it shouldn't be an issue at all.

And increasing the fitting requirements of labs/arrays is going to be another downside. POS are pretty soft targets as it is. Having to shut-down your entire production in order to ensure minimum safety for your POS every time you get a wardec is insane. You don't know whether they're after your POS or not, and by the time you find out it's too late to offline/online anything. The POS will be already in reinforced or the batteries will be shot down as you're onlining them.

I know CCP loves to troll us, but c'mon, have some decency and respect.

By that logic, CCP should introduce a mechanic where every hour one of the POS modules, chosen at random, in an online POS self-destructs and destroys itself and everything inside it. That would certainly "discourage" POS use.

As I mentioned in my original post ... which you apparently ignored ... It's a trade off similar to the "push/pull" for the industry landscape... the "push" making you want a different array for each job is lower costs and the "pull" making you want to consolidate all your jobs in one lab is the hassle of shuffling components around.

do we play the same game? this is the game where people will spend 6 months infiltrating an alliance in order to awox them.
This is the game where people spend years researching their battleship BPO to ME 350 to save 0.01%

not being able to think up a good solution is a fantastic reason to scrap the whole thing... I dont want a crappy mechanic put into the game because the devs cant think of something better ... thats how crappy mechanics happen... Id rather not have the mechanic that to have it be utter crap!

That, surely, depends on what lab install costs will be post-Crius. And that, in turn, depends on how many people jump in who don't use labs now (because of queues) or use labs instead of POSes in future (BPO security).

We won't know the cost difference, and hence POS viability, between busy NPC-facility systems and quiet, hi-sec, "bare" systems for at least a couple of months, which not only gives the Devs time to react to any trends they spot but also makes declaring research POSes extinct just a little premature.