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Most of the suggestions the Devs came up with I like and I have no problem with.

Seems really interesting..

There is however, one structure that I think will be the most pain, open for general abuse by players and break the way the game is currently played. The "Observatory arrays".

"Dedicated to intelligence gathering.
•Service module possibilities: Being able to increase, decrease or block Star Map filters in the solar systems they’re deployed, act as solar system wide D-scan blockers, disrupt ship intelligence in the solar system, take over player tracking capabilities from NPC agents or be able to affect or pinpoint cloak users. We are considering basing their effectiveness through a network coverage (like cell phones) so that a single one may not be that useful, but maintaining a bunch of them in space could give a significant advantage.
•Rigs possibilities: anything affecting the duration or effectiveness of what’s mentioned above."

I hate the idea of decreasing the Star Filters for anyone. This would severely hurt the lone explorer pilot game play and would only give advantage to the large alliance blocks power.

D-Scan blocking would make finding and killing the home alliance much more difficult for the people that make things in nullsec blowup. Which CCP wants.

Also hate the cloak user pinpointing. Again. This will make the large alliance, with the system as their home, more powerful and people will be less likely to venture into these SOV systems.

I promise if you make Observatory Arrays with this abilities as described that there will be a lot less smaller PVP in nullsec (which is already pretty anemic) and will shrink pvp down to large alliance fleet battles. Small group raiders will be the most negatively affected by this structures abilities.

I'd suggest reimbursing the corp wallet of the corp who dropped it? The longer the station was in space, the smaller the reimbursment.

About the transfer of structures, it seems like a much needed functionality in my opinion. You could create emergent gameplay for the hauling role: People installing structures for you. And you would allow diplomatic deals to be made, that kind of stuff. Or people moving away from eve for a while and wanting other people to own it to manage it if needed.

Why? Neither of these make sense. Why should we get compensated for outposts we lost, and why should our compensation depend on how long it was in space? If the asset suddenly becomes worthless due to a patch change, that's still money directly out of our pocket.

It would be bizzare if we got a refund on this outpost we dropped in 2008 and lost in 2009: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outpost/46DP-O, but not outposts we currently own and have owned for years but did not drop ourselves.

Wow, a lot of great ideas and looking forward to all the changes.

I would like the "rigs for structures" to be divided a bit:
There should be modifications that are chosen at the time the structure gets put into space and "anchored" and which cannot be modified until the entire thing gets torn down again (if at all possible for the XL thingies).
On the other hand regular rigs should work the same as they do for ships (replaceable at any time but destroyed upon being removed).
I imagine the thing like T3-Subsystems, but without swapping after the entire thing is assembled (meaning the "subs" or "permanent rigs" modify the base attributes the structure brings to the field and provide bonuses or modifiers that cannot be gained by regular rigs).

Therefore I think an additional phase when setting up structures would make sense:
Introduction of gantries similar to the one used for POCOS. They come in the sizes M,L and XL (usable for all structures of the corresponding type), requiring a rather small amount of materials. When put into space they allow the placement of 1 unit of structure into it. In addition a few PI materials should be needed in order to put up a structure of size M upwards (having an automatic cost associated with tearing down and setting up again, not counting potential rigs which might be lacking, would encourage players to keep stuff in space and defend it instead of dodging every bit of danger). Ofc the amount should not go overboard and scale with the size and type of structure that is about to be anchored.
Besides that all the gantry would provide a couple of slots for "permanent rigs" defined by the structure placed into it. Those rigs are consumed together with the gantry, the structure and the additional materials once the final building process is initiated. After that the structure sits in space with its base attributes and the optional permanent modifiers from those extra rigs, ready to be fitted with regular mods/rigs.

This would encourage specialization of structures and discourage structure spam, since even the step of putting a structure in space would automatically incur costs that cannot be recovered. The additional gantry phase however would (or at least 'could in theory') prevent players from making big mistakes, since they have another step where they need to make a "yes I really DO want to do this"-decision (and it allows for sanity checks whether or not a planned combination of effects would even be possible in the first place in the current system, see below).

By splitting basic structures and their potential permanent bonuses into different sources, CCP would have more fine grained balancing tools. They can make 1 and only 1 base version of each structure type in every size the type is required and then instead of making faction or racial versions of the base structure, split and move those "faction features" into above mentioned permanent rigs or subs (like e.g. bonuses to certain types of guns or a more powerful reactor or fuel catalyst to save fuel, etc...). To prevent overpowered combinations some constraints should be placed, like e.g. associating those rigs with a type and restricting max number of rigs per type.
Ah, and I would put all really, really strong effects, especially strong system wide ones, into this kind of system.

Just a few of my thoughts to what I imagine the biggest and greatest change to eve since I started :>

Maybe consider a thread for discussions on the capture mechanic, as that seems to be a big part of the discussion, although that of course also depends on how newsov play testing shakes out.

Have you considered a combination of entosis and hotpoint/damage on a single structure? IE entosis once through a structures shields?

Re reimbursement: this is an interesting idea, will discuss it with the team.

Re racial types: the new structures wont be following the standard racial variants ie Caldari, Gallente etc

Instead of removing forcefields entirely, it would be nice to see them as a module that protects the undock of a starbase.

Harnessing wormholes as star gates with system effects worries me because currently wormholes are the best part of eve and their effects/transience is a big part of making this so. Also Entosis linking structures in a wormhole would wreak havoc on small wormhole corps which make up the majority of the population there. I'm excited about these structures but I think its important to tread more cautiously where the game play is currently not broken.

Are some structures going to be limited to sov, like outposts currently are?

Since I started playing Eve in Quantum Rise, this has to be the most ambitious set of changes CCP has ever attempted. Good luck. After having read the blog I have a few questions and observations to bring up.

Outpost Rigs -

• Will rigs be replacing outpost upgrades? Seems so.
• Plz have sec status bonuses based on true sec, not just hi/lo/nul/w-space. This will generate granularity for bonuses and make better truesec space worth fighting over for the better effects on structure upgrades/rigs.

Assembly Arrays -

• If Assy Arrays are player controlled, what does it matter if they have an NPC cost reduction?

Research Labs -

• Datacore Spawning. Don't IHUBs already have an upgrade for this? Or are you removing IHUBS?

Market/Office Hubs -

• Interbus shipping seems great. But it also seems like something that could be very easily gamed using alts or alt corps. I like the risk/reward balance there. It is trivial to shoot NPC haulers even in hisec so long as you don't mind the standings loss.

Observatories -

• Detect cloakies? yes, plz.
• I love the scalability and improved effects from using multiple observatories. Astronomers have been using this effect for many years to improve the resolution and information gathering capabilities of their telescopes. Make it so.
• Modify wormhole spawning? Again, do not IHUB upgrades already do this or are IHUBs being removed?

Stargates -

• What about Acceleration Gates?
• Does this mean you will be completely removing Jump Bridges with no replacement?

Admin -

• TCUs being removed and replaced?
• A structure to change sec status could be abused badly, especially in border systems with sec status near to 0.45. Modifying this up or down could change a system from hisec to lo sec, or vice-versa. These structures should not be usable outside of nulsec.

Advertisements -

• Monuments plz.

POS replacements-

• The ability to set and change the scope of a structure (personal/corp/alliance/public) after deployment would be awesome. There is nothing worse than having to scoop a structure and redeploy it just to change the scope of use or ownership.

Fate of items stored in destroyed structures -

• The wreck idea seems pretty useless if a player can only undock once. Unless they have a freighter, they will likely only get a few hundred meters of stuff and one ship out, guaranteeing an almost total loss every time. Huge risk with very little chance of recovery. Containers that spawn on different grids (otherwise the lag would be insane) seems much better in that regard. It will also allow for much more player interaction at later times.

Something completely different (Structure defense) -

• Remove the ability to use sentry drones from ships and enable them on structures. Give structures enough bandwidth, drone bay volume, and sentry bonuses to use them. Is this feasible?
• I'm more concerned that with only 8 high slots, structures will be severely lacking in fire-power. Sentry drones could supplement them nicely where they need it the most; against large ships with the potential to easily destroy them. This would also fix the issue with sentry drones completely screwing the entire combat meta. Two birds with one stone.