EVE General Discussion

I was recently thinking about starbases (POS) and how I hope that CCP are finally going to do a fullscale revamp on the infernal things in 2012. By my reckoning the problems with POS break down into three areas, the first being the pain of maintaining them, which fuel pellets will hopefully go a long towards alleviating.

The second area is the big game design chunk of what they actually do and the godawful UI. Have you tried POS gunning? There must be a better way.... Stick in here a more more cool design and what have you. Its a big job and there are many opinions/suggestions out there on how to do the whole thing better.

If fueling/maintenance is part 1, and the structures/UI is part 2, what then is part 3? This last piece is a personal and long held bug bear of mine as someone who has been a corp director/CEO throughout nearly all of my 7+ years in EVE.

Corporation roles and permissions suck. The system is painful to use and convoluted, to the point where few players feel confident in saying that they know how it all works or even what half the options actually do. From a corp management perspective, the whole thing is hideous, overcomplicated and gets in the way of playing and enjoying the actual game.

I was very pleased to see the CSM’s (relatively) recent crowd sourcing poll come out with corp/alliance management tools so highly ranked as something the player base wants CCP to work on. And I was surprised, as most players never even see the interface let alone have to deal with using it!

It made more sense when I learned of the EVE University block voting according to a priority list set out by their CEO. And it was for that reason the results came to be seen as ‘skewed’, but even when the EVE-Uni votes were removed from the count corp/alliance tools remained high on the list (yes they will have used alts to vote too). The CSM advised CCP to ignore this area in their plans for Crucible and focus on other areas, which I agree was the right call for that release.

However, I think something is being missed in all this. Recently a corp mate asked me, his CEO, to grant him roles to setup his own industrial POS. We needed more industry in our small null sec holdings and we needed more stuff built locally to stock the market. Despite this, I reluctantly turned him down.

I turned him down because the roles I would have to give him are very powerful indeed. With them he could conceivably shut off critical things like the cyno jammer or jump bridges, or any SBU’s we have out. He could unanchor and walk off with every other POS we have. He could really make a mess of a whole lot of stuff if he wanted to. I didn’t suspect this guy of being a spy, but he had only been in the corp for a short time so I don't know him well personally.

The current implementation of corp and alliance tools is not simply annoying to CEO’s and Directors. It actually raises barriers to all players in experiencing entire areas of the game for themselves. The system is complicated and ambiguous enough that many players are not confident in the implications of handing out roles (assuming they have access to do so), and lacks the granularity to allow individuals to undertake their own enterprises without compromising the security of whole corporations and their members.

The irony is that POS were originally conceived as a form of player housing in EVE. The reality is that most players won’t be given the ability to ever use them because the roles system is so inflexible and open to abuse. I think its time that changed.

I completely agree with you,

I hate when people ask me for roles or what each role does.

My usual response is no you can't has, because you might break something,

& then I say the roles really don't do anything; it's the titles that hold all the power.

Then I give them a title like super star, and a friendly pat on the bum.

Yopp
ASTARTES CORP Human Resources Officer

Thanks for making this topic to remind CCP about this.

Right now I do not believe there is a single bigger aspect preventing more recruitment of potential customers for CCP that can help them than the lack of settings to isolate potential spies.

The POS system needs to be COMPLETELY redone into a modular system for 2012.

Every module and every aspect of that module should be configurable. A member should be able to be given either a tab or a small module in the POS with his personal space and ship space and no access to anything else to prevent theft.

BTW do you have the link to that crowd sourcing result. I have forgotten where they put the link.

The main problem i have with POS access and configuration is that when you allow someone to be able to online and offline a pos module, you also give them the role to online and offline the ENTIRE TOWER.

Good post OP. Now is the time to prompt them - nice one.

And while we are at it.... I want to be able to rent out LAB slots to the public! There are basicly no lab slots in the entire universe so why can't we have a player driven market in research also ?

-CJ

+1

That's all there really is to say. I do hope the POS revamp brings lots of shiny nice things.

God forbid that we let any but the Beta Vets actually play this game.

Regarding the OP's post, on a scale of 1 to 10... +20

... What? Sure, in broad concepts it's a similar mechanic, but API permissions and in-game POS permissions are absolutely different things code-wise. This would not be a trivial change at all.

Some sort of "key" system would be pretty great, but what happens when the person you trusted with the key gives it to someone else who you don't trust?

+1 Would "Like" again.