Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First off, let me preface this by saying I am a FW combat pilot, not an industrialist. I have spent a grand total of three months in null sec. I have never owned, or operated a POS, and have only been in one maybe a hundred times. That said, I have a deep love for this game, for its tenuous balance, and have studied this game on all sides at length. That said I have several assumptions about POS, and null/lo/high sec relations.

1) POS are fiddly, annoying things that require constant fueling. Although blocks have improved this somewhat, the process still remains a barrier to entry, and causes people to decide that station systems are simply better
2) Null sec industry is fundamentally broken, leading people to import more than construct.
3) Fights are now more about pride than preserving/destroying things of value (with a few notable exceptions)
4) A POS revamp is in order

My suggestion is two fold, and one of them will make people love me, the other hate me.

First: allow POSs to be expanded upon with specific modules that connect the expansions with the central tower. Each part will have its own powergrid and CPU, however, expansions will all be powered from the central unit. Expansions can be specialized, for example an expansion that eases the fueling process (stores/processes large amounts of fuel and automatically maintains the fuel system). Each expansion will be more efficient than building an entirely new POS, however, the central core tower will still be a central point of failure. In other words, no matter how big and sprawling your superstructure becomes, destroying the tower shuts down EVERYTHING. This makes the decision to expand vs. build a new one relevant and interesting. As people invest in these expansions, their overall investment becomes more valuable, in terms of usefulness and raw input. Expansions should take awhile to be available, or to build (avoiding the long anchoring times that caused so much heartache). The mega structures will represent very large investments of time, isk, and military power combined, and become beacons of pride for those who can create and defend them, and massive targets for those who wish to topple the top.

Second: move most if not all ship production to POS. Transform POS into shipyards. Allow modules to be created with minimum risk in stations, however ships themselves must be built in space. What this will do is naturally push ship production outwards, production in empire will require silently abiding the empires annoying rules and policies, which are oppressive and very restricting (this is a dystopian future after all). Tycoons who have established favor with the empires will be allowed to stay (standings) but those who wish to establish themselves will naturally be drawn to the wild fringes where regulations are not nearly as strict. Those who live in empire should feel the weight of that decision, so that they may opt to fall under the mantle of player empires, or opt to try to carve their own niche in lo sec/npc space. Because of the expandable nature of POS’s one could make a nice little outpost for themselves with only one or two expansions. As long as players create defensible, small bases of operations, many of the bigger threats will ignore them, seeking better prey. However, the risk is always there.

In closing: It is not enough for players to simply take over the avenues of isk generation through POCO taxes as we saw in the previous expansion. Those who make things should leave marks on the universe as tangible as those who destroy. Balanced correctly I believe this would usher in a new version of the life triad that more properly enforces the themes of hi/lo/null. Hi sec is safe, but safety comes with a cost; lo is a wild land where personal greatness can be achieved, if only you can fend off the damned pirates; and null is the land of great empires, spawling superstructures, and massive egos, all of which can come toppling down as the barbarians invade.