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The way I look at it, the entire framework that causes null alliances and coalitions to form is broken, and is unlikely to be fixed by any single bandaid. Most things that take a stab at it will hurt small lowsec corps more, and addressing that problem is a much bigger question than a little feature like this one. However, I think a feature along these lines could add overall interest to the entire POS mining equilibrium without needing to poke lowsec punitively in the eye. In particular if the investment into the siphon is tuned at the right level (which might include a fuel cost rather than an increase in the ticket price of its materials), it will make the value equation of hitting lower value moons shakier and drive attention towards the higher value moons which are routinely held by the larger alliances. For it to work, there needs to be enough room in the financial value of the moon mining stream to motivate individuals (or corps) to risk X to try and siphon Y from it so with the right numbers it could be deliberately tuned to be undesirable in lowsec.

As for the simple fact of someone stealing from a POS being enough to drive the owner online, yes I agree it will. But they will resent it because it is a lose/lose scenario for them where the most positive outcome is for nobody to ever drop a siphon on them in the first place - something the POS owner can't even realistically control. When a major stakeholder's ideal situation is for other people to simply not choose to use a new feature, that seems like a fundamentally poor addition to the game. The justification of needing to break an unhealthy status quo isn’t sufficient excuse for such a design choice imo.

Change the spin of the feature a bit so that there is potentially something in it for the stakeholder (the POS owner) that can be positive, something that gives them a sense of agency and involvement, and that substantially changes the value of the feature.

Obviously there still needs to be enough incentive of potential profit for people to be motivated to drop siphons, but I think there's enough value in moon mining streams to make that work.

If the siphon is scoopable after incapacitation, and/or requires fuel to run that the POS owner can claim as their prize when they respond to being siphoned (and which also reduces the profitability of a siphoner when targeting lower value moons), then the POS owner can achieve a net profit from responding effectively to being siphoned at the expense of fire and forget siphoners. On average across the world of Eve some profit will be diverted away from POS owners, that is after all one of the goals. But by altering the risks taken by the siphoner and the accessibility of those outlays to the POS owner on response it creates a dynamic where the diligant of either side have a chance to be better off. A running cost for the siphoner also makes the otherwise more vulnerable moons less desirable to help direct the attention where its needed - high value moons. The logistics of going deep into nullsec are another piece of the puzzle - but at least its the right puzzle to be trying to solve.

The feature as published is busted. I'm saying the idea can be made to work in a useful way with some changes.

I'd also like to see some numbers. I don't have time atm to theorycraft a comparison of the different moon goos up and I'm sure there are many people in this thread with more experience than me at running moon mining operations who could do it more quickly and accurately.

a dyspro moon makes 4,602,103.00 min or 4,989,997.00 max per hour at jita prices (thats before fuel costs as the siphon doesnt care how much isk we have to spend on blocks) so 1 siphon would steal 60/100 units and with a 20% loss thats 48 units per hour into the siphon (2,209,009.44 min or 2,395,198.56 max per hour). assuming a cost of 10 mil isk it would take 4.52 at min price or 4.17 at max price hours to turn a profit. so if the siphon went undetected for 25 hours (the time needed to fill the siphon with 1200 m3 of dyspro) it would make 55,225,236 min or 59,879,964 max (before the cost of the siphon) however it would cost the pos owner 69,031,545 min or 74,849,955 max (before the cost of fuel). a min of 45 mil or max of 49 mil isk in the first day of the siphon stealing aint too bad a haul for "afk" work (and yes that siphon is afk work). if the siphon was abandoned and its mats collected by the pos owner after 25 hours then the pos owner still lost 14 mil min or 15 mil max from the siphon. it takes only 18.1 at min price or 16.7 at max price hours to cost the pos owner as much in moon goo due to the 20% loss as it cost to deploy the siphon. so you only need a 17-18 hour window for the pos to go unchecked and you have for sure cost the pos owner just as much isk as the siphon is worth if you never went back to collect the stolen moon goo.

CCP Greyscale wrote:

Unfortunately this is the cognitive dissonance we're seeing among the loudest supporters of this change.

There's a disturbing number who seem to believe that starbases are some magical ISK-generating tool that run without needing any time, risk and effort, teleporting cash straight into the owner's wallet each day. Somehow that justifies being countered a new mechanic that requires far less time, risk, and effort.

To realistically balance things out, siphons should cost several hundred million ISK and take a few hours to setup. They should require fuel topped up every few weeks, and their stolen materials should be emptied regularly to prevent overflow.

Of course this would be still be a terrible game mechanic, but at least both sides would be putting in the same effort.

Syphons that are left too long should generate rogue drones. Like a mouldy infestation.

Interesting!

Instead of automatic, passive griefing, after dropping siphon, makes griefing require activity i.e. visiting.

I wonder: in original proposal of CCP, griefer can enforce 100% loss with visit by cloaky interceptor with small cargohold by sucking small portion from siphon into cargohold, jettisoning, then transferring remainder from siphon directly to jetcan, then blowing up jetcan? So visit-for-griefing is much easier than visit-for-profitable-harvesting? Is this what CCP intend?

It is easy. You send both of them a message about a fight location. And you give them an incentive to arrive.

You can increase the odds that they will both be there by sending them the message in advance, and preventing the fight from happening in advance of the scheduled time. This is, in effect, how stront timers work.

If you want to skew the results, then let one side or the other dictate the time and/or location of the fight. If you want fair fights, then don't. Thus, for example, POCO fights are slanted to the defense because they dictate the timezone after reinforcement ends.

The above is about as good as you can do given the constraints of a worldwide playerbase that has lives and jobs. You will not usually get a fight, except from very large alliances, unless there is a lot at stake. This is because people play when they play, and both parties have to be online at the same time.

The answer for siphons, though, is what I've been pushing. They should steal a large lump rarely, not small sips every hour. (The lump needs to be large enough to be worth risking a ship over.) And when they do steal, both the POS owner and the siphon "owner" get notification mails. Note that while this will usually not get a fight, occasionally it will (especially weekends). And that is much better than CCP's current design, which won't ever create a fight.

One improvement I can see on my original idea is to build in a waiting period. We might explain that by, i.e., the siphon takes a short while to process the results. Anyway, the idea is that at time T, the siphon removes stuff from the POS and mails both parties. But neither party can actually get anything from the siphon until after an interval, perhaps half an hour. This gives them both the time to notice the email, and get to the site.

Ah! GoonHiveMind!

Harry forever will fight the goons