Player-owned starbases
Overview
The POS and You guide gives a view into the world of Player Owned Starbases and how complicated and expensive they can be to run.
A Starbase, Player Owned Starbase, or most commonly POS, is a collection of structures that player Corporations may Anchor in the orbit of Moons. Starbases are not to be confused with the large 'dock-capable' Stations that orbit planets. A player cannot dock with a starbase, only make use of the external modules.
More confusion stems from the use of the acronym 'POS', which is sometimes elucidated as 'Player Owned Station', or 'Player Owned Structure'. No component of the starbase is a station. Player Owned Structure technically refers to the individual structures that make up a starbase. Worse still, players often refer to the central structure, the Control Tower as the POS on its own.
Officially, the term 'Player Owned Starbase' refers to the entire group of structures that make up a starbase.
A starbase fulfills many of the functions of stations, but externally. It is possible to store and refit ships, refine ore, or manufacture modules, ships and other items. A starbase plays an important role in the in-game economy, as they are the sole source of materials for Tech 2 ship manufacture. They are also required to build Motherships and Titans, and to process Combat Booster materials.
A starbase is used in the following capacities:
To claim space for a Corporation or Alliance(No longer valid with the Dominion update)- To mine resources from Moons
- To hold goods and materials in a time of war or for transportation
- To give players a safe place to go when under fire
- To provide an exclusive manufacturing or research center
Starbases are primarily used in security 0.3 and below systems for moon mining and reactions, for Sovereignty, for guarded Safespots, and for ore refining. A starbase may also be run in security 0.4 to 0.7 systems with the moon mining and material reaction functionality disabled. Their effective use is limited to guarded Safespots or manufacturing/R&D. starbase ship manufacturing capabilities are also limited, in 0.5 or higher systems, to Large Assembly Arrays. This disallows the starbase from making anything larger than a Battleship in 0.5 or higher security.
As items cannot be Anchored in space marked 0.8 or higher security, starbases can only be placed in 0.7 or less.
Requirements
Skills
You need the Anchoring skill to be able to anchor different starbase structures, you will also need the starbase role from your corporation to manage the control tower and operate structures like Refining Arrays and Ship Maintenance Array.
Standings
In addition to the anchoring skill a corporation wishing to place a starbase in a high security system will also need faction standing with the faction owning sovereignty (ex. Gallente Federation in Essence systems). Corporation standing can be figured using all non-zero active member standings. Characters on inactive accounts don't count towards the total. In case you just created your corporation, it will take a few days to get correct faction standing for your corporation. Every DT the faction standing raises to the correct standing value. Be patient.
For empire space your corporation needs to have the following standing to be able to deploy a starbase in a certain solarsystem: 0.4 needs 4.0 faction standing 0.5 needs 5.0 faction standing 0.6 needs 6.0 faction standing 0.7 needs 7.0 faction standing
BUG (04-08-08): When looking at the faction standing for your corporation it will not show the correct value. Ask somebody else, that is not in your corporation, to check for the real faction standing OR (10-15-08) right click on your corporations standings and select 'Show Compositions'. This bug is due to the client caching the value of the standing for too long.
Common methods of quickly raising factional standing for this purpose are doing COSMOS missions and turning in certain tags to datacenter agents.
Defense
High Sec
POSes in high sec tend to have lighter defenses, as well as configured to NOT fire upon players that are not valid targets (this excludes everyone except war targets and GCCs). High sec systems are full of POSes, but are much safer to warp to due to the above mentioned safeguard.
Low Sec
POSes in low security systems have much more formidable defenses, due to the ability to not only attack them, but to bring in capital ships to assault them (dreadnaughts). These POSes can also be configured to fire on any non-blue pilots (a non-blue pilot is a pilot who does not have +5 or +10 standings to the corporation that owns the tower), possibly destroying their ships (and pods given a chance).
Null Sec
POSes in 0.0 space used to be used to claim sovereignty, so you'll see references to that in older information. That's no longer the case, but they're commonly used as defensive structures and safe points. They will invariably be heavily armed. Under no circumstance should one be approached casually.
These structures can serve as a home base in a system with no outpost ("docking" stations, as seen in high/lowsec), or as industrial facilities for a nullsec corporation or alliance. Industrial POSes will have lighter defenses than purely defensive setups, but may be vigorously defended by the owners.
In wormhole space, POSes are the only available structures to base out of. They're "home" to the owners and as such, run very heavy defenses. If the POS is manned, expect human POS gunners to take careful aim and blow up your ship and pod without apology.
Defensive Strategies
There are many ways that POSes setup defenses, and there is no "best one". There are, however, several well known strategies:
- DeathStar POS
- Named after a powerful battlestation, DeathStar POSes are all about guns and pure destructive power.
- Guns are typically anchored on all 6 compass points
- Gun types generally include Projectiles or Lasers (no ammunition reloading)
- Multiples of each gun (i.e., 3 guns of the same type, with only 1 online)
- Multiple sizes of guns, usually medium and large guns (medium is battleship size, large is capital size)
- Usually as many guns as possible are onlined, with multiple backups for each type. Nothing is more irritating to an enemy attacker than to take down one gun, only to have another one onlined again 2 minutes later.
- DeathStar POSes include very little of anything but defensive measures. Shield hardeners can be included, as well as limited amounts of ECM.
- EWAR POS
- (Not clear on an official name)
- An EWAR POS aims to annoy the enemy into leaving (especially effective in lower class wormholes with a medium to large tower)
- Idea: Have so much ECM that every attacking ship is simply locked down and unable to target the POS, and thus unable to attack
- Generally not as effective against large attacking fleets (thus better in low class wormhole space), though could be useful in breaking a Logi chain and allowing defenders to score kills.
- Uni POS in Aldrat is a great example of this
Structures
There are many structures available to build and customize a starbase. Each structure has a specific purpose and plays an important part of your base's operation and enhances its capabilities. Structures must be Anchored at you starbase and brought online via your Control Tower before they are operational. These structures must be bought on the market and transported into the orbit of a moon. As they are very large, they are often moved using an industrial hauler or (in lower security space) capital ship.
More detailed information can be found in POS Structures.
Uses of a POS and the Types
Moon Mining
A moon contains a certain configuration of minerals, and this does not change. They appear to be distributed randomly within regions, with high variance in mineral type from one region to another. They are broken down into Gasses and Metals, and in the database they have numerical rarity values. The 'abundance' of a mineral was planned to be used to harvest more than 100 units of ore per cycle, but that feature is not in-game yet and does not appear to be planned anymore, so effectively abundance (Promethium 2, for example) doesn't matter.
Research and Development
The most common use for a POS in highsec is its research labs, where pilots can copy, research, and invent blueprints. Since the NPC station lines are ALWAYS full, a corporation with its own research POS can still work with blueprints, free of the NPC costs (though fuel does cost more).
Refineries
More common in nullsec and wormhole spaces, these stations provide a place for miners to store and refine massive quantities of ore where there are no other stations. Though they have a much lower efficiency than those in NPC stations, the sheer volume and value of the minerals gained from nullsec mining more than make up for it. Especially valuable in wormhole space.
Home Base
Another common nullsec use, a system with no stations can have POSes setup to provide storage and ship refitting abilities. This is especially valuable in wormhole space.
States (online etc)
Fueling + Transporting
A Control Tower runs on fuel. The fuels needed to keep a Control Tower online are trade goods and ice products. Your Control Tower has limited space for you to place these fuels in. The fuel units are consumed every hour for a Large CT, every 2 hours for a Medium CT, and every 4 hours for a Small CT.
Adding fuel to your control tower
* Right-click on the tower * Click 'Access Resources' * Drag and drop the Isotopes, Heavy Water, Liquid Ozone, and Strontium Clathrate you purchased along with the other necessary Robotics, Enriched Uranium, Mechanical Parts, Coolant and Oxygen.
Starbases do not refuel themselves: they only take what's available inside the resource storage part of the CT. If a specific fuel like Liquid Ozone has run out, then your structures will start to go offline. Don't just shove tons of fuel in there, balance it out so everything has roughly the same amount of days supply.
If you run out of Isotopes, your whole Control Tower will go offline, shields will drop and you will be a sitting duck. This is precisely the reason why fuel is such a critical issue and should be the most important thing to take into consideration when planning your base. Ask yourself if your corp can mine/buy the required fuel regularly, how many members can have mining barges? Do you have easy access to ice belts?
Always mine in advance, have 1 months supply stored in your Corporate Hangar Array at the starbase. If you mine on the spur of the moment whenever you need fuel you will fall behind and risk leaving your base open to attack.
- Note: Strontium Clathrate's have their own fuel bay, accessed in a similar way.
POS destruction
When assaulting a POS, the attacking pilots must know its defenses and bring an appropriately sized fleet. In known space, once the POS is located this is a relatively simple step. When the POS is in wormhole space, attackers must have a way of tracking the exit locations, usually by camping a scout there for a few days.
Once the defensive capabilities are known, attackers can assemble a fleet. These fleets generally consist of sniper and RR fit battleships and Logistics ships.
Assuming the fleet makes it to the POS intact, there is (more or less) a certain order of destruction. 1) POS Guns: Once the enemies defences are destroyed, he cannot harm the attackers. 2) POS Ewar: Once the enemy cannot attack you back, you need to remove its ability to stop you from attacking. Destroying the ECM, warp scrammers, webbers, and neuts removes this ability. NOTE: Once a defense module goes into structure, it goes offline. They cannot be destroyed or removed until the tower is offline. 3) POS Control Tower: This is the only remaining module targetable. Once the Tower hits 25% shields, it goes into Reinforcement Mode, where it will stay until either the Strontium Calthrates are consumed, or it is remote repped (from outside the shield) above 50% shields. The tower CANNOT be destroyed until all Strontium is consumed. Once the tower comes out of Reinforce, its remaining shield, armour, and hull can be burned off and the tower destroyed. At this point, the anchored modules around and in it become free, and the attacker can take or destroy them at their whim.
Strategies for Setup
Setting up a POS is a fairly simple (if VERY boring) process, consisting of jettisoning the modules for corp and anchoring them one by one. The tower takes the longest to anchor, and the guns the shortest. Once the tower is anchored, anchoring of the modules can be done through the POS management window, which consists of dragging the module to the location (similar to a probe), and selecting anchor. Then the module must be onlined (which takes a similar amount of time).
Cost
Tower and Modules
POS startup costs can range from reasonable to outrageous, depending on the size and modules chosen. A small tower costs about 50mil, a medium 100mil, and a large 200mil. Faction towers are significantly more expensive, with a Domination Control Tower topping the charts at an obscene 3 billion isk.
POS modules are significantly less expensive (generally, there are exceptions), though have a faction version as well.
Fuel Costs
A small POS will cost around 40-60mil per month in fuel. A medium POS will cost around 90-120mil per month in fuel. A large POS will cost around 200-250mil per month in fuel. This is all dependant on the number of modules onlined, faction or regular, and whether you create fuel with PI yourself or not.
War!
Wormhole Uses
As mentioned above, POSes have a huge part to play in wormhole life. They provide a home base, ship refitting, and storage. Since there are no NPC outposts (nor player owned ones), POSes provide all this in their place. The only things that cannot be used in wormhole space are those modules requiring sovereignty.
