Mobile structures

Mobile Structures Intro

Mobile Structures are 6 new BPO's and 1 structure sold by empire navy stations that are added by the Rubicon patch to act as a kind of "Personal POS" and allow for greater flexibility for players within the field and expand upon survivability, utility, espionage, bounties and defence. Relatively easy to produce and becoming a more common sight by the day and come in 6 "Flavours" of BPO:

Mobile Depot
Mobile Tractor Unit
Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor and
Mobile Syphon Unit
Mobile Scan Inhibitor
Mobile Micro Jump Unit

Or being bought at the empire navy stations:

Encounter Surveillance System

This article will explain what they are and how they work.

Mobile Depots

A Mobile Depot floating through space

Mobile Depots act as a kind of in field fitting service and storage facility. Allowing for ships to keep one fit on the ship and another in the hold for quick swapping at a "safe spot" and to hold any extras they may need room for from Ratting/Mining/PvP. They take a minute to setup, use only 50 m³ of cargo space and will last for 30 days and after that they vanish so you need to keep an eye on them. Also any player can attack them and only get a suspect flag, necessitating either defending the Depot or scooping it up and moving it, making sure to pick up whatever you can take with you as it will be jettisoned after scooping to the hold. It also has a 2 day reinforcement timer once the depot reaches 25% of its maximum HP

These Depots have a number of applications but the two most used (Thus far) are as a temporary "home", setting it up and bookmarking it to come to as and when needed. The other use is primarily reserved for Lowsec/Nullsec/WH's where you move around in a travel fit and create a "safe spot" before going off to do stuff and returning to it and instantly refitting your ship for combat when things get hairy.

Another awesome strategy is if you're out in a big ship, keep a depot along with some warp core stabilizers in your cargo hold, if you can tank the opponents DPS long enough for the depot to deploy, you can refit your lowslots to stabilizers and bail (if you aren't bubbled, of course).

Mobile Tractor Unit

A Mobile Tractor Unit bringing in the goods

These do exactly what they say, put it down and it will start to tractor in any tractorable items within a 125km radius at 1000 m/sec into its massive 27,000 m³ hold but can only target things one at a time. These units only take 10 seconds to deploy and will last 2 days. These units are more specialized and rare due to the increased cost and skills required but are still a worthwhile investment if you dont have access to a Noctis.

Applications are few and far between but if used right it can be a godsend for time saving. Put one (maybe 2 or 3) down at the start of combat and keep the wrecks within 125km and you wont need to worry about slowboating towards each individual wreck as they will likely all be now clustered around the unit, just park up and let your salvager get to work. Other possible applications are within mining gangs who don't have access to say an Orca, put these down and jettison the ore for it to pick up and come back in a transport ship later on to pick up the goods.

These have seen some heavy use in missions, for those that had not historically spent much time looting and salvaging they provide an easy way to get most of the loot out of a mission with little to no effort. Coupling a MTU with one or two salvage drones can pick a mission clean roughly as fast as some missions are run. While the MTU doesn't do salvaging itself, by pulling the wrecks into a central location it can effectively improve the time efficiency of salvager drones by reducing their trvel time. Further, if your fit and mission do not require kiting or maneuverability at all, you can orbit the MTU and use a salvager in a utility slot to work through your wrecks as you run the mission.

Some systems have seen an increase in organized greifing centered on MTUs. Similar to Ninja_Salvaging_and_Stealing a group will take up residence in a high activity missioning area and scan down the MTUs. They will then agress the MTU attempting to bait the missioner into engaging them. As with Ninja Looters your options are limited. Engaging the griefer will set your engagement timer and their friends can warp in an finish you off. Not engaging the griefer will cost you not just your loot but the roughly 10M that the MTU cost. Orbiting the MTU at close range mitigates this heavily. As soon as you see them warp into your pocket you can empty the contents of the MTU into your hold and scoop the unit. They will be left with a mission pocket that you have already looted and are likely to move on.

It should be noted, MTUs do not loot wreks that are not yours. There are some griefers that prey on this misunderstanding. After having landed in your mission pocket they may drop an MTU of their own hoping you will engage it, presumably because you think that it will collect your loot for them. It is best to ignore these rogue MTUs as they won't effect you and even if the griefer warps out leaving it behind they can monitor you in local to see if your become a criminal and then warp right back in with friends.

Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor

Cyno=Blocked

The Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor is almost invaluable within 0.0, creating easy to set up inhibitors that can severely limit the enemy's ability to hot-drop on top of your units or gates. It prevents all normal cyno fields (but not covert cynos) from activating within 100km of the inhibitor. It takes two minutes to set up, has a 300 m³ volume and will stay in space for 1 hour. However unlike the other mobile structures this one cannot be reclaimed and will stay in space for that one hour or until someone blasts it apart. It is inherently designed for small or medium gangs as it cannot stay active for long under heavy fire due to a lack of HP that comes from the structure itself. One other limitation is it cannot be deployed in any location that would cause 2 fields to overlap as well as being expensive to produce (150m for the BPO alone).

Even with all those limitations it will still become a common sight in 0.0 due to the massive benefits that come from being able to control owned space and combat zones so effectively.

Mobile Siphon Unit

Theft: Now you dont even have to be there!

These units represent a new option to those with more clandestine missions as they will syphon off a portion of the moon minerals or reaction results that go towards the stations silos. Designed to be secretly deployed near to a POS and will not alert the owner to the theft of materials nor will the stations guns automatically shoot at it, meaning that people who own POS's need to keep a watchful eye out for any of these things floating around. Like the Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor this is a one use item but with an added twist, any pilot may access the hold so even the thieves wont be immune to theft. It only weighs 35 m³, takes 5 seconds to deploy and will last 30 days with a cargo hold of 900 m³ but needs to be within 30km of the target, so CovOps ships can truly take advantage of these automated thieves.

Other points to note:

No criminal or suspect flags will be placed upon attacking the syphon.
Will prioritise raw materiel over refined (cannot take alchemy output).
Can only steal from one silo at a time and only the one at the end of a chain.
Will take 60 raw or 30 processed at a time.
Players cannot put items into it.
Multiple syphon units can be placed around the POS and will steal in order deployed.
Have a waste factor of 10%
Will only steal during a production cycle (once per hour)
Max range of 50km
Can be manually targeted by station guns

Mobile Scan Inhibitor

Ever wanted to hide your entire fleet?

This structure provides a way to hide ships in a 30 km radius from probe and directional scanning. Ships within this radius will also find their own instruments rendered inoperable. Mobile scan inhibitor itself is not invisible, but highly visible to combat probes and directional scans. Therefore usage of this structure does not completely hide somebody's presence. It will be very visible to others that somebody is hiding something - it is only unknown what is hidden. Even more importantly: while the ship is hiding inside the structure's radius its sensor systems are inoperable. Therefore its use is far more convenient for fleets operations than for lone travelers. Activation time is 1 minute and it cannot be retrieved - it is only a one-time use disposable structure. The structure self destructs after one hour of operation.

Mobile Micro Jump Unit

Now you can jump like a battleship

This structure launches a ship 100km in its current direction, similar to the Large Micro Jump Drive module. It has no cooldown between uses or limit to how many ships can use it at once, but it does have a warm up time of 12 seconds before initiating the jump. It can be used by any ship smaller than a carrier and can be used both by friendlies and enemies. It has a 1 minute activation time, a life time of 2 days and cannot be retrieved - it is only a one-time use disposable structure.

Encounter Surveillance System

Make or steal a fortune on bounties!

This structure affects NPC bounty payouts in system it is deployed in. It cannot be built but only purchased at the empire navy stations (there are four variations, one for race). It can only be deployed in null sec and has a limitation of one structure per system. This systems pays out 80 % of the bounties directly while 20 % are stored in a system-wide pool. In addition, for every 1000 bounty ISK, 0,15 LP of the appropriate faction are awarded. The payout rises over time (the chance is based on activity) and can be encreased 5 times by 1% for ISK payouts and by 0,01 LP/1000 ISK for loyalty points. This gives a maximum of 105 % on bounties and 0,2 LP/1000 ISK. Destroying, scooping or accessing the structure resets the payout value. This structure therefore opens many possibilities for PvE bounty hunting as well as for PvP engagements since bounties can be stolen and payout bonuses can be reset. To make things even more interesting, the range to interact with the structure is 2500 m and the structure also has a 15 km radius warp bubble. If a player interacts with the structure he can make one of two choices: Share or Take all. Each choice causes a notification to be sent out informing all that contributed to the pool on who accessed the structure and what option was chosen. Share has a timer of 30 seconds and leads to the ISK in the pool being shared amongst those that contributed to the pool, each player receiving ISK equal to what he added to the pool. Take all leads to tags dropping in a can and has a 210 second timer. If the player stealing from the can is destroyed some of these tags can be retrieved and turned in at navy stations of the same race for ISK.

General limitations

All Mobile Structures have a minimum distance they have to be away from certain structures in order to be deployed (see below) and all of them are capable of being destroyed by anyone and the attacker will only get a suspect flag for it so a watchful eye needs to be on your goods as often as you can. Some of them can be relatively easy to scan down due to low sensor strength which makes them rather vulnerable, however the named versions of the Mobile Depot are very resilient to probing, the Yurt in particular boasting a hefty 400 sensor strength against all sensors which makes it very hard to pin down for all but the highest skilled probers

Skills, stats and materials required

Mobile Depot

Skills:

BPO Skills: Industry LvL 1

General Skills: None required

Stats:

Volume: 50 m³

Mass: 10,000.00 kg

Deployment:

Distance from deploying ship: 250m

Min distance from other Mobile Depot: 6,000m

Min distance from Stargate or Station: 50km

Min Distance from Control Tower: 40km

Activation delay: 1 minute

Maximum Lifetime: 30 days

Structure Retrieval: 2,500m

Capacity: 3,000 m³ (Wetu/Yurt: 4,000 3)

Access range: 2,500m

Allows direct placement of cargo: Yes

Cargo accessible by all: No

Max fitting range: 3,000m

Reinforcement period: 2 Days

Tech Level: Level 1

Meta Level: Level 1

Shield Capacity: 5,000 HP

Recharge Time: 2100.00s

Armor HP: 5,000 HP

Structure HP: 7,500 HP

Sig Radius: 500m

Sensor Strength:

RADAR: 50 (Wetu: 250. Yurt: 400)

LADAR: 50 (Wetu: 250. Yurt: 400)

Magnetometric: 50 (Wetu: 250. Yurt: 400)

Gravimetric: 50 (Wetu: 250. Yurt: 400)

Materials Required

Pyerite: 270

Tritanium: 6750

Zydrine: 270

Guidance Systems: 3

High-Tech Transmitters: 1

Nuclear Reactors: 1

Smartfab Units: 3