User:Enta en bauldry/POS
Player Owned Starbases, or POS are anchorable structures that provide various services in space. They are deployed all over New Eden and Anoikis, filling various roles for vastly different entities. They require fuel to run and are a risky asset because they're in space, meaning they can be shot.
Core Mechanics
All POSes are initally erected with a control tower which provides a protective forcefield, CPU and powergrid space for adding modules, a strontium calathrate (stront) bay for reinforcement and a UI to configure related roles and access to the forcefield.
Once the tower is fueled and a password entered for the first time it will generate the forcefield bubble, granting protection from enemies. Ships and structures inside the forcefield cannot be locked or lock anybody outside. Smartbombs and bombs don't work either. While the forcefield protects everything inside it, the tower itself is exempt from this feature. The forcefield can grant access based on a password or corporation or alliance status. The restrictions may be issued simultaneously, so it's possible to have a password and a corporation requirement. However, anybody with the password can enter the forcefield regardless of their alliegence.
If the stront bay is fueled and an unfriendly entity starts shooting the tower, at 25% shield;
- The tower will resist all locking attempts,
- Any modules requiring CPU will be turned off,
- Shield hitpoints will no longer regenerate over time,
- The fuel and stront bays will be locked,
- Parts of the configuration UI will reject input.
- The tower shields cannot be repaired.
At this point the structure is in what is called reinforced mode or RF for short. A timer visible to anybody on grid begins depending on how much stront is in the bay, for a maximum of 41.7 hours. Once the timer reaches zero it is possible to start shooting or repairing the tower again. If the shields are repaired up to 50% any attempts to destroy it can be impeded by another reinforcement cycle at 25% shields, provided the stront bay has been refilled.
Modules
Control towers only provide the protective forcefield without modules. To receive the benefits of various modules, they must be purchased and anchored after the control tower has been onlined. The tower will provide a limited amount of CPU and powergrid. While a lot of modules can be anchored you may no be able to online all of them.
Services and Storage
These anchorable modules provide storage, quality of life services and strategic opportunities to the POS owning corporation and/or alliance.
Corporate Hangar Array: Provides corporate space to store items. Mirrors corporation hangars and inherits access levels from corporation role settings.
Personal Hangar Array: Provides space for corporation members to store items privately. Has unlimited space globally but every character gets limited space.
Ship Maintenance Array: Provides space to store ships on a corporate level. Additionally allows members to fit ships in space similar to the Orcas fitting service.
Capital Ship Maintenance Array: Same as the Ship Maintenance Array, only (much) bigger and with a better space/fitting requirement ratio.
Cynosural Generator Array: Generates a permanent cynosural field that can be locked onto by ships with jump-drives or jump-bridge generating ships. Requires fuel.
Cynosural System Jammer: Prevents any cynosural field in system from being locked onto. Requires fuel.
Jump Bridge: Generates a permanent jump corridor with a sister jump bridge. Limited by range and requires fuel.
Manufacturing and Research
These structures provide manufacturing and research lines for production related tasks, additionally they provide ore and mineral related services.
Assembly Arrays: Provides manufacturing lines to build various items and ships. Require materials and blueprints to function. Common advantages are shorter build times. Some of them can only be anchored in sovereign nullsec or 0.4> security status systems.
Laboratories: Provides research lines for invention, Material Efficiency and Time Efficiency research. Common advantage is shorter run times.
Refining Arrays: Refines minerals with efficiency based on player skills and the set rate.
Moon Harvesting Array: Exploits a moons mineral riches at a set speed.
Compression Array: Compresses raw ore for transport much like a Rorqual.
Silos: Stores and feeds refineries with various drug and Tech 3 polymer raw materials.
Refineries: Reacts raw materials for Tech 3 polymer or drug production.
Defensive
A starbase may provide you with protection and many opportunities compared to the scary dark void of "outside the forcefield" but the starbase itself must be protected from assault. These structures do just that, they fight back too!
Shield Hardening Arrays: Increase shield resistances of the starbase tower. Comes in the standard four flavors.
Electronic Warfare Batteries: Each kind of battery deals a different effect to enemies on field. They can activate on a single target at a time. The effects are sensor dampening, ECM, warp disruption, stasis webification and energy neutralizing.
Gun and Missile Batteries: These batteries can have hybrid, laser, projectile guns or missiles. There are three sizes for each and each size has two range variants, much like regular weapon systems. They must be fed with ammunition and due labelling the batteries are actually one size large than what their name indicates. Ex: Small Pulse Laser Battery is equivalent to a medium pulse laser and requires crystals accordingly.
The Electronic Warfare, Gun and Missile batteries can be controlled by a player.
Corporation Roles & Skills
All starbases are corporate assets when it comes to game logic. There are no exceptions to this rule. Therefore to run a starbase and do various things with it roles must be granted through the corporation interface. Additionally certain tasks have skill requirements to be adhered.
- To anchor anything in space, you will need the Anchoring skill and the Starbase Management corporate role. The Anchoring skill grants different structures for different levels, you can review the items you wish to anchor to see what level they require.
- To use anchored guns you will need the Starbase Defense Management skill and the Starbase Defense Operator role. The skills prerequisite is Anchoring IV.
- To re-fuel and re-stront a tower you will need the Starbase Fueling Technician role. This role does not grant the ability to remove fuel from the tower and isn't required for anything if you already have the Starbase Management role.
- Additionally, various structures such as SMAs and CHAs can be set to only accept fueling technician access through their own interfaces. This can not be configured down to individual hangars in a CHA.