Gravity well
Gravity Well is a free-port Fortizar Class citadel in Boystin which was built by members of Project Solitude for use by Eve University members and residents of the Solitude region.
As a free-port Gravity Well provides market, reprocessing, and cloning facilities to the Solitude region along with corporation hangers for Eve University members. Being in Boystin Gravity Well has easy access to the current market hub house in the NPC station of Boystin V - Moon 6 - Federal Intelligence Office Assembly Plant; along with this the Low-Sec system of Pertnineere next door allows easy access for Jump Freighters.
Gravity Well finished anchoring at 00:15 on August 16 YC 118 and was the second citadel built and anchored by Eve University after Azmo's Large Innuendo. Due to restrictions around control permissions, access rights and to keep better track of tax income Gravity Well is currently held by the Ivy League Hall of Residence rather than the University directly.
Services
Market
Gravity Well has a market module installed; this allows the purchase and sale of items from the citadel. Brooker fees for this market are kept deliberately low to encourage market activity. Uni members are strongly encouraged to make use of this market to help establish and maintain Gravity Well.
Cloning Services
Gravity Well has a cloning module installed; this allows capsuleers to install jump clones and medical clones in the citadel. Members of Eve Uni can install clones for free.
Reprocessing
Gravity Well currently has reprocessing facilities. It is expected that these will be removed once Industrial Arrays take over this functionality.
Corporate Offices
Eve University has corporate offices in Gravity Well; this allows corporate hangers for University members. Unfortunately current Eve mechanics does not allow corp members to remote install a medical clone to a citadel.
History
Gravity Well was built by the members of the Project Solitude campus as both an experiment to investigate the construction; use and function of citadels and as a uniting project for members.
Origins
Late in 2015 The idea of a uniting project for the members of Project Solitude was one of the outcomes of discussions inspired by Aaric Novigrad's "Solitude State of the Union" post. Leading on from this Sally Digital noted that the the idea of a communal POS had often been kicked around by members of Project Solitude but quickly discarded due to the complexity and restrictions of POSes. However the announced introduction of citadels by CCP presented "the opportunity for a massive communal project to build, deploy and maintain one of these structures for ourselves, for the benefit of our fellow Solibro’s and, possibly, the wider Solitude community." At the same time the name "Gravity Well" was coined as a title for the proposed project.
The following discussions agreed that the construction of a citadel in Solitude by members of Project Solitude was desirable. However a number of factors had to be considered including feasibility; location; type and function of the citadel. Along with this a major point of discussion was who would end up "holding" the Citadel. At the time little information had been released on citadels so most discussion went into a hiatus. However the idea that Project Solitude should and would establish a Citadel in Solitude had been agreed and that once more information was released the campus would undertake the project.
Planning
Early in 2016 with the majority of citadel information having been released and the announcement that citadels would go live with the April release actual planning for the construction of the citadel begun. While the location; name and holding corp were still to be determined these would not prevent construction as under citadel mechanics the citadel itself could be constructed and later anchored. What had to be confirmed though was the type/function of the proposed citadel. Internal discussion lead to the conclusion that to allow the greatest functionality at a cost which was both affordable and defend-able by members of Project Solitude a Fortizar class citadel should be constructed.
Construction
In the mid period from April 2016 till July 2016 resource gathering activities were undertaken by the members of Project Solitude. These included shared can mining fleets to gather minerals; weekly missioning fleets for required salvage and many members of the campus turning their Planetary Interaction chains over to produced the needed PI products. Isk over-flow from these activities was used to fill up any shortfalls in materials.
Also during this period the University firmed up it position on citadels including the introduction of a Director of Structure and Structure Officers to oversee and coordinate all structures across the University. This lead to the appointment of Talman Drak as the first Structure Officer for Project Solitude. Along with him Project Officers Exorcist Wraith, Pemluan Katelo and Tek Sharax and Project Member Angella Montjoie were instrumental in coordinating the fleets and construction of the citadel.
Anchoring
One of the riskiest points of launching a citadel is the dangerous final 15 minute vulnerability window at the end of the anchoring. Due to this anchoring of Gravity Well was started with very little fanfare by a safe alt corp at 00:15 August 15th 2016 with anchoring completing 24 hours later at 00:15 August 16th 2016.
At then end of anchoring Gravity Well was then transferred to the Ivy League Hall of Residence for future safe keeping.
