Hmm, that is a good idea.

The only problem I have with it... It is another item you need to place that is visible which is another indication of plants being near by. But maybe that isn't bad either.

I would think the terminals are advanced enough to handly this type of mechanic. I know where you going with it.

Would these other devices be NPC items being sold or can players make them?

Great idea, and I like the small structure idea for the moment. When we get POS however I think it would be better to have a Radar/Sensor building which needs fuel/upgrades which grant the ability for the smaller deployable structures to be augmented...

e.g. Radar building can be upgraded for greater range/capacity but does not give details.

Deployable structures give details but you need to be within 1000m of them to see their data.

Combine the two and you get details across wide range....

However, this also present opportunities for enemies.

1) Small squads can search out the smaller deployables and attack them (some kind of corps event would be great for this so it isn't completely risk free for the attackers) which removes your detail view of your POS

2) Attacking the radar structure could cripple the ability of the corps to operate (i.e. you have to visit each individual deployed sensor) until they 'fix' it with materials and special industrial modules.

This provides good content for all types of corps from small to large and does not limit interaction to 'end game' corps only.

First, I'm not sure what POS is, I'm assuming this is an Eve term since it's not listed here and probably means Player Operated Structures (?) in this context (I never played Eve but I've seen plenty of video and read about the game and I know there are Player made/operated stations so this is my best guess).

I see potential problems with this, particularly, that an item like this would be tied in to the new event notification system.  If that's the case it would be trigger alarms every time someone touches a plant which essentially kills the plant-pirate mini game.

Even if it's not trigger events I can see people sitting there with an alt monitoring the panels to make sure the numbers are going up (growing cycles) not down.

I see the idea of having panels in the ground that have to be a certain distance away. That's not bad, other solutions might be a timer on info, say instead of a constant stream of info it updates every 15 or 30 minutes, or maybe even some form of mini game similar to artifact scanning or based on the can codes something like, the panel has a 2 digit code and you get 5 guess per 24 hours and if you get it right it shows the plant locations and if you guess wrong on the 5th try it sets off an event trigger in the notification log with a tone and does the same thing after 30 seconds if you stop guessing in the middle and notifies the owner.

Certainly there is potential for something to be implemented that doesn't take anything away and adds to the game to make it richer.

POS is being used in this context to mean any player operated structure, which station is a subset of. The distinction is important because not all POS devices should be handled the same. Something like a remote surveillance node is a deployable device, and not really a POS, but it could report to a communication station, which would be a POS.

Why that is important is deployable devices should be reasonably cheap in comparision to a POS and be expected to be lost on a regular basis, while losing a POS would be significant. Because this is the forums, I'll clarify cheap deployable device as about 20 Million NIC and up to 100 M, where POS's would be Billions of NIC.

Something like a POS should not require 24/7 guarding, meaning there are measures in place that prevent it from being destroyed quickly, it should never be indestructable though. In comparision, the deployable device could have offensive or defensive protection, but is designed to only 'hold out' for a short time before being destroyed.

The reason is, if expensive POS devices are vulnerable to off-peak destruction, the benefit to building one would have to be OP to warrent the risk of owning one. To be clear, making a billion dollar investment in something that could be destroyed the next day wouldn't be worth the effort unless even one day of operation would pay it back, and then if it stayed in operation it would be too much advantage.

Something like the panel would be a perfect compliment to the expensive POS, alerting online members to the status of the structure. Requiring a POS to be used in conjunction with deployable objects to get remote status would allow the system to be compromised without losing the expensive POS and making it not worth building.

Just a thought, the remote survallence unit would actually lock the tiles in its target range to monitor what ever is there, be it plant or structure. The cost of the deployable object would go up to get more range and more max lockable targets; or they could be enchanced by extensions of the player deploying them.

Sorry, my response turned into a wall-o-text.

I would disagree that norgalis are pos, they aren't 'owned' because anyone can harvest them, just like current outposts aren't POS; you gain a benefit from them, but you don't control them.

The distinction I was hoping to make is POS should be expensive and durable, but needs something that is easily destructable/replaceable to provide functionality.

For your example, the deployable sensors would lock the tile that the plant was on, using the same mechanics already in the game, but it would relay the cycle count to a POS, which would report back to the POS panel.

Without sensors, the POS has no functionality, but the sensors would be relatively cheap to redploy in comparison to rebuilding the POS.

The other difference would be that POS's are large targets in landmarks, whie deployable devices would be only a few hundred meters, so putting one down wouldn't be a Plants are here beacon.

Something like early warning radar would be a different deployable device, but maybe it can talk back to the same POS, making them multifunctional - with the addition of modules.

um, went long again... POS just has so much potential

i agree with gremrod that noralgis incubators are a kind of PoS (as per definition someone made @ the PoS discusion topic)

Being a dedicated miner, I hope they have a fuel need like in Eve.  I always liked being able to fall back on ice mining if I wasn't feelin asteroids that day.  Constant, and consistent demand, is nice.  Prices did very little up and down, was just guaranteed income.

I'd support the fuel being a new type of material as well, that isn't used in production.  But it will probably just be HDT.

If I have to refuel another thing at any mmo for the rest of my life, I'll kill myself with a wooden spoon, POS' donkey for too more than enough time and moons. Plz devs,  say NO to any kind of fuel mechanic.