One of the major problems with bases is that they can be slapped just about anywhere, and server gameplay was harmed by a few POB's being sited in locations that made it just about impossible to enter through said gate/hole. This discussion is not about which bases did what to whom. This is a discussion of a possible solution to the 'seemed a good idea at the time' base locations.
Anomalies first cropped up in the SP campaign; Benford station was located to study one. There is another in the Omega 3 asteroid field. Anomalies could be used as an anchor for destructible player operated bases.
InRP: the anomaly gives power to small stations that do not have their own (insert technobabble here) power source. If you notice that the POB's are a lot smaller than say, trenton station, and the more compact bases like glasgow are crewed by robots, requiring less power consumption as they do not require life-support or pizzas.
Balance:
you can deploy an ordinary station without a power source anomaly, but it requires X amount of Y commodity every (time period). Something tricksy like nommie power cells every day perhaps.
Balance 2:
the heavy lifter mk2, released only upon admin approval, can create the 'roppongi-like' station designs (can't remember name). As i recall, there are a limited number of versions of that design, with the rotating jets under the platform, for example the bunter station in manchester is different from the universal station at manhatten. These variety of designs allows SRP for perma-bases to have a modicum of individuality and reflect the predominant design of the systems that they are in. Asteroid stations could also be a potential: Cadiz and tripoli being examples of different uses of a similar design.
these perma-bases would be placed by dev/admin/other assorted gods, and not by the player themselves, to remove any temptation to put a molly base in the middle of gamma, for example.
The solution to the POB's other problems isn't really something i can comment on, but if there were two kinds of POB, with a bit more variety, then it would serve as a carrot:
if you want a decent station, you have to be roleplay.
of course, a perma-base could easily suffer the righteous wrath of an infinite amount of angry ban-hammer wielding penguins should FR2/5 or rule 0.0 be transgressed, or insufficient activity be recorded.
Personally, I think your suggestions are good but I think we should wait for a further official announcement on the fate of player bases from the Admins before further community discussions take place on em.
Why, well I believe not only are the admin still assessing the weaknesses in terms of hacker abuse of POBs but also since they have been offline it's provided an invaluable survey of the server in general to see how a lack of POBs has affected the player base ie has a lack of bases changed the average player population. We should wait for such surveys to be completed before commenting further!
Of course everything I have said is just my opinion but its plausible....
I dont like it, I like freedom. I say better to make NPCs shoot POBs, so any POB put in a ridiculous hostile zone - molly base in gamma - gets chomped by NPCs.
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you've skipped a part Hone, you can build a base anywhere, but it would take the entire resources of a faction to maintain a base not located next to an anomaly.
why would you want to build a base that blocks the entrance to a system? less traffic means less things for the resident factions to do; wth less things to do activity falls off for those factions, and eventually for the server as a whole.
im not trying to say that you can only ever site things in approved places with form DR8Y003KW1 signed in triplicate, im trying to think of a way to encourage people to build in the places that don't kill the server
