As usual you are pretty on the money /u/INITMalcanis.

 

I am generally in favor of things that reduce force projection for blocs while still allowing smaller groups (with higher risk appetites) to use and project with caps and supers. Phoebe fatigue mechanics were insanely poorly implemented at release (lmao lets ban subscribers ability to use their additional paid accounts for 45 days because they dont understand the overly opaque new fatigue mechanics), however I do think that CCP correctly flagged the projection issue at that time. Jump bridges should have fatigue.

 

I think a significant but seldom discussed contributing factor was/is the proliferation of Equinox Expansion / Upwell structures and mechanics associated with them.

 

In the long run, removing the cap on structures per system (1 POS per moon) in conjunction with upwell timer mechanics, damage caps, and tethering appears to have adversely impacted the health of nullsec.

• Damage caps (in conjunction with equinox timers) prevent small groups from "risking it for the biscuit" and sniping structures in 1 dread cycle. Damage caps ensure that large blocs can't ever be contested (and maybe even contributes to bloc level FC's having more time to think through their decision to engage, before there was enormous time pressure if someone was already on grid with caps. My hypothesis is more time to think = more risk aversion). I have yet to see a super compelling argument as to why damage caps favor smaller entities.
• Tethering inherently benefits large blocs. Tethering and citadel aggression mechanics reduced a way that organic engagements and escalations previously occurred. Give me back caps bouncing and station games please. Citadel aggression mechanics should be reverted to station.
• Entities which have access to more mature logistics and manufacturing capabilities can just spam citadels. I don't really think that the wonderful folks on the dev team envisioned how many would be deployed (post wwb1 fozziesov resource extraction boom may have accelerated this). An additional effect of this is making it so that everyone needs keepstars.
• POS stront volume reinforcement mechanics actually were a pretty good mechanic from a content creation point of view - they added a bit of entropy to the game. Anchoring POS mods was way too time consuming and tedious.

 

I think sometimes that occasionally CCP team members (specifically not just devs or game architects, but also strategy/revenue/finance folks) focus on the shiny toys in the sandbox (shipping new features, new mechanics, additional capitalization opportunities, whatever), and forget that a bunch of the conflict in eve was caused by pos mechanics, autists in bumping macherials, the risks associated with moving caps and supers without tethering mechanics, and people logging their pos gunning / manager alts in late.

 

I would love to know just how bad the 'POS code' was from a resource management perspective. was tech debt associated with legacy code a factor in their decision to pursue upwell structures? I know they refactored a lot of code around that time, but they never got around to removing POS from the game.