Ten fun things to do with a deployable siphon

CCP Soniclover has broken the sound barrier with a dev blog that has provoked a cacophony of wailing from some of Eve's richest players. All the fuss is about an innocuous looking box that sits outside someone else's POS drawing off valuable moon goo from moon harvesters and simple reactors.

Nom nom nom slurp $$$$ nom nom $$$$ ching!

Let's have a look at how we can have fun with this new toy.

1)  Evil Deathstar of Doom. Train up Starbase Defence Management, drop a syphon outside an idle moon harvester on a barren moon, name the siphon "Dyspro!" and wait for targets to roll up. A stealth bomber alt with a point will make sure no one escapes while your defences lock them up.

2) Bear Trap. Drop a cyno outside some nullbear's pos, get your gang on the blops a few jumps over, and watch it with your recon ship. When they rock up in a dusty Maelstrom to shoot it, light your covert cyno and get your crew back from League of Legends.

3) Patchday rush. Stockpile a load of mats before patchday then when the expansion goes live churn out dozens of siphons for your local trade hub at the super-inflated prices. Undercut the market frequently the price will rocket downwards but it should start out at least 5-10 times the mineral value of the module.
If the BPOs are seeded in dangerous space buying them there and moving them to trade hubs is incredibly lucrative (if you don't get caught and killed).

4) Patchday gankfest. We know the blueprints will be seeded in NPC stations. In some previous patches new BPOs have been seeded only in stations in dangerous space, for example Noctis and Venture BPOs were seeded in Outer Ring at the ORE stations. Hilarity may ensue if a big bunch of people unfamiliar with nullsec are trying to get hundreds of BPOs through your camp.

5) Cloaky Camp business as usual. A nullsec cloaky camp is usually done by a stealth bomber and often there's an intent to get kills. Usually people get safe when a neut comes into local but when the neut doesn't leave they often get desperate enough to go back to their regular activities. A stealth bomber with a damp can kill a battleship before the battleship can lock it up. If your main interest is another Eve account or another game it's very low risk to tab back in once in a while to see if targets have turned up. When you do this you learn the rythyms and lifestyles of the defenders - when they are active, when they log off and so on. Perfect for well-timed siphon operations. Now not only are you interdicting ratting and mining but you're also stealing moon goo. You can even, with a stealth bomber, blow up lone battleships or battlecruisers that come to deal with the siphon and get out before the pos defences point you. Overheat those torp launchers!

6) Watchlist the defenders. I keep the orange status in contacts for people I am actively targeting in my current operation. When I do a new operation I clear out all the -5 people and start watchlisting people from my new target. That way when I see an orange I know it's probably someone that is defending against my current op. So do this - drop a siphon, cloak off it, dislike the person who comes to blow it up in contacts with a note of which moon they're defending and add to watchlist. Eventually you have a list of people who will defend against siphoning with an easy to check list of whether they're logged in. Find a moon where all the people defending it are logged out, drop a siphon and collect in peace.

7) Other people's siphons. The professional thief is a business-minded individual and one way to succeed in business is by controlling your costs. So why put yourself to the expense and labour of setting up siphons when you can just use other people's? A recon ship is great for lighting covert cynos to bring your blockade runners in to collect other people's moon goo. An interceptor is even quicker and can check entire systems for deployables with a single pulse of its core scan probe.

Shit dude - just act natural....

8) Economic warfare. You don't even need to collect the goo - just siphon someone's goo and watch their spreadsheets start smouldering at the edges as even if they take the goo back they lose 20%.

9) Anyone for a roam? Roaming nullsec in fast ships is going to be enormous fun as in addition to the buff to the amount of ground you can cover nullsec is going to be full of halfbaked defenders in kitchen sink ships trying to catch blockade runners. To add to the fun you should be able to catch a few halfbaked blockade runners. To add to the profit add a blockade runner or agility industrial (eg Sigil, Badger) to your fast gang.

10) Play the market. Now might be a good time to find some nice quiet moon material market and start discreetly stockpiling it. I have a feeling moon goo prices are on the way up!