EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Controlling conquerable space is one of the milestone achievements that most serious corporations or alliances will eventually make. Having your own territory staked out in outlaw space will provide a significant boost to your organizational prestige, member morale, and with any luck, income generation. It is also very difficult for new players to understand.

Once you have taken control of a solar system, you can anchor other structures and farm the system to improve the value of available resources and increase the number of players that the system can support. You can also build a station, which will improve the productivity of the system, allow a market to develop, enable your corporate cash flow, and make the system more resistant to invasion.

This is the first in a series of guides to setting up control of a system in EVE Online. It will be especially useful to returning players that are unfamiliar with the changes to the sovereignty system that were enacted in the Dominion expansion, who may find the new mechanics strange or difficult. For the second half of the article, check here.

The mechanics differ significantly from these, when invading a system that already has occupants. Sufficiently so that it is better to cover it in a separate article in the future. For players unfamiliar with how anchoring mechanics work, this Ten Ton Hammer guide about POS is recommended.

An Outline Of Claiming Unoccupied Solar Systems

• Online A Territorial Control Unit
  
• Online An Infrastructure Hub
  
• Accumulate Sovereignty and Development
• Install Upgrades
  
• Profit

Claiming space is much easier than you think.

In a nutshell, one claims space by setting up a special structure there, then improves it with additional structures and add-ons for said structures. With time and use, additional options become available. The caveat being that the more options installed, the more rent you must pay to CONCORD each day for the privilege of utilizing that solar system.

In order to anchor, online, and configure the various structures involved, you will need to have the "Config Starbase Equipment" and "Station Manager" corporation roles. Being a director or CEO will suffice, of course. Your corporation will also need to be in an alliance.

1. Online A Territorial Control Unit

Control can be taken of an unclaimed solar system by means of a Territorial Claim Unit. This structure is sold on the markets in high-security space. It is the keystone of claiming space, and costs about 56mil ISK at the time of this writing. It takes up 5000m3 of space, so you can carry it out to your chosen system in an industrial or a larger ship.

Once in your chosen system, right-click on it in your cargo and select "Launch For Corporation". Right click on the structure in space and anchor it as you would a POS module. It takes only a few minutes to anchor, but must then be right-clicked on to online it. The onlining process takes eight hours to complete, and during that time the structure is vulnerable to attack. For this reason, it is best to anchor the "TCU" somewhere safe, like at a moon that already has a well-defended POS on it. Note that for whatever reason, it is impossible to anchor a POS at a moon that already has a TCU anchored there, so you must have the POS already set up prior to claiming the system. You should also treat any attack on that POS as you would an attack on the TCU itself, even if it is not specifically targeted.

Once the TCU is online, the system is yours, and your corporation will immediately begin being billed for rent to CONCORD, to the tune of 6mil ISK per day (at first). You can now anchor an Infrastructure Hub in that system.

2. Online An Infrastructure Hub

The "IHUB" is a solar system's strategic crux. With it, you can install the various upgrades that allow the system to be used more effectively. It is quite large, taking up 750,000m3 of space. This is so large that it necessitates a freighter to carry and deploy it. Neither a jump freighter nor a rorqual will do. It is relatively faster to set up an IHUB, taking only an hour to anchor it, and another hour to online, but must take place at a planet.

The IHUB is now running your solar system. Any attackers seeking to steal your territory will eventually need to blow up the IHUB, in order to take over the system.