Forget POSes, Make POPs

Currently there is a threadnaught on the Eve forums because the CSM Summit meeting minutes came out and CCP pretty much said that they were not going to revamp Player Owned Starbases (aka POSes) as previously discussed due to them only impacting a small portion of the community while requiring a lot of effort to develop. There is lots of places where people discuss this malarkey (including episode 82 of the longest continuously running active podcast, Broadcasts from the Ninveah!
) so I won't rip into CCP's shortsighted stand here.
Instead, CCP, I'm going to give you an out.

My proposal is to leave POSes alone as they are for now and instead develop something new for the sandbox:

Player Owned Platforms

What the hell, you say?

Look, the reason that POSes are used by only a small number of people is because of cost and practicality and not desire. So let's give the playerbase something that fulfills the need for players to establish their own bases in hostile territory without incurring the massive ISK, Time, and Effort cost that even small towers do now.

I propose three sizes of platforms (large, medium, small) and they would cost 50/35/20 milllion ISK or thereabouts to produce. They would have fuel costs of about 15/10/5 million ISK work of fuel blocks (and charters on top of that for high sec) to run and must be anchored like towers, but can be anchored anywhere in system, not just moons. However, to balance that flexibility they can be scanned down like a ship.

They would sport some CPU and Powergrid to be able to host a handful of small tower guns but lack a force field. They would have a built in corporate hanger and ship assembly hanger and maintenance array; storage for ships would be 500,000m3 for large, 350,000m3 for medium, 200,000m3 for small and corporate hangers would be 50,000m3/35,000m3/20,000m3 respectively.

Defensively, I would have the hitpoints for the large being just under that for a small tower, with medium platforms and smaller platforms scaling down from there. The goal is not to create a fortress but a resupply point, a home away from home. No reinforcing either, because of the next paragraph.

In order to prevent enemy fleets from simply roaming around and sweeping the platforms from everywhere they are found, I propose that platforms have a built in cloaking device that operates as long as the platform has fuel. It deactivates when a ship comes within 2000 meters and has a 30 second cooldown before it can activate again. The cloak does not cover any sentry guns setup at the platform.I think this along with requiring fuel is a nice balance to its vulnerability otherwise.

These platforms would allow players to setup bases away from stations in potentially hostile territory without the massive overhead that even a small POS incurs. They would be far more accessible to newer players (and we know that perks your ears right up, eh CCP?) while giving new content to old players to try out.

Thoughts, comments, rude gestures?