I think the balancing of POB's should come in other ways. First of all, new Core 1's could stand to probably start with 100 million HP.

Make them start out with a shield and make the station turrets be much more powerful. That would ease up things on base owners, and make it so that going in you also are aware that it means a base is more disposable thing in some cases. People would focus on doing more things with the POB's rather than only grind for simple things like shields and defense. But in turn, that would make them fair game. In our current situation, perhaps make it actually fair starting off. If it were up to me, I'd give them 1 WP to start off too, but require the base have munitions on board for it to actually be depoyed in space. Make respawns of it take 100 units of Munitions. Then any Core 1 could be used as a temp battle base if properly supplied, and at the same time, be quickly depleted if cut off, and its WP's knocked out until no more spawn. Factions would find themselves with some real missions to go on.

So not only will that ease up things on base owners, but POB's could also then be used as temporary battle stations. A faction could go into an enemy area, lay a Core 1 to purposely try to block a jumphole or jumpgate or junction, just with its station turrets and one WP, and provoke a response. RHA can go on the offensive easily, so if POB's were like that, and someone went in and layed 2 (more dangerous) core 1's close to their territory, blocking their jumpholes, they'd suddenly need to do some shifting to worry about that for a bit. They could try the same tactic in return. Ironically, focus on any other targets would take the attention off of mining operations. I mean, they allow sieging people's bases, but not NPC military assets in the same way. POB hunters would have something else to chew on if the wars were focused on military targets, NPC targets, that if lost, you only lose control of that area, which can be replaced after a while. What would people prefer? The mining ops should be generating funds for us all to invest in stuff for action in wars, not be at the center of the wars, unless its really got to that point. Not to diverge too much, but I can't believe RM can't even have NPC battleships moved into areas they want to to increase protection in those areas. An option like that might make it worth sticking it out sometimes.