They’re still actively maintaining their structure. Imagine the dude was at the movie theater when you attacked his structure… it’d be RF’d and on the hull timer already.
No clone services obviously, so he had to literally park a character in there.
I don’t see it as a problem to be honest. He logged in and fueled it, that’s to me more than enough commitment to maintain what is otherwise an active structure.
Had it been abandoned, it would have stayed low power, which is what that mode was intended to combat (structure spam tactics and abandoned structures).
No, they’re getting the alert that the structure is being hit, throwing enough in to online the structure, let it get beat down to reinforcement mode, and letting the structure return to low power.
How they’re maintaining it is moot. I’ve asserted that they’re maintaining it. The fact that it went out of low power mode proves that they’re maintaining it.
They’re saving fuel by not onlining it all the time, sure. But they still onlined it. Ergo it’s being actively maintained.
Again, consider what low power was intended to combat… structure spam tactics and abandoned structures. The described in the OP would NOT thwart low power mode for either of those two reasons.
The problem is it’s under attack and then magically gets another timer for the cost of putting the structure online for a whole minute. I can understand why they consider this an exploitation of low power mode. It’s just not being maintained until it hits that 10% and someone runs into it throwing fuel into the bay before 5% to online a single service module and poof… All that work you did is now denied.
As was intended:
In effect they gain up to 11 days for the cost of 3 days worth of fuel time. It doesn’t need to be maintained. It just needs to have enough fuel to throw a switch to “on” and instant extra time granted. Thus even well planned strikes to minimize the timeline to 7 days suddenly become 14. 4 days becomes 8 for null space. 2 days in WH becomes 4. You gain this without maintaining the structure’s online status thru the entire timeline. You only need throw the fuel into the bay and online anything. You pay 3 days worth of fuel which is negligible.
This is 1136 fuel blocks. I would make more than that in an hour. A wonderful cost of 26 million to gain days upon days of defense time. Negligible to anyone. Lower to me because I used to build them in the tens of thousands per month…
Sounds like a joke to me that it wasn’t looked at. Perhaps it needs to be changed to “online when initially attacked” to be proper.
The fact that they put the structure online, for a minute or a year, shows that the structure is inhabited. Correct?
As you stated in your own quote, the intent is contingent on occupancy. Not all of the services a citadel provides need to be fueled. Consider that docking, tethering, and having a hangar are all technically services that you use in a citadel. They aren’t services that get onlined, but they are certainly a reason to deploy and use a structure.
The position that “occupied” is the defining criteria is reinforced with the following:
A structure is either online or in low power; you don’t have to online everything, it doesn’t matter how much fuel you use. It matters that you be there to take care of your structure. To you this means regularly shipping fuel in to it. To me this means being around to do something about attackers.
And yet, the goal of a reinforcement timer is not to stop attackers, but to give defenders time to form.
At the end of the day, CCP wants us to fight for these structures. Now there are 2 fights instead of 1. 2 chances for the defenders to inflict losses on the attackers.
The cost of maintaining their structure is irrelevant. The goal of the timers is to create fights. OP might have been baited on a low power status, but he can take heart from knowing that he may well get an actual fight. We should be congratulating him, not lamenting creative (and certainly not harmful) use of mechanics.
At no point does it say “fueled services”. It simply says “services”.
Edit: It also at no point states “stand-up services”. Those are a requirement for fuel consumption and for high power mode, but the player can use “services”… not “stand-up services”.
Yet you by your own words admit they are services. Lets refer back to what CCP said.
Ergo, the structure is occupied, and the player is using it for its services.
That it has no stand-up services onlined at that particular moment has no relevance to whether the station is occupied (relevant and determining factor). That it has no stand-up services onlined does not define whether or not players are using the services that it offers. They just aren’t using stand-up services.
They make differentiation quite apparent, which means they obviously understand the difference. They chose to use the word “service”, not “standup service” in their classification.
They actually DO use the words “service module” rather than “service” in the flowchart they posted.
Guess I should ask it.
@CCP_Falcon Would you bring this up with the people who actually do this piece of the structures and ask them if it is indeed intended to online a module at the last second just to gain that “First reinforce” while having zero standing cost of maintaining until such time? Would be much appreciated.
You’re conflating the power status of the station with the occupancy and usage of the station. I’ll say it again. At no point do they say that a stand-up module must be online for the station to be considered occupied and in use.
All they say is that for a station to enter high-power mode, a stand-up module must be online. You’re skipping the whole part where we identify whether low-power mode was even intended to help the attackers.
So again, lets look at when they want low-power mode to help players kill structures.
Are there people using the services? Yes, obviously if nothing else they’re storing fuel in the hangar; the services are in fact in use.
Are there people actually in the station? Yes, obviously someone was in the station to online the stand-up module.
So, regardless of HOW you reach a high-power state on your structure, low-power mode was never intended to help in this particular instance because neither of the two criteria for when it was intended to help are met.
The flowchart shows the flow of reinforcement timers. It does not say whether or not it was intended to help kill the structure.
I’ve been saying the same thing all along: Low power is not intended to help kill an occupied structure. It is intended to help kill an unoccupied structure.
Even if we ignore intent and go straight for the flow chart, which says nothing about WHY low power mode was introduced, look at the flow chart.
When you go from “Shield Vulnerable” through “shot to 0 shield HP” it THEN looks for an online stand-up module. It specifically places the check after 0 shield HP.
I say this as an aside; I still maintain that the purpose of low-power was not to help kill occupied structures, and as such this flow-chart really has absolutely no relevance… we’re debating whether or not it should have had 1 timer or 2 timers.
And the base complaint from the top is that unoccupied structures are being dived into at the last second with a load of fuel to add time because shenanigans are allowed. But… You’re moving the goalposts.
Not actively using the structure… then pulling it out of not active for the time needed to gain that window only. Then letting it go back into low power for the cost of 3 days fuel.
So they’re not using it or maintaining it. Until they want that window.
Which contradicted your statement:
And again.
It sounds like it’s not being maintained until they want another window because it’s actively being hit. And in fact…
Which brings us back to the first post who thinks this is an unintended function:
And I see reason to ask CCP to respond to that piece only.
HELP CCP, THERE’S A GHOST IN MY STRUCTURE. A PERSON WHO WASN’T THERE WENT AND ONLINED A MODULE.
Does that about sum it up? I’m not moving ■■■■. You’re just running out of arguments, and attempting to subvert the debate with false accusations.
There we go back to cost again… the cost is moot. CCP could change the cost of a a fuel block to 0.1isk and the volume to 0.001m3. That would not have changed whether or not the structure was occupied or in use. It’s a red herring argument.
Last I checked, “actively maintaining” is a kind of maintaining. There’s no contradiction there, try again.
The subject of our little debate, yes. CCP is free to weigh in any time… I doubt they will though, cause I don’t think they actually read this forum anymore.
Based on the wording they’ve issued, low power was intended to help kill unoccupied structures. Someone was in the structure to online the module, which meant the structure was not unoccupied.
It is specifically stated in the flowchart… To which:
So we are either using the flow chart to your advantage or discarding it because it declares something you don’t like based entirely on what benefits the structure being online most.
How about this:
We ask CCP to respond on if low power mode removal while under attack is working as intended?
Sigh. You’re either bad at reading, or intentionally misrepresenting my words.
The FLOWCHART does not indicate intent. It indicates how reinforcement timers flow. It doesn’t indicate whether it was intended to help, or whether you were supposed to be able to online a module mid-combat. It doesn’t say “WHY”, it only says “WHEN”.
What I have been saying is that “WHEN” doesn’t matter. We aren’t talking about “WHEN” because we clearly know when there is or is not an armor timer. “WHY” there is or is not an armor timer is the issue.
No, I’m saying that the flowchart is irrelevant for this discussion. The mechanical aspect is moot. The intent is what is being debated. But even if you ignore the intent and look solely at the mechanical aspect of it all, you’re still wrong because the check happens when the shield reaches 0 hp, which means the defender was perfectly within acceptable use to online the module before the shield hp hit zero.
Feel free. Like I said, I really doubt they’ll answer. If they want to, I’m all ears.
And what, praytell, does the mechancial aspect have to do with the intent of the implementation of that mechanical aspect?
The mechanical aspect is just the solution. Without a specific problem to apply that solution to, it’s entirely without meaning.
The problem, which is what I’m discussing, is that low-power mode was intended to help clean up unoccupied structures. As the structure was occupied, low-power mode was never intended to be a solution for the attackers in this set of circumstances.
