As has been said countless times here already, structure spam is out of control. Full Disclosure; this idea is based on one shared with me by an alliance mate, so not completely my own.
What I want to center around as an ‘explanation’ for this system, is the idea that too many structures distorts the gravitational balance of a system, thereby forcing us to adhere to restrictions preventing us from causing damage to star systems.
To do this, restrictions can be placed both restricting how many structures can be placed in a system, AND how many structures can be placed on one grid. For continuity’s sake we’re going to use the current mass of structures in our requirements (50 bil kg for XL, 10 bil for Large, 3 bil for Medium). These restrictions could only apply to new anchoring structures, or CCP could force an unanchor of non-compliant structures with fair warning (and reimbursement of original rigs).
The grid based restriction would be a hard-set ~76 billion kg, or the equivalent of 1 XL, 2 Large, and 2 medium structures. This would help to de-centralize things from one-grid, and remove the ability to view all important structures in a system from one area.
The System based restriction is a bit more complicated, and is different on a per system basis. This restriction would be ~13 billion kg, multiplied by the number of planets in a system, plus the single grid limit (~76 billion kg). With the most planets in one system being 18, this would allow a theoretical maximum of about 310 billion kg, or 103 medium structures, with the average being closer to about 180 billion kg (with 8 planets), or 60 medium structures. This sounds like a lot, but when you take into account Large and XL structures you hit this limit pretty quickly. I realize this also makes it impossible to place moon mining facilities on every moon in some systems, and honestly I don’t have a problem with that.
These numbers can be tweaked of course, but my hope is that this idea can be made viable.
It could also get dicey as large player groups attempt to use structure spam as an RNG method for getting NPCs to attack the structures they want.
Flipside seems that hard caps on structure mass would make it exceedingly difficult to unseat defenders who build up enough assets on a grid or system to prevent attackers from establishing new forward operating bases.
I like this idea. In conjunction with the 3x Jammer structures we have, we can just block out any and all attempts to anchor a foothold. No more anchoring a hostile Astra or Fortizar in order to establish a beachhold, you straight up can’t do that anymore with this hard cap.
Also means the only real places people can attack from are NPC sov regions, and if we’re nowhere near NPC sov, looks like no attackers will be able to invade. Trades a little big of citadel spam for perfect security. 10/10 good for the game. Especially for those alliances that are already established.
Given that they only spawn in high and lowsec, they won’t be an issue. This will effectively kill nullsec by locking in everyone who is already established. Not even the triglavs can touch it.
Absolutely not. I cannot begin to enumerate all of the issues with this proposal, not the least of which is that it is a largely undesirable mechanism that is extremely ineffective and inefficient in addressing both the symptoms and root causes of the peripheral issues.
In either event, I think the vast majority of us would agree that the best solution to structure spam is to destroy them, and if it is beyond your means to do so, then join forces with others toward a common goal. That’s how MMOs work in general, and EVE moreso than any other.
Or you could join the structure owners. Then you can laugh at everyone else futilely attempting to destroy your structures.
I could see introducing new mechanics to help avoiding single-grid structure spam (Perimeter and a few other hisec trading havens come to mind), but any sort of hard cap on the number of structures system-side seems super no bueno.
We used to have a similar system with POSes (since you could only anchor one POS per moon) and I’m pretty sure that nobody thinks moving back to a system like that is a good idea.
I see a lot of structures going boom soon. I’ll be producing en masse for people who want to have fun. reitaru, astrahus? Cheap as dirt and let’s make them cheaper by producing p4’s+++.
I’d buy a reitaru for killing people, I’ll discount any structure loss as a null loss. It will become the norm.
Also I don’t understand, if I plant 10 reitarus all over, it’s going to be a real pain to find all citadels? Can they be found through agents or anything? I’m asking as my current agent is a locater agent and I don’t know what that is.
Then your reply is off topic to the discussion at hand which is addressing the issue of Citadel spam, not war targets. Please try to stay on topic and not try to derail the conversation.