I advocate the implementation of structures more friendly to new / low end players. These should be a solid step in size, value and complexity than citadels. These structures should be significantly more diversified than Citadels and they dock only a limited number of cruiser sized ships and under, although there might be S Bastions (frigates), M Bastions (destroyers and under), L Basrions (cruisers and under), and VL Bastions (battlecruisers)… I have some suggestions
siege bastions (specifically used to lay siege to existing citadels, granting logistic advantages, highly armored, super specialized, very expensive)
defense point bastions (NOT artillery systems, they provide support in range bonuses to attackers)
terrorist/guerillia bastions (specialized to remain in stealth, allocated in enemy systems, allowing purposeful terrorist/pirating activity in enemy territory, can only be used in war, helluva expensive)
logistics/support bastions
smuggling bastions
espionage bastions
signal disruptor bastions (conceivably may even be made to completely annihilate communications/player lists in system, insanely expensive)
The potential here is for daisychaining bastions, and allowing them constructed at a more close range to exising citadels. Another option is to have bastions move, albeit very slowly. This would completely screw with existing battlefield mechanics.
How is this new player friendly? How is this not already covered with existing structures or control towers?
How is this going to work? Do you want these new structures on the same grid as an enemy citadel? I mean, sure, so long as that citadel’s fighters can take it out in the 24 hours while it’s anchoring and defenceless.
Bonuses from an off-grid structure? NO
How is this new player friendly?
Wars don’t exist as a game mechanic in sovereign space.
Feels like this is replicating something black ops already enables.
Off grid boosts are a no-no.
What even does this mean? What is smuggling in Eve?
What does this mean?
This is your best suggestion but it should be a deployable not a structure proper.
Also how is this new player friendly?
None of your suggestions help new players and the only suggestions you’ve fleshed out are about making seiging easier for large corps/alliances. How is anything “insanely expensive” for new players?
Just use a mobile depot or commit to either an Astra or Raitaru.
Both of those are dirty cheap and will only get cheaper since the demand to use them as citadel-spam is now almost entirely gone thanks to the Abandoned Structures update.
Maybe a “small” citadel or something like that could help new players more, somewhere to dock, refit, repair and store ships, maybe only up to 1 service module and far less defensive capabilities than an Astrahus.
Sometimes an Astrahus is too much for what you need when you’re starting with only a few friends.
Structures are conceptually easy to understand and deploy and use and are relatively cheap to procure and maintain, so in this regard they are 100% newbie friendly. Keeping them alive, however, is not a matter of “newbie friendliness” but rather a matter of “teamwork” - you don’t need to be part of a large and well-established corp or alliance to make friends who will help you defend it. Stick to your treehouse corp and watch it burn. In general, no POS mechanic should exist to make it easy for treehouse corps to field them and keep them standing, too.
You know motherships are already a thing, right? Every capital ship + the Orca + Bowhead can carry other ships with it into space to resupply ships in the middle of battle. Combine this with existing structures capable of docking any ship and we’re basically set. (The notion that the smallest existing Upwell structure tier, M, of any variety can’t fit all subcapitals is ABSURD.)
We already have dreads and mauraders
We don’t need deployables/structures to serve in place of players. If you need more manpower, get more fleetmates. If you need more fleetmates, make more friends.
On this I can only say that some have longed for “S”-sized Upwell structures and have wondered in what ways they will be radically different from M/L/XL so as to justify what must be diminished capability and cost…
Per the above: existing ships already exist, unnecessarily redundant with existing M-sized structures which are already cheap and easy to use, and also offer a manpower advantage that should not be filled by means other than actual players in fleet.
This is precisely the kind of thing we do NOT want to see in EVE: we don’t need to see a few players have an armada of deployables giving them a massive advantage, we want to their power potential to scale with fleet size, and supremacy to be dictated by talent rather than N+1
The idea sounded okaish as an S-size citadel basically, with maybe variable rig/service bonuses per type and wide variety of such.
And then you started listing suggested types and it all went awry.
So yeah personally I would go with S size citadels, rather than this bunch of whatever. as far as i am conerned tiny citadel could even come without service slots… ah wait fuel thingy nevermind.
1 service slot, no rigs, single missile launcher hardpoint (with alterative variant that trades hardpoint for fighter bay?)