Hey all, this suggestion represents a set of relatively small changes to citadel mechanics, but one which I believe could have a significantly positive impact on the game.
First off, change the anchor timer penalty for citadels to be tied to the owner of a system’s TCU instead of IHUB. This is simply to give the TCU some purpose again, and to cement TCUs as the link between citadels and sov. The penalty multiplier would still be tied to a system’s ADM, but for an alliance to ‘activate’ the penalty for other alliances it would need to control both the system’s IHUB and TCU.
Second and most significantly, change low power citadels which are not controlled by a system’s TCU Holding Alliance to have no reinforcement timer at all, effectively marking these structures as abandoned and allowing them to be easily destroyed. This would then become the default behavior of low power citadels in High Sec, Low Sec, and Wormhole Space, allowing player groups and even NPCs to begin swiftly clearing the mass of citadels that have been anchored and abandoned over the past 3 years.
The second change only applies to Low Power Structures. As long as the owner is able to maintain at least one online service module literally nothing changes from the way things currently are.
There are good reasons to put a structure into low power without it being abandoned.
If it really is abandoned it is easy to kill, and owners should get an opportunity to defend.
how do so many people have trouble killing abandoned structures? I’m not sure there is anything easier to do. With lasers you don’t even have to be at your pc
The very existence of the low power mechanic implies that CCP wants people to have to fuel the structures they place. As such I see little reason or excuse for a group not keeping their structures fueled.
Beyond the problem of abandoned structures, this change is also intended to address the problem of intentional structure spam which has crept its way into the current meta.
In my honest opinion this meta is damaging to player retention and thereby the game as a whole, as it forces players to grind endlessly through structures that can be replaced with a tiny fraction of the effort that it took to destroy them.
[Oracle, *Simulated Oracle Fitting]
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Polarized Heavy Pulse Laser
Multifrequency M x8
And go watch Netflix. Problem with any citadel solved after few movies. Bring friends or alts and you can watch less movies per citadel.
There is no problem with citadel spawn. Problem is with players, because they don’t want kill structures while they have tools to do that.
Ps. I actually think you can get more DPS with sentry drones only price tag will be higher. But you shouldn’t care about it since you gonna bash abandoned structures so no one will come after you.
This may be the case in highsec, but not in nullsec. Sure you can sit and AFK bash 100 structures, but chances are some random gang is going to come along and kill you in the process. Because of this you need to have an escalation chain ready, which means keeping people on standby for the entirety of the bash at what is often a godawful hour set by the defender.
I’m not a null person, but why you want bash structures solo outside your home? Or if you cant secure your home, consider having less systems under your sov.
Arent we are talking about abandoned structures? Or I missed change in topic? Same thing from coming from hisec structure spam to nullsec.
Yes the reasoning was broadened to include Structure Spam here:
Beyond the problem of abandoned structures, this change is also intended to address the problem of intentional structure spam which has crept its way into the current meta.
This proposal was never designed to purely affect highsec. In nullsec one of the more cancerous methods of wearing down your enemies is to drop tens or even hundreds of structures in their space at once. With raitarus only costing a bit above half a bil, any decently established entity can afford to do this. If the timers all come out at around the same time, it becomes physically impossible to bash them all on the initial anchor timer simply due to numbers limitations, and once the structures are anchored the addition of a timer makes bashing them even more difficult.
I think it can be generally agreed that this is not an intended use case of structures, and the spontaneous creation of so many timers is what generates the burnout that I referred to before.
