With consideration given to tethering as the intended replacement for forcefields as the game swapped from POS combat to Citadels I have the feeling that forcefields were ultimately superior, that tethering provides too many easy advantages and should be a service module in itself.
Tethering’s invincibility effect should just be replaced wholesale with forcefields as we used to know them, this should be a service module with a high cost to upkeep (600 blocks per cycle for example). Forcefields that required strontium to reinforce and only had a 24/36 hour timer meaning that at least the shield timer was fast and not a whole week of home ground advantage.
Tethering has the effect of repairing and restoring most ship stats including capacitor. This should also be a separate service module with an associated fuel cost, it is a separate function from shields and should never have applied instantly.
Warping to the structure should always place the target just outside of the shield like when warping to a gate, even if there is a bookmark inside the shield. This will mean that ships panic warping straight to a citadel have at least a couple of seconds where they can be intercepted.
Citadels should have no self defense mechanisms that are automatic. Unlike towers where you could shoot the guns to offline them, attacking a citadel means at least being scrammed and maybe ewar’d.
A citadel which uses any gunner mounted function like ECM, webs, noots etc should drop tether protection to all ships. This will prevent whole fleets sitting safely away while the citadel alpha’s away an invading force with no real losses taken. Engaging in combat means engaging in combat, a citadel in combat cannot permit tethers just as a ship with a weapons timer cannot gain a tether.
This is a difficult situation since Citadels were a key feature several years ago and have now made their impact universe wide very well known, but their ease of deployment and hyper generous advantages has created an unhealthy atmosphere and a very poor meta especially for killing mining fleets. Previusly you could gank them in anomalies and suck goo via those deployables, now the fleet needs only a scout on gate and their fleet is instantly safe AND can launch counter offensives at no risks to the still undocked fleets. With limited capacity to pressure engagements especially at the gang and even fleet level citadels have crushed small scale offensive efforts and forced us in to the current blob meta which is factually worse than its ever been.
All is not good as it is. Structures have been spammed to an absurd degree. Tethering is a particular problem and, at the very least, should be removed from low power structures. Along with asset safety.
If you can dock you don’t need tether! Just remove tether completely for subcaps and only keep it on astras and forts ect for caps only, can even rename it to"capital anchor" for lols
citadels take about 1 week to destroy if you time it right get insta heals and timer reset if you miss the 15 min timer or dont have enough dps to reset the timer
i watch gankers undock after the pvp timer expires but still under GCC for concord to show up and not shoot because of tether
-10s sit there waiting under tether while faction police do nothing
timers use no fuel, stations get spammed due to no requirements for fuel or standings needed even 1 man corps set a station just to have one with no services
im not sure that a shield would be the best option for citidels
tethering should be a service module along with a separate one for repairs. (mid slot modules), either fit Ewar or remote assistance.
tethering should take in to Account suspect and criminal timers (will not activate if these flags are present on the player)
IMO - if a citadel is is manned and attacks a ship in space outside of the vulnerability window for that structure), then its invulnerability window should be reset and allow the citadel to be reinforced within a 15 minuet period. (this can keep happening if the player manning guns keeps attacking)
any act of aggression from the citadel will drop all tethers and not allow them again for 15 minuets (like normal aggression mechanics)
Tethered repairing will use a Citadels CAP reserves to apply the repairs.
tether and Repair services should be controllable separate to docking rights.
The classic defence of someone who has been found out…
Your argument is purely about station camping, you may have highlighted some of the problems with citadels, but you are not interested in fixing them, just getting easy kills.
Plenty of other threads looking at some of the real problems with citadels, and plenty of views about how to fix them - but that’s not your intent here.
I have seen a game become a matter of pre arranged fights, wormholes are verge of death, FW is mostly bots, lowsec has super proliferation, highsec wars got changed to being only slightly more risky for deccers (who can still drop corp/alliance at any time as we discovered with Warhogs) and with changes to crimewatch and insurance you are looking at a really really safe game. Now trig ■■■■ lets you farm in relative total safety (relative because you can always use a t5 fit in t4 and be nearly immortal) which is compounding the problem more than ever. With people using citadels as defensive bastions to alpha strike hunters or as totally safe caves the only people dying out there are the ones playing the game as designed, without a bot program to cover them. There’s also that good old Russian dominix bot that runs on a 13 minute timer you can mess with if you feel like wasting your entire evening killing ships that don’t even have a human pilot then sure, you can do that.
Easy kills would be nice but that implies im the guy drag bubble camping with HACs and a HIC long scrammer.
I don’t disagree with this - but making a bunch of suggestions just to get easy kills that will have no impact on actually fixing these issues, just makes you part of the problem.