I use citadels a lot.
I think they’re really user-friendly, more so than NPC stations. They have all kinds of conveniences like tether and easy delivery between characters that NPC stations don’t have.
But they have risks too.
While you’re right that the are certain risks with citadels that are not present for stations, they’re easily mitigated if you know how citadels work.
Correct.
I would therefore never store valuable clones in a citadel owned by a group that I do not trust.
However, random citadels are still a perfectly fine place to store jump clones, or simple clones with an implant I don’t mind replacing. Did I get locked out, did the citadel get put into hull timer or did the clone bay get taken out? Lost nothing of value!
Next point, items.
While a citadel owner you don’t trust can indeed lock you out of your stuff, asset safety can get the items out.
Asset safety within the system (to an NPC station) is pretty cheap and fast, so unless you require the items now there is basically no risk in putting your stuff in a citadel with an NPC station in the same system.
And if there is no NPC station in the same system? Same thing applies, but a bit longer and higher fee, up to you if the benefits are worth that risk.
Benefits?
Sure, citadels have plenty of benefits too, which make me use them often:
- tether (to dock and undock safely and with less of a hassle and strict timing than bookmarks)
- free repairs (on tether)
- clone swapping (although I believe NPC stations now finally got that feature too?)
- easy item delivery to alts in same station
- clone jump prices (depending on owner)
Correct.
I too would not use citadels I do not trust for long periods of time with items I do not wish to lose.
Either
- you trust the owner to defend the citadel
- you trust the owner to tell you ‘pull out your stuff from citadel X’ in time when it isn’t defended
- you only put stuff in it for a couple of days while you’re paying attention
If not, just put it in an NPC station instead.
Citadels are useful:
- for short term,
- for extra convenience with items you don’t mind losing,
- when you trust the owners
and when none of these three apply, use an NPC station instead.
I would love to see a cheaper citadel option to replace the functionality of the player-owned starbases, something that can act as a temporary home for a solo player or small group of players.
But it may be hard to find a good balance between something convenient that also does not allow spamming structures everywhere.
Because structure spam has been a major challenge that CCP has had to balance. Structure cores, lack of invulnerability timers if not cored, abandoned structures if fuel runs out, all of these things have been added as countermeasures to the strategy of players to simply place structures everywhere with the motto “more annoying to kill than to place”, which likely would happen with any new small cheap citadel option too.