As we move forward toward the February Release, and the coming of Upwell Structures 2.0, there’ll be lots of changes appearing on Singularity over the course of the next few days.
Team Five-0 have been hard at work putting together a long list of changes based on community and CSM feedback, so here’s a Dev blog to explain what’s coming. Be sure to leave your feedback in this thread!
Check out all the changes in the latest Dev blog from Team Five-0.
FAQ:
January 20th:
January 28th:
RESERVED FOR FAQ
Courier dropbox is still something that we want to get implemented at some point but it wasn’t able to make it into this release.
So just to confirm, if a structure is in low power mode, the armor hp will just go away? It’s not gonna come out and I have to shoot through armor then hull, correct?
If a structure is in low power mode at the time that it is initially reinforced then yes it will skip armor entirely and come out of reinforced in hull.
If a structure is in full power mode when it is initially reinforced but then goes into low power mode while reinforced, it will continue to the regularly scheduled armor vulnerability with low armor resists.
Wow, this is quite the change list. I’m still digesting.
One question: regarding the overview change for structures and their accessibility status:
Will we be able to filter overviews based on this information? For example, can I remove restricted structures from my overview?
Tried my hardest to like something in this structure blog, as its quite important to the games development, and get that EVE feeling going.
Nope, this just feels like pandering the capital meta and keep this new form of game-mode going. But this is a far-reaching blog.
I hate everything about Citadels currently.
Wake me up in 2020
p.s. even these forums are way more unlikable
So you’re saying that this Low Power Mode is visible to all without scanning?
Not initially, and I can’t make any promises but it’s a good suggestion and I’ll ask our UI pro about it when she get back from vacation.
Yup low power mode shows up to everyone with no hacking needed.
@CCP_Falcon @CCP_Fozzie Can you confirm whether the Standup Shadow BPCs will be exclusive to LP stores, or will it be included into incursion loot drop tables?
A new five minute “fitting invulnerable” state has been added to the Upwell structure deployment process. This new state falls after the 24 hour anchoring period but before the structure becomes vulnerable to attack for its onlining repair timer. During this five-minute period the structure is invulnerable and can be boarded and fitted, but it cannot activate any modules or launch fighters. The intent of this mode is to provide a more exciting engagement for the onlining repair timer as the structure itself will be able to participate in the fight. It also prevents a potentially frustrating situation of having your structure continuously attacked to prevent the fitting of modules at all.
Ok, this I think is going to be problematic. It almost entirely defeats the purpose of leaving the structure vulnerable for that 15-minute period. This doesn’t leave the attacker (space defender?) with much as an advantage to prevent structure emplacement.
We’ve already seen how annoying and painful multiple structure anchoring spam can be. With this, you won’t even be able to keep a structure paused long enough to deal with more than a few at a time, and that’s before considering the structure defenders.
This is a huge advantage to groups with large resources and any groups performing an incursion in contested areas.
The 4 hour window is great, but I think it would be even better if it was 4 hours and also influenced by other factors - for example widening the window with every citadel in system, and decreasing the window with friendly strategic level. That way it can be influenced by defenders and attackers alike and lower priority citadels would be easier to kill, but higher priority ones harder - rather than every citadel being the same 4 hour gamble.
I really don’t like the 490km lock range or the GTFO additions, the lock range makes an already powerful structure even more powerful and negates the only tactic we’ve seen used to attack an online Keepstar (Titans at edge of lock, with FAX just out of range, ready to engage defenders). The GTFO still hard tackles capitals for it’s duration which I don’t know if it will be the case for citadels, but I think it should be looked at if it is.
Edit: Assumed GTFO would have 100km range, but on SISI it’s at 300km. That’s monumentally dumb, and a huge buff to citadel defenses when half the community complaint was how hard they are to engage in addition to a hostile fleet.
The invulnerable-fitting timer is also kinda shitty, it means there is no effective difference between catching an onlining citadel and showing up to its final timer which was determined to the second by the defender. The defenders of an anchoring citadel already have the exact timer advantage and the knowledge which the attackers have to discover - they shouldn’t also have a fully operational structure on their side.
Not being able to force a weekend timer is still a huge issue. TZ tanking is kind of addressed but TZ tanking combined with weekday tanking is still a major problem that Upwell structures have.
“To improve the balance around using carriers from within tether range of structures, launching fighters is now considered an aggressive action for the tethering system. This means that any carrier or supercarrier with fighters under its control will automatically break tether and remain untethered until it either recalls or abandons the fighters (or those fighters are destroyed in combat)”
Maybe I’m being overly cynical here, but this change just seems to a direct response to a mechanic that has been picked up and used by the dreaded goonies, afterall the ability to launch fighters and fighter bombers with out breaking tether has been a part of the citadels since they were first introduced and only now is it being changed. What about drones though? Is launching drones not also an aggressive act? The only real difference from my point of view is scale.
It means you can take it down without going through 2 reinforcement cycles.
After some productive discussions with the CSM at our recent summit meeting, we will also be increasing the locking range of Upwell structures significantly to better enable them to engage with targets at extreme ranges. Base lock range of Upwell Structures is planned to increase to 400km, with the ability to increase it further to a cap of 490km through the existing targeting speed rigs and modules which will be expanded to also provide targeting range bonuses in addition to their current benefits.
i cannot wait to see the minutes to find out which mangos thought this was a good idea
A new icon has been added to structure brackets in the overview and space scene to indicate whether you currently have permission to dock in that structure.
I’m glad this is coming, but when are we going to be able to color them in the overview like ships and POSes?
Also, can we get a bit of a lock-speed buff for large and medium structures? It currently sounds like the 30-second scrambler activation is going to be shorter than many locktimes for these. Keepstars currently have that one rig that dramatically buffs lockspeed to a reasonable level, but all the other structures have a severe lack of flexibility when adapting their targets to any ongoing combat.
Well, this thread should be all kinds of fun
