Dev blog: Upwell 2.0 - Structures Changes Coming On February 13th!

The ability to project damage across extremely long distances is fairly key to the gameplay role of carrier and supercarriers, although we are reducing the power of that tactic somewhat through the new change that blocks tether while fighters are controlled in space. Adding other anti-fighter functions to structures may be worth exploring in the future but players also have the option of combating the hostile fighters with their own ships and fighters.

I’ll pass these along to our UI folks and see what they think.

We actually added a change last August that allows any character with structure gunner access to place fuel into the fuel bay (but not take).

Potentially, but to be completely honest we are hesitant to add too many hooks between these systems and the sov system. The structure system should be able to stand alone, which would also make it more reasonable for the remaining functions of the sov system to be either phased out or moved over to structures in the future.

This idea was brought up at the CSM summit as well, and we liked the idea and made a note to look into it further. No promises though.

I can definitely understand your desire for more warning, but we need to balance the needs of both attackers and defenders as best we can. Keep in mind that although the first reinforcement can exit on any day with short notice, the final stand will always be on a day of the week selected by you so that you can plan to be able to attend.

The honest truth is that we’re never going to be able to make both attackers and defenders 100% happy with any system, all we can do is work towards a balance of their interests.

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Primarily +15% variations of the standard ores and Ubiquitous Moon Ores (R4s) however we are keeping the option open of adding very small volumes of other ores randomly in the mix.

That’s an oddly specific example. You can clearly understand the limitations inherent in putting a similar module on a structure vs a ship.

Also, since we’re being specific, half of those attributes aren’t even something that one ship can modify on another. So no current roles for those.

Also, restricting a specific mechanic to a specific class of ships simply because “it’s gonna take over its role” is fairly narrow-minded when you consider how many different roles and abilities have been passed on to different ships with different purposes.

Balance health aside, adding more than a single option to do a task in different ways and combinations is exactly the kind of flavor that makes ships interesting.

I geuss that depends on your view. POSes have been having effects on combat since basically the beginning. Probably one of the key factors in bringing dreads into the game. An actively gunned and properly designed POS was already fairly strong at determining an engagement in some circumstances.

I would say it’s more important that the effects from a structure have some kind of counterplay or influence on how the battle plays out. That was probably one of the more important parts of POS mechanics; being able to shoot the modules was the most common method of counterplay involved.

After all, actively gunning a structure is a very familiar activity to anyone who’s ever flown a ship before.

That’s never been the case with POSes. I don’t see why any ship (or more accurately, any player) needs to have a perfectly safe perch to shoot from. It’s why fighters and carriers are such a sore spot for many, including myself.

That argument also kinda works in reverse. If a group want to assault a citadel, it should be within range of it. And before you mention anything else, I’m aware of how terribly skewed combat against capitals is on citadels. That’s what needs to be changed.

You can lock, you can’t scram that far, and that neut is pretty deep in falloff. Hell, even with current citadels, lightly tanked sniping doctrines are fairly effective against citadels. That being said it takes some decent skill to not get chewed up by a subcap fleet.

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Primarily to keep the state flow between reinforcements sane. It gets pretty messy if you try to skip shield and need to consider a service module coming online after the structure has taken some damage.

This kind of thing (essentially “small” Upwell structures) is something we are very interested in investigating in the future.

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At the end of the day asteroids in space are never explicitly “owned” by players. The highsec moon mining metagame is going to be quite different from other areas of space since it will not be trivial to monopolize the asteroids. The structure owner however does have control over the timing of the chunk detonation and access to logs of who mined from that field. Players could use those tools to encourage cooperation and provide a public service, or they could attempt to discourage other miners through suicide ganking and war decs.
Seeing how EVE players react to this unpredictable social ecosystem is something we are looking forward to as always. :smile: smile:

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The currently planned window is actually 4 hours total: up to two hours in either direction from the center point.
This means in your hypothetical 9pm setting you could experience reinforcement exits as early as 7pm or as late as 11pm, which I think matches what you are asking for.

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This is an excellent question. Under the current proposal it would indeed be much easier for hostiles to disrupt the unanchoring of a structure. We discussed this a bit with the team today and we’ll be discussing it internally more after the weekend. If you have any suggestions that would help provide a balance between the owner and hostile forces we’d be interested to hear it in the meantime.

They will have a different name and the Standup flag in the corner of their icon, but their 3d models are the same as the base fighters.

I would love to see this, but I can’t promise anything at this time. At the moment our first priority is to get the same locking functionality from stations into structures as a bare minimum because we at least know that current industrial operations can work with that functionality. Further improvements would indeed be great though.

It definitely weakens them significantly, but we currently believe they can do with a bit of weakening.

Good catch. We’ll get that fixed on sisi asap. Thanks.

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At some point, will there be a more direct fire weapon from Citadels such as a beam or pulse laser to deal with faster moving ships?

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Upwell structures actually use missiles due to their size making gun tracking impractical. So if we ever do add more weapon options in the future I would expect them to continue to be missile based.

Can you clarify.
Course of events.
I shoot the shield
It goes into reinforcement.

Now, do I immediately see the RNG element of when it will exit, so I know exactly when I need to turn up, or does it say ‘9pm +/- 2 hours’. In which case I have to potentially maintain a standing fleet on grid for four hours.

I’m assuming I see the RNG immediately but it’s not been specified for sure.

Everything you said here is so “structure owner wins”…

That’s an oddly specific example.

These modules are already available for ships. Putting them on Citadels reduces the need for “Ships on Grid”. If you can’t see the problem with that everything else is meaningless. Why have titans and supers if a Citadel can do the same job…

I geuss that depends on your view

Thankyou for that… You clearly pointed out why such things as phenom gens and burst projectors should never be allowed on structures… In case you missed it, a Pos could be disabled by reffing offensive mods, a Citadel is able to shoot back until it is destroyed… BAD mechanic.
If structures are given more offensive powers then the limit should be they can somehow be disabled, I think it’s called “balance” - From your example, once a pos is RF’d its only form of defence was ships on grid, structures should be the same. You want to save you structure turn up in ships to fight for it…

That’s never been the case with POSes.

Structures aren’t pos’s, just because something was doesn’t mean it should be. What is the difference between a structure having a max range of 250k (the same as everything else in the game) and 400k? It does nothing but counter one specific style of attacking an otherwise invulnerable structure. If structures are to get such an overwhelming buff then maybe damage caps should be increased to compensate and offer something to attackers.
Right now it is way to easy to defend a structure and this change only adds to that ease.

You can lock

You forgot the fighters, structures will be able to send fighters out to their max lock range, they will be able to use all offensive modules out to 400k, NOTHING else in eve can do this, so again Devs are saying they want to “balance” attack vs defend but buff defend and give nothing to attackers… This unfortunately has become CCP’s idea of “balance” - Make it OP then slowly nerf it into oblivion.

That argument also kinda works in reverse.

I moved this one to the end because it is the most interesting.
Maybe if Structures weren’t so OP people would not have to resort to sitting outside their lock range to engage them.
Sooo, what we have now is - A nice buff to Structure defence and no counter for it.

Devs need to encourage “players in ships” to defend structures not buff structures to remove attacker options…

Thanks for the reply Fozzie :smile:

regarding this one: Can we get an alert when a structure is dropped in our sov space like the old POS system?

Understand the reluctance to link the sov and citadel stuff, could that become a feature of the observatories? Allow them to detect hostile structures within a limited range. Assuming they are still a planned ‘thing’

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Citadels are specifically meant to be a force multiplier. To allow a smaller group to hold their own safe ground against a larger group. Now obviously there is a limit to any kind of multiplier, but they certainly need to have some effects.
What you are arguing for is pure blob warfare. ‘Bigger’ fleet wins even on Defenders home ground. That sort of gameplay is what gave us Coalitions to begin with.

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Darn… well, as long as webbing is still usable and more than one can be fitted, it will have to do… unless you create a nifty interceptor class missile capable of overrunning objects moving over 5k. Hopefully it will have enough ‘umph’ to put a dent in their hull before they warp off.

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