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 
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’
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.
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.
Hey folks. Thanks for reading the blog and for the replies so far!
I’ve replied to several of the questions in the thread so far, but there are three issues that we’re seeing raised a repeatedly in the thread that we wanted to give special attention:
The Standup GTFO
Big thanks to everyone who has been giving us feedback on this module so far. We’re hearing you loud and clear and spent some time discussing the concerns raised by the community as a team internally and with the CSM today. What I can say with confidence right now is that we will definitely be making major changes to this part of the plan based on your feedback so far. We are seriously considering a few options right now including fully removing the Standup GTFO from the plan, or limiting it to highec only (where fights tend to be a bit smaller and where AoE weapon options are much more limited for structure owners). Keep passing along your feedback and we’ll update you all on the plan as it develops next week.
5 minute fitting period
We’re seeing plenty of concern that this period makes deploying structures too easy. We definitely consider those concerns valid. This mode was added to the plan largely because we were seeing both in feedback and metrics that there was too much of an “all or nothing” element to structure anchoring where the survival rate of anchoring structures in their onlining vulnerability was quite low while the survival rate of structures that made it past that phase was too high. The goal here is to make this distinction less severe by increasing the survivability in that initial repair timer while reducing it for the rest of the structure lifetime through vulnerability and combat changes. We will be taking a look at how the combat changes shake out on the test server and evaluating with that feedback over the coming weeks before deployment.
TiDi and repair timers
We’ve been seeing quite a few requests about dilation of repair timers since the recent Cloud Ring fight where a titan distraction allowed a keepstar to repair. We won’t rule out changing the relationship between the repair timer and TiDi at some point, but I can definitely say that changes of that nature are non-trivial.
The repair timers were originally set to use “wall-clock” rather than “sim-clock” time, both because of their relatively long duration compared to most sim-clock features and because under the current system more than one server node must keep track of the structure state changes and sim-clock timers are always limited to a single server node. We took a look at the code to see how reasonable it would be to change and came away determining that it would be far from a quick or simple change.
To be completely honest we’re also a bit concerned that dilating that timer would actually cause more complaints (150 minute repair timers can feel pretty rough) rather than less. Like most decisions relating to server performance in very heavy fights this is a matter of tradeoffs and a bunch of difficult choices with no easy/good answers.
Thanks again for the feedback everyone! I also want to just repeat the reminder from the Test Server forum thread that the stats of modules and structures on SISI right now are not even remotely close to final (especially the new stuff). Remember that there will also be a lot of bugs with early test server builds. We really appreciate everyone checking out the test server and submitting bug reports, they are extremely helpful.
Have a good night o/
Yup that kind of functionality would be right up the alley of an observatory structure. We definitely still want to do them, although that part of the plan is still quite a ways off so I can’t promise anything right now.
Thx for your reply and i’ve read in this trhead someone speaking about cap and fortiz and the price to dock with cap (a fortizar). It was a joke but indeed after the pos remooval (my old pos bait will miss me so much) we all have a problem, we don’t have a low cost solution to dock cap actually. But… But… The azbel allow to produce caps and to undock with them. My suggestion is : allow us to dock on azbels.
Here is my solution : every production cita may have the same docking rights as our fight’s citadells. Azbel : dreds carriers, Sotyo, super and titan.
Small and medium null alliances will be able to afford it and to save their lonly titan, wh guys will have an easier access (3 time less) to colonize wh space etc…
We will think our side of a solution with your system but… will be tricky.
No, what I’m asking for is “balance” buffing structures like this removes a valid tactic for small groups to engage.
I belong to a smallish nulsc group, we have actively been removing hostile structures from our home. We can hold our own against most owners because we can sit our primary dps out of range of the structure and have a defence fleet to protect them. Normally they won’t escalate for a couple of dreads.
That option is now being removed with these changes.
Structure warfare is shite, it is totally geared towards the defender and these changes only reinforce this by removing the primary way a small group could be effective.
I did not create a meta where the biggest fleet wins - CCP did that - I’m just trying to survive it.
We have had times where the only person in system aside from us is the guy manning the citadel - and managed to drive off our 30 man fleet… Sure we could have taken caps and or even more subcaps and more logi but then they would also have escalated and we can’t win at that point.
CCP is working hard at removing the ability for small groups to survive.
@CCP_Fozzie What are your opinions on the anti-capital damage that Forts, Keepstars, and Sotiyos can put out? There’s concern that the combination of AXL-S damage + paints + XL neuts is too strong against dreadnoughts and triage. So far, the addition of standup fighters and t2 modules suggest the damage and neut pressure will only be going up. Are there any plans to tone this down?
Is the intent of the scrambler to force only “hard commit” doctrines like passive tanked BS onto the grid? I’ve been saying for a while that the incredible range of the scrambler and web prevent any doctrine that relies on mobility or sig tanking from being used on a citadel. No matter what the reactivation timer it doesn’t solve that problem, the only way to do that is to move the tackle modules to a reasonable range (50 to 75km) or we will never see these kind of doctrines used it a citadel fight (you already have to deal with the relatively low tank and the invincible bombs doing ~200 dps a second). Right now there are so many varied doctrines that just can’t see the light of day because even if you wanted to run them as an alliance it doesn’t make sense to invest in having your guys spend a lot of isk on a doctrine that won’t work on a citadel.
Any update on removing the ■■■■■■■ aweful chat convo bubble, universal skins, or ISBoxer?
Any chance we can get notifications pushed to alliance when a structure is getting hit? We like to keep ours all under 1 holding corp, so nobody ever really knows when somethings being hit for the first timer. With 24/7 vuln on shields its even more important to see whats going on at any given time to the whole alliance, rather than just a single corp.
You’ve been seeing these requests since people mathed out that even attempting to attack the 209G Keepstar’s onlining timer would be impossible just because of the number of people in local… 18 months ago.
The irony of this statement, of course, is that if the defender doesn’t have the advantage when it comes to the survival of their infrastructure… how does the small group survive if their bigger neighbors can casually roll through and destroy all their stuff?
I dont think this will be a good way to approach testing the 5 minute fitting change. There is no sense of urgency on the test server, so you cant see how people react when someone drops an enemy structure in their space. You need to consider that fighting a fitted structure is much more difficult than unfit. People normally prepare to fight fitted structures, they ship in more resources, they take the time to move their subcap and capital fleet into position. On the test server you cant simulate this reaction because everything is seeded plus people dont care about someone dropping stuff into their system on the test server.
A great example of this is the MTO2-2 Keepstar fight, the GOTG has the advantage of moving ships into place to defend the unarmed structure before they even drop it. The DRF has 24 hours to react to this and prepare to fight it, which meant working all day to get players and ships into the area. At the end of the fight the DRF lost almost as much as the keepstar was worth after working all day preparing for it. So even though its unfit, the person dropping the structure has as much time as they want to prepare for the fight before dropping it, the defender only has 24 hours.
Now imagine if that Keepstar was fitted, the DRF may have lost even more than GOTG did by the end of the fight because of the incredible offensive capabilities of a Keepstar, despite having much greater numbers on field.
Another thing to look at is that Keepstars are very hard to kill once fitted, anchoring structures (Astrahus’ and Fortizars) on grid with them to attack from is the way people kill Keepstars now. So you have two issues here:
I don’t like the idea of having them fitted for the anchoring timer, it doesn’t make much sense and will be abused easily. And I don’t think you will see the real outcome of this until it reaches Tranquility.
Plus we aren’t sure how the new citadel changes will affect things, maybe someone finds a way to make the structures even harder to kill using the new modules and fighters. Itd be smart to see how the nerf works on anchored structures before buffing the anchoring structures. Too much change at once could cause lots of problems that you cant just reverse immediately.
Oh, and the chat bubble needs to go. It’s very annoying.
Other than these 3 topics you touched upon (tidi, GTFO, 5 minute fit), I think the rest of the update will bring a lot of good things to the game.
I’d like to see the GTFO module for a month or so. Let’s test it out in battle and create some chaos.
Since they are changing Citadel timers/modules how about making a change that is worthwhile too, like the mechanic that is current ASSET SAFETY. Along with adjusted drop rates below, we can make some changes that will protect those that are truly AFK.
Suggested Simple Changes
Suggested Drop Rate Changes
This simple change along with the current suggested changed for citadel’s should make for a much more interesting gameplay!
Would removing them from overview and dscan be reasonable?
High Power Unanchor: Structure decommissioned with 514 fuel units in hold. Has shield and hull timers (no armor timer if attacked). Structure removed from dscan and overview while 7 day unanchor commences. Structure has medium to high combat scan difficulty.
Low Power Unanchor: Structure decommissioned with 0 fuel units in hold. Has single hull timer (no shield or armor timer if attacked). Structure removed from dscan and overview while 7 day unanchor commences. Structure has low to medium combat scan difficulty.
No, it will result in far less gameplay because like POS, people simply won’t store stuff in any of the structures unless they absolutely have to. And people will make far less use of the structures.