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?
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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:
- Aggressor anchors a Keepstar and now you have to fight a fitted Keepstar without a structure on grid for support.
- Aggressor drops a Fortizar (or even a Keepstar) on grid with your Keepstar to base out of, you now have to kill the fitted structure in 24 hours. (Imagine if both those Fortizars that were anchored off TRIs Keepstar were fitted, that’s a ridiculously hard fight.)
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.
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I’d like to see the GTFO module for a month or so. Let’s test it out in battle and create some chaos.
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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
- If the player ACCOUNT does not log on for more then x-days (14 perhaps) they get 100% of assets moved to asset safety automatically.
- Keep normal random mechanic on dropped items of 50/50 destroyed/dropped.
- Remove the asset recovery fee associated with getting items back since items will actually be dropped/destroyed now.
- Implement “asset safety insurance” you can upgrade your protection to 90% for a one-time fee of 5% asset value, or 100% for a one-time fee of 10% asset value, and insurance is static to each citadel you buy it in forever (or until destroyed/removed).
Suggested Drop Rate Changes
- Wormholes - Drops 100% (0% goes to asset safety)
- Nullsec - Drops 75% of assets (25% goes to asset safety)
- Lowsec - Drops 50% of assets (50% goes to asset safety)
- Highsec - Drops 25% of assets (75% goes to asset safety)
This simple change along with the current suggested changed for citadel’s should make for a much more interesting gameplay!
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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.
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Good point. What if it was the other way around? If you fail the hack twice you get a custom pop-up message from the station owner.
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I thought with the old POS system everyone was happy in this regard, with a much better risk/reward balance. The balance mess started with some fundamental decisions made for Upwell structures, namely combining station and POS services, unrestricted placement, and rigs as “cost anchor”.
The problem with referring to the “last stand” is that you effectively lose your structure already after the second day. When the armor reinforcement happens all services go offline - the main goal of a strategic attack, especially in highsec.
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Except when it comes to tidying up space of someone else’s dead sticks. That’s a chore.
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Maybe in highsec. In null, I don’t care if a structure’s 3 days into the final timer, I can still tether my fleet to menace someone else’s in safety.
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Community: Asset safety sucks
CCP: We hear you. Let’s just make it more expensive.
Outcome: Asset safety still sucks
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Correct, structures are used completely different in highsec, as staging is not the bottleneck. The current mechanic already favors the (serious) attacker, but the new makes that imbalance even stronger. As you can’t cripple the attacker’s mobility, and also the absence of effective structure weapons, capitals and (chaotic) escalations, the group bringing more subcap numbers into the war always wins.
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To be fair to the Devs, you get 24 hours notice before the first attack in highsec. So it’s 46 to 74 hours after the first notice that your structures armour timer happens. Though it’s admittedly far more likely to be 46-50 hours since anyone actually going for your structure will time their war dec. But accidents and bad planning happen.
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I wish that i could have a option to set my structured to auto attack any agressors while in shield.
This way to make sure its not going to be 100% cake walk in the park to smash my few structures.
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How much fuel would you being willing to consume for the convenience of those auto defenses?
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“We are seriously considering a few options right now including fully removing the Standup GTFO from the plan”
YES PLEASE
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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.
CCP Fozzie, I hope that this wasn’t actually considered seriously - making game balance decisions based on a particular group’s inability to prioritise what they want to do is pretty ludicrous, especially in EVE. Decisions have consequences, and in this case, deciding to chase killmails instead of strategic objectives had the effect of denying them a victory at the timer.
(I will do them the credit of ignoring the fact that they refused to seriously attempt contesting the keepstar until the defenders got bored of sitting around after the reinforcement timer and bridged out 
)
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Obviously the change panders to WH eviction/loot-farm groups that want their pinata’s to crack in 2 days or less. I’ll be moving out of WH space since I can’t log in every day. I guess CCP/CSMs must think WH space is too populated (sarcasm).
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If you can’t defend a structure in a wormhole go back to kspace.
Structure bashing in WH is already crap because it’s balanced around kspace where there’s no mass limits. Evicting any decent corp in their home hole is a pain in the ass. Even without asset safety you need a massive effort to prevent them from extracting assets out since you can’t bubble citadels like you used to be able to bubble posses.
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Also consider the suggestion that low-power Citadels have no damage cap. As you know there is a strong visceral desire to shoot and see things explode. Low-power Ctiadels are the very definition of spam and should carry the consequence of being simple to destroy as they were to lay down. While it is trivial for any group to drop a year’s worth of fuel into a structure to avoid this, a truly abandoned Citadel should be the easiest thing to remove.
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