They are.
You can blow any ship piloted by 1 guy and you cannot blow citadel until it comes through at least 2 timers.
You cannot damp it, cannot jam it, cannot neut it.
But you can tank it. And, even if initially they were announced to need a fleet of 30-50 cruisers to take down, it only takes a group of 5 now.
Citadels are easy to solo if it’s just you vs citadel. The way it should be if I’m fielding way more isk.
Other than the Structure Tackle Nerfing, Upwell 2.0 seems spot on. A lot of very well thought out updates, at least initially.
It appears the 5 minute fit timer was dropped to continue easy anchoring kills. Why not have this? Now instead we have a 30 minute window to destroy the anchoring structure. 15 minutes at the drop and 15minutes at online time. Is there any example IRL, Historically, or in any other game where you build a defense or structure that stands there useless, provides no benefit whatsoever for 30 minutes? I honestly don’t know.
I am still not getting this change to Upwell Structure Tackle, especially the Citadel Class. Here we have structures that are Mini to Gargantuan Fortresses. From the Astrahus / Frontier Fort to the Fortizar / Castle to the Keepstar / Keep.
I think the first and most significant nerf of structures was entirely overlooked. The fact that Structures must be manned to be defended. A POS was fully automated requiring you to bring Logi just to RF it, if it was properly fitted.
With 24/7 vulnerability, you can solo RF several structures such as Astrahus, Raitaru and Athanor. Only a few ships needed to RF Azbel, Fortizar and Sotiyo if no one is present to defend it. *This part is a good thing given the 3rd timer now
On the Armor and hull RF timer, structures should be able to hold down what few targets they can indefinitely as they lock very slowly, a bit faster if you sacrifice missile DPS. This makes it a commitment for the attacker to bring logi, lots of ships or both.
A lot of the feedback in this thread seems to indicate a desire to be able to solo or with minimal effort take down any structure. Does that really seem reasonable? What historical, documented, fictional or other game example has anyone to draw on to show this should be a thing?
Prior to structure tackle Nerf, Astrahus and Fortizar could hold down maybe 3 ships at a time to destroy them. A Keepstar might be as many as 5 if you totally disregard Capacitor conservation.
Why would anyone think it should take less than a 25 member Corp to take down an active but undefended Astrahus, 75+ member Alliance for a Fortizar and 250+ Member Coalition for a Keepstar? These are massive structures the sheer size of which should dictate extremely powerful defenses that can lay waste large numbers of vessels that do not move off to repair. Though structures are fitted like ships, they are not ships, they cannot move.
It appears this was purely a “Play Balance” to favor structure attack. Another consideration seems to have been in part dealing with Medium structure spam. That was partly covered with Full/Low Power Modes.SOV mechanics may have been away to resolve the rest. Invaders suffer a significant delay in anchoring in SOV held areas. Bigger structure size means more delay. Make it visible on overview to SOV holding alliance if there is one.
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This seems to be purely a structure clean up project without thorough analysis (by CCP a.k.a. “we will monitor how the situation unfolds and will make adjustmenst if required”)
There is one aspect that will hurt the most: post-POS military and industrial stations (citadels vs refinery/engieneeeing) separated , the latter has much less resilience (just try to fit and compare an Astra with a Raitaru) . Limited vulnerability window was the only counterbalance of this shift. Don’t forget: service modules (moon/indy) can be shoot down in 2 days approx.
It will be interesting to see how nullsec industry will operate espec after NPC stations will phased out: probably further forced concentration of industry, money and power.
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With 24/7 vulnerability, you can solo RF several structures such as Astrahus, Raitaru and Athanor. Only a few ships needed to RF Azbel, Fortizar and Sotiyo if no one is present to defend it.
Considering what was promised initially :
Size Number of Cruisers to reach damage mitigation
M 10-20
L 30-60
Delivering 10 times less than their promises. So CCP.
- Price. Astrahus price is about equal to pirate battleship.
- Can be placed anywhere and be free of charge. Space is crowded with citadels.
- 1 man corp can put one. Why 25 man corp needs to kill one?
Similar to titans CCP overlooked their popularity and sheer numbers. Now they are trying to return some reality to this system.
Yeah. But as you said “partly”. Unless destruction of citadels cleans up the space they will be nerfed again and again.
Price. Astrahus price is about equal to pirate battleship.
- But a pirate battleship is not vulnerable while you are not online.
- A fitted fortizar price is equal to 13-15 such battleships and still can be destroyed by 4. Should i show you the difference for keepstars ?
Can be placed anywhere and be free of charge. Space is crowded with citadels.
- Jita is crowded with scammers. But you dont have a tool to remove them.
- It takes one week to unanchor a citadel and move to safety.
1 man corp can put one. Why 25 man corp needs to kill one?
Even without arguing about the value of the assets inside a citadel, see the price argument above.
Yes but a keepstar attracts everyone in eve to come shoot you, would you like fortizar’s to do the same ? 
The design goal you refer to was a damage mitigation cap, that is the maximum number of attackers allowed to contribute, not the minimum number of people needed to attack an Upwell structure. And they more or less met it with 5000 DPS requiring 10-20 fleet-fit cruisers (250-500 DPS) or close enough not to quibble.
The original design called for a minimum of one person with an entosis link (https://www.eveonline.com/article/citadels-sieges-and-you/) to attack even a Keepstar, so if anything CCP has significantly walked back their original design intentions.
Citadels are suppose to be conflict drivers, not invulnerable space fortresses, or space junk so tedious and uninteresting to even explode when abandoned that they just accumulate. I won’t claim to know if these latest changes will put them in a better place, but it does seem like a step in the right direction.
Upwell structures are still incredibly cheap, and incredibly safe for what they offer, especially if you are actively using them. Contesting an actively defended one still requires significantly more effort (and person hours) than deploying one in the first place and now, removing an abandoned one is less of a grind. Good changes all around.
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I agree in general on the citadels front, but they have considerably toned down the ability of the citadel itself to engage enemies.
If we are to treat them as space castles (in the medieval sense) that have no real offensive capabilities unless manned (Someone at the trebuchets) and defended by a fleet (army on the battlements), they need to become the force multiplier I believe they were intended to be. If some of the offensive capabilities were removed to improve balance of the structure they should have been moved to a fleet support role instead.
The citadel should be bonused on remote reps, cap transfer etc. Also potentially add command bursts, make the citadel a force multiplier by being a good logi support. That way a lone citadel manned by one guy can take on a small number of attackers, but will truly shine when it has a support fleet.
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Amen Brother!
Yes! Structures should indeed be a defensive force multiplier with not only Logi but command boosts and membership in fleets. Also, what about those Ship Tractors and Repulsors originally advertised?
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I agree with this sentiment, with the current 24/7 shield vulnerability the ‘invulnerability’ has been further reduced to play balanced windows to allow max participation. As to old structure spam and reduction of abandoned structures, CCP did not go as far as I had hoped. Why not have fuel depleted structures decay over time to the point of falling apart and becoming debris / wrecks that disappear in 2hrs like any other?
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Any kind of Citadel Space SPAM is perceived by the players and not actually based on any merrit. How Many POS were there prior to Citadels. The answer for highsec is that nearly every moon in desireable systems had a POS and relatively few players were involved in their useage. There are still thousands of offline POS sticks in highsec because they are relatively hard to find for wardeccers.
Also all the statements that Citadels are cheap is a direct indicator that EVE does indeed have mudflation.
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the damage produced by the subcap launchers is so pethetic that 2 logistics is sufficient to render the damage useless, there is no point fitting subcap weapons so any of the structures. and now that the web and scram are limited in cycle time, your missiles will not hit before your web or scram cycle end due to just how SLOW the missiles are.
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How dare you ? ccp says that the new defenses are great ! All the structures on killboard that have fallen without taking even one subcap are just competition propaganda and we are sooooo misinformed !
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What were the problem(s) with the old system? At first a big feature of the new structures was that they wouldn’t use fuel unless you wanted services. Was it decided that was a mistake and it is better to require players to be burning fuel 24/7?
Actually, to minimize the risk of being asked about it, initially on the test server a citadel had the normal defenses ( 20% resists/ regular amount of shield, armor etc ) when UNFUELED and increased defenses when fueled. But after the deployment it was transformed into a nerf.
From several expansions ago i am not satisfied with most changes , still i played the game and tried to adapt to every new meta that was born in ccp frustrated minds. But last one is last for me. First of all is fatique changes , you remove it when this is not needed , people are already adapted to it even when you put it there on a first place. Second is “upwell 2.0” . Im pretty sure this will be same case as fatique. You will change this too but will be late for many people . Im not typing this to tell you how to run your game , i just want to tell you that i am dissapointed of ccps lack of logical thinking over the game at all and poorly implemented changes which makes things worse and makes you look like people who doesnt know what even do.You know what people said : first time is unfortunate event, second time is probably incompetence. Maybe i can make it this time too , but , is it realy matter? And untill when? Next time you can shine with even more ridiculous change. And no , i dont think this will change someday , i just lost fate in you. Probably ill play EVE for a next monts or even year, but withour effort , only to watch with what genious idea you`ll come next.
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