Flying a carrier, warp to a structure (citadel, engineering complex, refinery) at any distance over 250km, send fighters to structure… and then sit back whilst the structure is unable to do anything about the attackers.
If you really want to be risk averse, once you’ve released your fighters, you can warp a few thousand km away and your fighters will still continue to engage the structure.
Triple web citadels with Gram II can of course engage the fighters with some success, but against 4 or 5 carriers, there isn’t enough time to kill all the hostiles before the structure looses shields/armor/structure. Engineering complexes and refineries are simply dead in the water.
Upwell structures are suppose to be force multipliers, not WTFOWN machines that can wipe out enemy attackers without a fleet.
The fighters are perfectly valid and engagable targets by your weapons and your fighters. You would be equally be powerless against 4-5 people in a much cheaper tailored fleet composition that rolled up and started shooting your medium structure. There are many spider-tanked, or logi-centric small fleet compositions that can tank the max DPS output of an unsupported structure.
While your obviously correct, I think we can all agree that citadels are generally too weak and too expensive compared to the old POS’s. I’m disturbed that CCP thinks citadels should be even more helpless. If people like this, fine. But I know I’ll never be owning the giant space pinatas that are citadels.
I’m not sure a POS would fare any better solo against a bunch of carriers. And even if, defanging and exploding a POS is faster with a properly composed fleet with capital support than grinding down Upwell timers.
I am not going to claim the balance is perfect as I don’t think structures are a uniform force multiplier and maybe too weak in some contexts, but they can see off solo/opportunistic trolls are far from a “piñata”. They have three reinforcement windows to get someone there to defend it and unlike POSes, have perfect asset safety. That is possibly harder on the solo player who relied on auto-defences of POSes, but opens the door for these being used, and fought over by groups of all sizes.
I don’t find it strange at all that CCP wants to get players in space and have their fleets fight it out rather than rely on auto-defences or massive walls of unfun grinding that just deter people from trying or lock smaller groups from contesting them.
I should clarify my main issues are how incredibly cheap a deathstar POS is in comparison to a citadel, and how much more powerful it is for that price. not to mention the automated defenses that kick in till you get people to properly man the guns. I will concede the fact that a POS is a little quicker to destroy than a citidel due to a POS only having one invulnerability timer compared to a citadel, but you can have a hell of a lot of deathstars, even full faction ones, for the cost of a lone fortizar.
The cost to efficiency ratio is out of whack. And CCP seems to want to make it even more out of touch. Killing citidels that are not HEAVILY defended by actual players in wormholes is laughably easy, I can do it myself with just a alts, but I groan when I have to kill properly tanked and fitted POSs, even undefended. (Granted I’m not using a fleet of dreads.)
I would consider that not right at all. Carrier (s) war at range of citadel at predestined position, drop fighter fleets to engage station, warp to safe while fighters/bombers destroy station.
Specially it’s totaly wrong coz if a astrahus or a simple raitaru have one anti sub cap weapon + bomb launcher, those 5 carriers gonna lose all their fighters in less than 5 mins ( even extra ones in cargo )
Wrong. Astrahus with triple web, Gram II, sub-cap missiles and bomb launcher can’t kill the fighters before the citadel dies. Raitaru might as well not bother trying.
one of any bomb of astrahous always oneshot one fighter from your squad, so u gonna lose your squad before their reach target and probably even before they come back
-.- 
