Sorry for my english in avance, but I hope you`ll understand me)
At the moment (at least in lowsecs), the demolition of the citadels is incredibly dull. And it’s not in the game mechanics itself (it’s not bad), but in absolutely absent consequences. No one wants to protect the citadel. The overwhelming majority of citadels costs much more than a fleet that can be lost on their protection (astrahus and so on - generally stand as half of the ship in the fleet, it’s just absurd). In addition, all the assets from the citadel is safely transferred to the nearest NPC station.
As a result, there is no special incentive to demolish the citadels or defend them. Given the huge number of ISKs in the game, in my opinion - the time has come when it is necessary to introduce the death of all assets stored on the citadels during their demolition. Either at least the death of 70 percent of it (randomly), and the rest as it is now - through the security system to the nearest machine tool.
Effects:
Real economic damage from the demolition of Citadels. The loss of huge structures must be tangible financially, and this is REALLY a loss, not just a line on the killboard.
As a consequence - the incentive to demolish the enemies’ quotes and defend their own, and not save the fleet - just put new ones
Traders, manufacturers, etc., getting bonuses from strongholds, begin to carry some risk. Bonuses cease to be a freebie/
Give the citadels some significance! The citadel should not be cheaper or insignificant than the ship
What now? Most of them are empty hulls aren’t they? Even if there was no asset safety, you would not find a lot of these:
Not to mention that removal of asset safety is going to have a lot of negative consequences on EVE as a whole by pushing a lot more numpties into huge, established groups because they seek safety over adventure.
A Citadel alone has little purpose. Its how it’s being used and for what it’s being used, which makes it meaningful. If a Citadel just sits in space and that’s all it does, then it has no consequence for anyone. Thus destroying it has not much consequence either.
Only in how they are being used do they have value for their owners and when it’s destroyed and can no longer be used then that’s also the consequence. What you want however is something different. You want Citadels to be pinatas. For them you need to go to Mexico.
When then nobody protects it then that’s a choice a player makes. If you find this boring then you, too, need to make a choice. You can choose to put in some effort and find a target worthy of destruction, or when you do want to destroy a meaningless structure by someone who doesn’t care for it it then you can still sing songs while doing so and thereby combat the boredom.
Special incentives are not needed. The Citadels are the incentive for whatever you want to do with them. A special incentive is what you give to people who are special (i.e. have disabilities).
EVE is also not about total annihilation of all and any assets. A ship, which sits docked in a station isn’t a threat on its own. No need to go “HULK SMASH EVERYTHING!”, because you choose to bash a pointless structure of a nobody in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, this was a mistake from the start. Citadels take way too few ressources to build for what they offer. People presented the numbers, but CCP was fixed on everyone having their little cheap home. Not only does the loss rarely matter, the other side of it is that creating such a huge structure does not offer any feeling of accomplishment.
Fortizar / Azbel / Tatara should have been the baseline, the smallest structures. Keepstar / Sotiyo / X the 2nd line and some actually expensive structure on the top. Didn’t happen back then and they won’t touch it again.
tl;dr you are right about this, but there is no reason to believe that CCP would change it
Well, this depends on the circumstances. Any undefended Citadel can be taken down by T1 max dps battlecruisers. As soon as a defense fleet is forming, the price of the attacking fleet will always be higher than the cost of the structure.
Also, the idea is that Citadels are not supposed to have overly offensive capabilities on their own. I think it makes sense. POS were overpowered in their solo-defensive capabilities, even when guns were not manually controlled.
Anyhow, this thread is mostly what if, since there is no way CCP will drastically change the build requirements (thus the price) for existing Citadel models.
True. In the what if world where baseline Citadels would be more expensive, there might have been some sense in giving them different abilities.
It shouldn’t offer unequal protection to anyone. The protection to builders/owners of structures right now is mostly the grind to take it down and asset safety. I think it’s maybe already too much passive protection. Any more than that and the Citadel spam will only escalate further. Also too much safety is never good for builders/industrialists, because less destruction is bad for business.
The fact that Citadels are not cheap and can be easily destroyed is the whole reason for Asset Safety. CCP adding a fee for that service is in my opinion a rip-off.