I feel like this will help marginally but you still have the tzlock issue to sort out.
The obvious solution to me is to half the assigned vulnerability time given to the players and impose the other half at a time gap,(6/12hrs) after for example.
I donāt think this would work though as it would simply crush smaller groups ability to put up structures.
Citadels cannot defend themselves as a POS could so in this TZ window the attacking force would have an unstoppable advantage over smaller groups. The Vulnerabilty window was to allow defenders to choose a time when they would actually be available to fight. Then if they couldnāt defend the structure they would lose it.
With enforced alternate TZ windows any small group of friends starting out wouldnāt have a hope of defending against a larger group. There would simply become a critical mass of players required to be active in each TZ to make any corp viable as a structure holding group.
If you want structures to have vulnerability outside the current ones then the structures themselves would need automated teeth at the same scale that POS used to have.
I would much rather see the 15 minutes repairs be based on the SOV status (if they hold it or not) and ADM. so 15 minutes is the least, and an hour would be the highest.
Will we start to receive anchor notifications for structures within sov?
yknow whatd really be op? start a mother ship incursion in jita xD
wanna see op? try giving players Lux Kontos
wait so how much will the new structure be at jita? i really want it
Looking interesting so far and the video did show a lot of insight into what is to come.
In the video you said, you would not be against refineries in w-space. Would it be feasible to ask if such refinery could have the hybrid reaction service, so you could attend to the yellow blueprints?
How is this going to look come October? Did you consider the outage of t2 products when all them poses go offline and the first refineries will deployed and anchored and the time it takes to have the first few crumbs of moon-ore can be mined?
There is at least a downtime of three days where no moon-ore is processed or any reactions can take place and even those will take time to process.
Does the new random distribution of moon-ore mean that a lower or deeper lowsec system can have a tech moon like the current R64?
What about tech-interdiction? If one wanted to interdict or suppress moon-ore, wouldnāt it be easy to just have a black ops gang wait for the explosion and kill them miners?
However funny or not that might be, I foresee a price increase of t2 modules, ships, ammo and drones.
Oh and, there is a hint that some ships are getting rebalanced. Which are those and can we take a look at what you have planned there?
Itās a double-edged sword.
Iām curious why blocking a moon is called an āabuseā of the mechanics. I would call it a totally legitimate attempt to intervene in an adversaries economic efforts. Is there any self-control mechanism that helps CCP to successfully reflect on wether or not decisions serve the game and the player community as a whole or only the groups who effectively lobby the Devs?
If anyone is willing to put up 1B for the trash to block a moon for 24 hours, I donāt see how this would negatively effect the game. Neither would I see many scenarios of this happening in which the āintrudersā are really not looking for a fight, but purely want to block profits from a moon for 1 single day, which will cost them more to than the Sov-holder loses in potential profits. This would anyway only be relevant in the first chaotic period after the changes. All in all this totally sounds like a hypothetical issue, which could only ever be relevant for any large Alliance which gets moon-blocked by a much smaller entity.
A negative side-effect has been named by people in the comments, stating that it will be significantly harder for highsec dwellers to online their structures, just as @Tipa_Riot explained. A much better solution against cluttering space with Citadels would be an ease on the attacker for grinding through undefended structures, with longer vulnerability timers (scaling with System security status maybe) or shorter waiting periods or fuel requirements or whatever.
So while catering the paranoid fears of large Nullsec Alliances, for an issue that - if ever - exists merely for a few days, it deeply and continously will have an effect on highsec with really only being a hit to the weakest in the foodchain.
Is that not right @CCP_Lebowski @CCP_Fozzie ?
To be clear, the blocking of a moon is a completely valid strategy that weāre not trying to stifle. Its just that we feel that blocking it by being the fastest to click a button once a previous Refinery is destroyed is an abuse. Controlling the field and getting a structure into the anchoring period is completely fine.
In regards to reflecting on the long term effects of decisions, I canāt speak for all of course but in Five 0 we take into account a lot of variables, the main one being data on activity that we gather when the features are live. We also listen to player accounts, the CSM, and conduct surveys on existing and future features.
I hope that answers some of your questions!
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I canāt even picture how much salt would of been mined if an alliance managed to deploy a refinery just after it lost one because they had prepared in advance and jumped/bridged a hauler on grid as soon as it went boom.
I discussed this once as a dry dock that would have a module slot.
3 modules = 3 ships up to a certain m3 threshold. One super would use up all the space or you could have several smaller ships. They would have green or red flashing lights over a opened or closed hangar bay thatās visible on the structure so people can see if the structure is vacant or occupied.
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That controlling the field thing sounds like references to dust 514 with holding planet side artillery to shoot down hostile structures.
Although that would still mean to feed 1B kills + salvage to whoever took the previous Refinery down, just now within Ā±15 minutes and not after 24 hours. But I think I see your point: throwing a Bil a day into the bin might be a bit cheap a price to cause a lot of trouble for the ones who did the grind before.
Step in the right direction, but still not enough if you ask me. Implementing this change now just because of refineries is really short sighted IMO.
At the moment it is possible to anchor a citadel in an enemyās capital system without them being able to do anything about it. The way this thread is worded indicates to me that this wasnāt even considered a problem and still isnāt, which is absurd. Even with the changes a 15 minute timer is way too little.
The pre-anchoring timerās length should depend on the sov (and ideally standing) of/towards the sov holding alliance. Friendly structures get a 15 minute timer, hostile structures get a longer timer. Iād advocate for an hour or even more. Because establishing a beachhead in enemy space shouldnāt be a matter of throwing up a structure and hoping no-one sees it in time.
Also the pre-anchor timer should be part of the default anchoring time. So 24 hours minus 15 minutes.
I think the abuse case CCP is trying to change is when two or more entities have fought over a moon and the āowningā entity has lost a structure fight for it. The previously owning entity could under the current Upwell structure mechanics simply drop another refinery and have a week-long immunity because āmechanicsā, thus ending the fight due on account of someone having a better connection with less latency, or was just one second faster on the button. Pretty lame imo.
Under the new mechanics, they would have to actually defend their newly deployed structure and control the grid for 15 minutes. If random losec entity ninjas a structure on a moon without entity 2 noticing, then effectively nothing will change. This sounds much better to me.
With the current mechanics, they would not have a week-long immunity, but only 24h hours, after which the structure can be shot and destroyed. To cause a week-long blockade of a moon would cost you 7 x 800-1000M and thatās when you manage to always be the first.
Iāve understood that CCP doesnāt like the idea of a weaker entity trying to take moons that someone else might be interested in or to minimize the grind for the āstrongerā if anyone would chose to apply aforementioned method of dropping a Refinery a day - which I still believe is an unrealistic scenario.
On the other hand the new mechanics will open up opportunities to camp moons that you donāt want to hold yourself. Just wait for a daring small group who thought they found an empty good moon, wait for them to anchor the structure and drop.This could indeed be an interesting part of it.
Same for baiting a response fleet.
Honestly, this change was very necessary to prevent abuse. Imagine an attacker blowing up a moon-mining cit and then instantly planting a new one thereā¦ in a 6 ADM system they donāt own. Under current mechanics, that structure will be an invulnerable wall for 7 DAYS! The initial 15 minute vulnerability will help prevent that.
Whilst its a start there needs to some thing like a decay mechanic - if you dont use the citadel it slowly decays until its vulnerable 24/7 with only one RF cycle
Yes, yes letās increase the vulnerability timers because how dare the smaller groups focused mostly around one timezone even try to build something on their own. Is it really smart choice to make changes that will ultimately end up turning Eve into even stronger case of āKiss the ring or gtfoā?