My Take on Structure Spam

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Structure dwelling capsuleers,

I would like to share my 2 cents about the proliferation of Upwell structures. I’m not the first one with such ideas, I’m sure much has been written about this topic already, so some stuff in this post you may have read before. Also, I’m writing this mainly from a null-sec perspective, though most of these issues apply to low-sec and WH space as well.

Structure Spam
To make a long story very short, the proliferation of structures has made once risky and dangerous space far too safe. Members of null-sec alliances do not need to worry about being caught out in an isolated pocket of their territory, as every single system has at least one structure in it that provides instant and infinite protection for all ships, against all foes. Capital ships and even supers can move around in perfect safety as Keepstar chains are deployed at the drop of a hat. The sheer number of structures in a single system has been used on multiple occasions to deter enemies purely with the prospect of a mind numbing grind. Removing enemy infrastructure from a region takes hundreds, if not thousands of manhours. On top of that, current structure mechanics give defenders a disproportionate advantage.

It has become very obvious that the traditional way of trying to contain the proliferation of very powerful toys in EVE Online (that is, by making them extremely expensive) just doesn’t work. Didn’t work with titans, didn’t work with Keepstars. So screw the sandbox, it’s time for some hard caps.

Constellation based limits
To start with, I would propose a hard cap on certain structures per constellation. Constellations in New Eden usually have between 6 and 8 systems in them, which would create caps as such:

Keepstars: 1 per constellation.
Fortizars: 3 per constellation.
Astrahus/Engineering Complex/Refinery: Unlimited.

No more Fortizars on every gate, no more multiple Keepstars in staging systems. Pick and choose where your strategic priorities lie.

The limit only applies to online (full/low power) structures. This allows for multiple structures to be anchoring and unanchoring at the same time to facilitate relocation.

Tether restrictions
Any ship being able to tether in complete safety on any type of structure is ridiculous and should never have been a thing. I would see most structures lose their tethering function, again forcing strategic deployment of tether capable structures.

Keepstars: Tether enabled for all ships.
Fortizars: Tether enabled for all ships except super capitals.
Tatara: Tether enabled for all industrial ships (mining, hauler, freighter, industrial command).

All other structures lose their tether capabilities.

Astrahus’ should function like an ordinary station. You can dock there, you can live there, it keeps its docking range, but you don’t get free infinite protection in a structure this cheap and this small.

Engineering complexes are dedicated to industry. They shouldn’t function as safe havens for anything or anyone. Anyone building capitals or supers should have their exit figured out before they undock them.

Athanors are so prevalent due to moon mining that they shouldn’t function as a safe haven to anything, period. You want to provide your miners with extra protection? Deploy a Tatara.

Anchoring restrictions
The ability to anchor structures just anywhere means everyone does the most logical thing; group everything together on one grid so it becomes nigh impossible to get caught warping between them, and defending becomes a cakewalk. Time to rip that up too.

Citadels: No change, can be anchored freely anywhere.

Engineering complexes: Can only be anchored on planets, and only one per planet. Geography now decides where large industrial hubs can exist.

Refineries: Can only be anchored on moons, and only one per moon.

Offensive structures
Now, I’m fully aware of using structures offensively, and hard caps kind of kill that concept if the defender has already hit the limit. Originally I had come up with a way too elaborate system involving hacking the sov hub to raise the structure limit, but let’s keep it simple (stupid). Declare war on your target, and as long as you’re involved in a war you can anchor one additional structure in any system where your opponent has an online structure (this would work both ways). If element of surprise is an issue, we could say anchoring becomes possible from the moment the war is declared, rather than after 24 hours. That doesn’t actually matter much for the purposes of this mechanic.

Forced abandoned state
I know very well that if a loophole exists, EVE players will find and abuse it within exactly 0.000136 seconds. So in the interest of anti-bullshittery, a war declaration only allows an additional structure to be anchored and online for a set time limit (I’m thinking 2 weeks). The attacker either is or isn’t able to remove one of the structures from the system within that time, and if they fail to do so, their beachhead is rendered moot. After 2 weeks the last structure to cross over the structure limit is forced into an abandoned state, regardless of online services or fuel usage. This prevents entities from existing in a perpetual state of war so they can circumvent the structure limit. Yeah, I know what you people are like.

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And that’s all I have! I’m sure there’s angles to this I haven’t considered, so feel free to poke holes in my ideas. Just to note; these ideas are meant to support a healthy state of null-sec warfare and the game in general. I’m well aware that implementing these ideas would destroy quite a few conveniences people have become accustomed to (myself included). However, I think these changes would make the null-sec a much more interesting place with more potential for conflict and loss.

Thanks for reading!

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I like your idea to further limit the amount of structures in space.

While we already have two mechanics that limit structure spam (structure cores to make people commit to placed structures as well as the abandoned state to more easily deal with forgotten structures) neither of these counter the structure proliferation of large alliances in their own null sec space.

An additional mechanic to somehow limit that could be welcome, for the reasons you’ve already mentioned.

I’m not a fan of hard limits though.

It makes it too easy to ‘saturate’ a region with structures, which makes hidden or offensive structures near impossible.

As you have noticed while writing your suggestion you needed extra rules to make offensive structures possible at all, with some convoluted war and abandoned state limitations that groups probably are going to exploit one way or another for example by declaring war against themselves to temporarily get beyond hard limits when necessary.

I feel like this version of your suggestion isn’t a nice solution.

Wouldn’t it be better to instead of hard limits have soft limits to structure spam?

For example, make every structure in a constellation beyond your proposed limit cost a lot more upkeep. Let every structure beyond the threshold drain a lot more extra fuel blocks, and possibly other resources at well. It would take some careful balancing, but with high enough such ‘additional costs’ CCP can make it possible but uneconomic to spam structures for safety through an entire region. People could still place a second Keepstar in their staging, but with an upkeep cost considerably more than ‘a second Keepstar’, so they’d have to ask themselves if it is worth it.

Like your hard limit, this soft limit also encourages players to choose where to strategically place their structures, instead of choosing ‘everywhere’.

Such soft limits also accomplish your intended goal of less structures in space, which I agree with is a nice goal, but as a bonus of such soft limits you also allow offensive structures. And all without convoluted and exploitable war rules.

After all, an invading force likely is willing to pay a lot more extra fuel for a few temporary offensive structures than an alliance at peace would want to pay for to have extra structures for safety though the entire region.

What do you think?

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Sadly I think hard caps and sometimes convoluted rules are the only way to manage a game like EVE where so many different mechanics come together. The past 20 years are a testament to how ‘extra cost’ of any kind is never a deterrent to scale up, ever. The large bloc alliances are sitting on so much income that a bit of extra cost isn’t going to make a dent. It’s like giving Google a 300 million dollar fine. That’s just the cost of doing business.

I admire EVE for the ‘hands off’ sandbox approach in most cases, but in certain areas it just doesn’t work and lead to problems like this. In those situations we need to remember we’re still playing a game that is meant to be fun, and sometimes hard rules are needed to keep things in check.

A soft cap can work, but the penalty needs to be something other than money. Then something like draining resources from the sov hub(s), in turn restricting system upgrades, could be an interesting approach. When you have the choice between an Ansiblex or an additional structure the priorities become much more difficult.

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…..proceeds to write a novel.

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Yeah that’s how it often goes when trying to describe something in this game :upside_down_face: