Before Citadels hit New Eden, the station undock was a significant conflict driver for roaming gangs in 0.0. You could bubble the undock to catch slow-to-warp ratters, or you could simply sit there, disrupting the everyday business of locals - with the advent of Citadels this is now dead.
The Citadel, down to even the smallest moon-mining platform or engineering complex, is an unkillable 300km web, 200km point, and 100km heavy neut - it is simply impossible for any roaming gang to fight within the death-sphere of a Citadel, and this has removed a lot of conflict from the game.
My proposal is simple: A citadel should be unable to use its weapons and ewar unless its repair timer is active (I.E. it is under attack or it has just come out of a reinforcement timer). This would allow citadels to still provide a significant home-field advantage for threats to its existence.
I’d maybe refine the suggestion a little more… add a button to citadels to turn on “combat mode” so you always have a choice to use combat modules by disabling other modules. Basically what you’re asking for except still allows the defenders some options in a real serious combat situation regardless of rfc status.
I’d maybe refine the suggestion a little more… add a button to citadels to turn on “combat mode” so you always have a choice to use combat modules by disabling other modules. Basically what you’re asking for except still allows the defenders some options in a real serious combat situation regardless of rfc status.
I disagree with this suggestion. If you can simply turn on “combat mode” to enable the death-sphere when a gang lands on your citadel grid, that’s not a change at all.
Easiest way to prevent that would be to have you do a certain amount of damage to activate the guns.
Unless you somehow bash out your own structure to 90% shields so that you can be saved, but if it takes whoever is killing you that long, you should just have a response fleet be able to land.
This is an interesting idea, but given how long it takes to lock a ship shouldn’t a small-gang be able to warp out to a ping when they’re being yellow boxed and then warp back? Doesn’t that provide what you’re looking for in terms of being able to engage untethered ships?