You know as well as I thats not true you silly fish.
@CCP_Aurora I would request it be more visible when certain weapons are on their reload cycles. If you think of the citadel as a raid boss battle, it needs a nice UI so we can tell our fleet “not to stand in the fire” 
I would like to see more power given tot the EWAR modules of structures. That makes them more of a force multiplier rather than a damage dealer. I’m fine with reducing the combat damage potential of a structure by itself, but give them an extra super long range target painter or jammer to make them better able to assist a defense fleet.
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Is it, though? Small things can be on-grid just fine, they just can’t be within smartbomb (PDS) range of the structure. And that’s just the structures that have PDSs. Will Large Smartbombs be getting ammo requirements so a swarm of interceptors can keep a titan tackled, too? They do exactly the same thing, after all: they’re very limiting in terms of the ships that are allowed to exist right up close and personal with the titan, too.
The bomb launcher is far more restricting of which ships could be with the fleet while shooting the structure, because it can reach out and touch you well past the 20-something km range of the PDS.
As for battleships’ ‘larger signature radius and slow speeds’… speed doesn’t really help when the bomb follows you, and the main bomb defense (defenders) don’t work on it. It’s just a matter of remote repair—which is part of why the Leshak is so popular for structure bashes. It’s big, sure, and it’s slow, but a group of them shrugs off damage because they spider-rank. Bring along a few logi and you’re golden. Nobody ever said ‘wait, no, it’s got a bomb launcher, nothing bigger than a drek!’
And yes, the XL missile launchers do a lot of damage to capitals. They need to, because dreads self-rep like a boss, faxes keep titans up, and carriers… lol, carriers are no-where near the anti-cap fit citadel’s range anyway, they’re over on their own citadel sending fighters over to orbit right outside the PDS’s range so the whole thing is completely impotent.
Will similar changes be happening to the ship-mounted Vorton Projectors? Can Thunderchildren only target battleships now?
I get what you’re trying to do with this one, obviously, but why not just make it so that its effectiveness is based on Signature radius? You guys pushed FCs into a useless ship that’s got half its EHP in whatever tank type the fleet isn’t using specifically to counter ‘FCs just get headshotted’… because apparently, FCs are such tactical geniuses that they can’t figure out ‘we need a robust chain of command here in case they start shooting officers’, and you guys still haven’t figured out how to balance Artillery into being anything other than ‘all or nothing’.
Well, one of the big ‘this is how it keeps you alive’ of that damned ship that makes you train 6 months of boosting skills so you can not boost is that it’s got a tiny sig radius. Use that here. Use the ‘here’s how you don’t get headshot’ measure you built into the ship you’ve told them to fly… to keep them from getting headshot in the ship you want them to fly.
As for ‘it can still bounce to subcaps’… like anyone’s gonna be attacking a Keepstar with capitals, but only 9 of them. Bounces are mass-dependent. If there’s a capital in range, it’s not bouncing to subs.
I agree that citadels—especially the larger ones—need to be rebalanced to be proper force multipliers, but I don’t see the things you’re saying are issues as the real issues. Lower the damage threshold to pause their timers. Make the bombs, y’know, bombs… fire-and-forget, instead of unpowered explosives that are somehow changing course in space.
Heck, if you want to make the PDS interesting, make it exactly what it claims to be: point defense, not area denial. In fact, go whole-hog: give structures shield arcs. Let the PDS defend in 1 arc at a time. And then (gasp) have it reduce incoming damage. You know, have it be point defense. Let people try to punch through in just one arc, or spread the damage around to minimize the PDS’s ability to reduce incoming fire. That’ll give rise to tactics like putting your big scary fleet on one side, and once the fight’s engaged, bombers drop out of cloak and lob torpedoes at the other side.
The missiles… eh. The damage needs to come down some, but 50% on the cruises? I feel like that’s overkill.
Either way, you need to make a decision—and then you need to communicate that decision to the players—about just what the fundamental use-case for these things is:
Do you want structures to be the province of large groups, or do you want structures to be something aspirational for small groups or even solo players to own and maintain?
Because those two use-cases have very different balance points. If a structure’s supposed to be something a small group can keep alive… then it needs to be able to punch above its weight, by a lot. Small groups don’t just get attacked by small groups, after all, and if a small group can’t keep a structure alive against a group 1.25-1.5x its size, it won’t be long before small groups don’t have these things anymore.
So if you want small groups to be able to have astras and forts (because after all, if you want small groups to have their own capital ships, then they need someplace to put them), then astras and forts need to be able to be defended when Snuff-sized entities come knocking.
And yeah, that kind of survivability gets frustrating when you’re dealing with the big groups and what that means for Fort/Keeps with a decent defense force. And honestly, I gotta say…
So what?
Look, the big groups, those of us playing the empire-building game… yeah, overcoming ‘well crap, they actually have solid defenses’ is part of the game. It’s more than part of it. It’s the point. I know this won’t be a popular viewpoint with folks like @Brisc_Rubal or @bigbillthaboss3 (and you guys both know I ain’t saying this because I hate the null game), but once you’re at that scale… yeah, the US military shouldn’t be running around knocking over banks in some 3rd world backwater. We and PAPI shouldn’t be out there trying to stomp on some rando’s dead-end astra.
You can be the empire, or you can be the marauding bands of barbarians. Can’t do both. Even the Mongols had to face that. In the same vein, structures can either be ‘for regular folks’ or ‘for the megablocs’… the same structures can’t be all things to all people.
Let’s face it, BBTB, bombers are just completely unbalanced on the whole. They shouldn’t be used as a metric for anything, they should be reined in, hard. 100+km range on a frigate packing a battleship weapon system that keeps getting buffed as ‘short range’? With extra bonuses ladled onto the torps?
And isn’t that the problem with so much? CCP doesn’t want to commit the time to actually fixing things, they just want to ‘twist some knobs’ (and I don’t mean you, @CCP_Aurora, you’ve shown you’re more than willing to roll up your sleeves and dive in when you can, but it really feels like the guys in charge aren’t allowing anything like that on the real mechanical problems the game has).
Define ‘a determined force’. 1-2 dreads? Absolutely should. A half dozen Leshaks? Probably still should be able to defend that Astra with just the gunner.
Fortifications that need significant investment of effort to defend are not fortifications. They’re speedbumps.
The structure is not the point for you, or for me, or for Bill. But for a lot of folks, yeah, man, it is. Because that’s the bill of goods CCP sold 'em. And if that’s not what CCP wants now, CCP needs to get their message straight, and very clearly tell players what these things are for.
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Yeah… I still don’t understand why such a colossal stomp on the PDS. It’s not like we’re changing it’s RoF here by 5 percent. This is a monumental step change for a system to go from basically a costless, short range AoE defense to something that now can fire 3 times, and then sits out for 3 minutes… I didn’t see a range extension or anything to balance this. No, instead it’s also getting a damage reduction.
If this is the case, then why are you waiting until fanfest to discuss the larger imagining of what structures should be? Because right now - and since you didn’t deem it necessary to give us any idea what the overall goal was - I have to guess that your goal with structures is to… just nerf them into the ground because once again, you all designed something, ignored feedback that this would be a problem, let it blow up out of control, and now you’re twisting the only ‘knob’ you have, which is to make it useless so people don’t use them anymore.
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Ty and well said i agree
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I find myself generally agreeing with you, @Arrendis it was very well put together, and I echo your sentiments.
I disagree with the bombers bit though.
they are not balanced now. The change is the balance. Citadels are so hopeless broken even if they were nerfed ‘into the ground’ it still wouldn’t be enough.
2+2=5.
Got it.
was part of a different reply I never finished, edited it out
Im not sure how this is going to address any of the issues that plague citadels.
SPDS - Sure i guess, i was kinda odd that it requrired no ammo, but i wouldnt call itg limiting a grid, at best a Fort had a PDS range of what? 40km? with T2 rig on it? not really a game changer. If your logi wing cant keep a few dictors alive next to the them then “get gud”
SGBL - Oh boy
The structure bombs were particularly effective in limiting the types of fleets which were able to successfully contest an armed structure, particularly for battleship which were most impacted by them due to their larger signature radius and slow speeds.
this is a joke in-itself, spider tank fleets can easily tank the DPS of a Astra or Ria with a bomb launcher, removing the bomb only rewards incompetent FCs or random small gangs. 2-3 skilled logi pilots can easily keep a 5+ dps fleet alive on medium structures (even more so if they warp off and on), anymore logi and the fleet becomes unkillable to the structure itself.
Missiles - I havent messed with XL missiles since you separated them (no real reason too). Will say that the velocity buff is nice thou.
Arc Vorton - haven’t messed with it but @Arrendis hashed it out so i refer to her on this.
If you really want to address the issues with Citadels then you need to look at the damage cap and the damage threshold. The fact that the Threshold is the same for every size is the literal problem. There is no reason that an Alliance level asset have the same protection as a small corp asset. We’ve seen it time and time again, that the threshold for the keepstar continue to keep them safe.
Meaningfull change would look like this.
-
M - Dmg Thres 10% - Dmg Cap 7500 HP (per sec)
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L - Dmg Thres 5% - Dmg Cap 25,000 HP (per sec)
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XL - Dmg Thres 0.0025-0.01% - Dmg Cap 500,000 HP (per sec)
This here is meaningful change based on intended user that should alleviate the issues that tidi cause over such structures.
Edit: im bad at math and probably still messed up.
A determined force is a fleet with 10-20 people in it, depending on the ship type, or multiple caps on grid with subcap support. I’ve been pushed off a structure, usually a fort, when we’ve had more than 20 people against one dude. Astras are less of an issue than Forts and Keepstars. But you’re saying “fortifications” like these things are designed to take and hold space and they aren’t. We know they aren’t. Even a Keepstar isn’t defensible by itself, but it can force the other side to bring substantial fleets for boring ass work that only takes longer because of harassment from a gunner but doesn’t change the overall outcome.
You read the FC document. You know the issues. Even small groups defend their structures with response fleets when they care, but they don’t bother when they know one person can do it. If one person can’t do it, this will force them to decide whether they really want the structure or if they’re willing to do what it takes to defend it. And that means content, one way or the other.
The point for EVERYBODY is content. That’s what we want, that’s what citadels tend to stifle. This game should be about fleets of different sizes fighting each other, not fleets vs. structures. That ■■■■ is beyond boring, the kind of clean up crap that makes the game tedious. We don’t need more tedium in EVE, regardless of this size of your group.
So I have a solution I think we can all agree on:
Bring back mining POS’s that can be Ref’d in one dread cycle. That’ll get content going again.
Translation, if they’re willing to get their teeth kicked in for forming against say… SNUFF.
The decision, for small groups, tends to be whether we’re willing to commit to a fight we know we’re going to lose, because they’re trying to force us to escalate so they can bring down the hammer and laugh. That’s not engaging.
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The decision is the same for large groups, unless you missed us losing 50 Keepstars in Delve over the last year and having two actual fights. It’s not engaging, no. That’s the problem with a system of gameplay based around static objects.
Brisc, that’s not a fair reply. You’re talking the largest of alliances in the game and comparing it to alliances that don’t rate top 100 in some cases. The scaling on that doesn’t match, nor the scaling on ability to make the initial investment, replacement, etc.
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It is a fair reply - the same issues affect both groups, albeit in different ways. If we design structures to make it so that a small group can use them to fight off a similarly sized group, that is going to scale and break at larger levels, and vice versa. That’s why these issues are difficult to fix, because there is no way to ensure that only big groups are impacted or only small groups are impacted. We all use citadels, in a variety of ways. But in my experience, citadels create the least common denominator form of content, they aren’t that engaging, and unless a defender is willing to actually defend, they’re mostly time wasters and time sinks, and that sucks. Like I said, one guy in a gunner’s chair can make what would have been a 45 minute ref take hours and I don’t think that’s good gameplay.
If this reduces some of the tedium, it will have helped.
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No, I’m saying ‘fortifications’ like these things are supposed to be someplace where you can fall back and get some temporary respite. For them to be that, they have to be able to exist without constant fleet defense.
And how’s that different from the way towers were set up? A tower could actively defend itself against a small group with 0 gunners. Now, at least if nobody’s defending, the structure doesn’t shoot back.
Look, I agree that ‘fleet v structure’ is boring AF, but that’s still what CCP sold their customers. ‘YOU can have your home in-space’, not ‘you and 50 friends can have a base, but you can’t ever take a break from the game, because some group with 10x your membership will decide you’ve become content’.
No, we don’t need more tedium in EVE. But you don’t reduce tedium by reducing the ways a defender can defend. Sitting a bunch of leshaks on a structure and just waiting for it to die is also tedium. Dropping a bunch of dreads and knowing the structure can’t do squat about you unless the 50-man corp you’re hitting is willing to fight your 100-man fleet + caps.
And you and I both know that’s what you get. Fair fights in EVE happen when someone screws up. It’s why the one word you hear from the people looking for punch down as hard as they can is ‘Content’. And I’m not saying you’re one of those guys, Brisc, just that that’s the language they use.
And getting shat on from a great height because everything always N+1 is also tedious AF.
Yeah, obviously. Like so much of the game, it can’t be all things to all people, but that’s what it’s getting sold as.
For every bit of tedium this reduces for us, it will introduce more for the people getting shat on. Because where our tedium is ‘this gameplay is boring’, theirs will be ‘there is no point even logging the hell in’. It’s wardecs all over again.
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I appreciate that that’s been your experience, but it’s just not the same, and the solution you’re proposing here seems to be entirely hinged on something CCP could otherwise change to make structures more than ‘just one guy in a gunner’s chair.’
CCP could very well add multiple gunner chairs to structures. They could offload some of those defenses to installations around the structure so the structure itself does very little and each installation could be destroyed. CCP could adjust damage caps and thresholds, CCP could create other means of fighting with citadels. There are a lot of ways to go about addressing this that could all deal with that ‘one guy in a gunner’s chair.’
But it’s just not the same to compare that time Gonz lost a bunch of keepstars to the a 150 man alliance in so and so space trying to appease their bigger neighbors every day of the week because if they don’t, any of those 10K+ groups could just roll in and wipe you out in a week.
That’s been my experience from when Suddenly Spaceships. lived in Cloud Ring between Horde and INIT and how much diplo’ing we had to do on a daily basis just to ‘get to keep our structures’ in a bit of space neither of you actually wanted. And even then, I’d personally invested 20 some billion of isk into our Australia House network, and the moment we did something that I think it was Gobbins in this case wouldn’t let slide, we had to write it all off and move out.
It is not the same.
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This is literally one of the best solutions.
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