You can already encourage fleets of frigates to group up, simply by having a Hecate or similar probe the lone frigates, warp to them and take them out before the rest of the fleet can respond if they’re spread out too much.
No need to implement a mechanic that specifically rewards N+1 to do so.
Again, why are they sitting still? If they’re moving, that Hecate’s gotta chase them, which slows down how fast it can kill things. Especially if it has to stay in Propulsion mode to do it. If it’s Generic T1 Frigates, good luck RFing a Fortizar with them in the first place. If it’s bombers, that Hecate’s never out of their range, no matter how spread out they are… and they’re not in PDS range, anyway.
Harpies? Still not in PDS range.
Jags? Survivable enough that your little Hecate’s gonna have a bad day anyway, since they can warp to one another. Same goes for basically all Assault Frigs.
So which frigates are you looking at here? Interceptors? Nobody’s using them to RF a fort. And they’re definitely not sitting still to be missiled to death while they waste time trying.
You are aware that simply by saying that you now have at least 25 EVE theory-crafters racking up a plan to do exactly that, right. 
Honestly I feel a lot of the PDS concerns would get alleviated if they were treated like POS batteries and not a click one button general AoE smartbomb effect around the entire structure. You could group them for concentrated damage, or leave them undirected for whatever they happen to hit. Sometimes they’d group up on one person, others they’d be a bit of everywhere.
I also really still don’t get why the huge hate for the PDS when so many doctrines(courtesy largely surgical strike) are already optimized to engage well outside that range anyway. I guess I’d ask what doctrine are you trying to use that requires you to be inside 4KM, that also isn’t tanky enough to shrug off most the damage?
If they can get enough of them with long enough range and high enough damage to do it, I’ll tip my hat.
Our swarms of condors will blot out the sun
Because apparently, people (read: FCs?) are complaining about not being able to sit their frigates at 0 on the target.
One current concern with smaller groups vs caps is the lack of ability for DPS to overcome sustainable tank of single ships, dreads in particular for this change, for the duration of their attack window.
A flat 30-50% nerf to Missile DPS disproportionally hits the capability of an Astra to overcome a solo-dread pilot given their lack of additional Anti-Capital Fighter DPS from Heavy Fighters available to the larger structures.
These changes may indeed be good for structures at those scales; however, for the Astra in particular (and other non-fighter equipped structures for that matter, but those tend to be of lesser concern due to their specialized roles instead of their role being defense) though it changes it from a near battle where a defender may need 2-3 minimum additional battleship supports minimum to break through bashing dread fits to the point of where you need 5+. If anything I would have said for M-Set structures or the Astra in particular that a DPS buff was probably needed to help make things closer in terms of parity. (Assuming, of course, the dread pilot isn’t being actively ignorant of a structure defense’s capability.)
That’s before we get into issues of limiting bomb launches on M-Set structures for Wormholes or Pochven, where this dramatically lowers their outgoing damage capacity. Which seems like might have been an unintended side-effect of the proposed change.
And that’s before we get into other issues of overall apparent change in stated design based on your statements that @Elsebeth_Rhiannon articulated quite well.
I mean, maybe we should start a campaign to nerf Titan DD’s into rainbow cannons because I can’t set my carrier at 0 and solo it?
I just don’t understand how ‘bring the right tool for the job’ that applies to every other reddit forum warrior argument suddenly doesn’t matter here.
I missed the part of the design where skynetting fighters from carriers was addressed.
In the last month, 11 ships have been killed by structure bomb launchers.
In the last month, no ships, but 7 sets of fighters have been killed by structure PDS.
Glad we’re addressing these critical issues.
But a dozen FC’s have said this and this alone is the sole reason they’re not able to have fun anymore, and nerfing these into the ground is the only acceptable way to fix them.
And if you don’t agree, well then seriously, stop.
At least it’s consistent with the number of spies PL needs to get dropped by BL dreads. 12 seems to be the magic number.
I missed the part of the design where skynetting fighters from carriers was addressed.
That’s up in the front. PDS makes skynetting heavy fighters to reinforce and kill structures too hard and expensive, so the PDS is getting nerfed to align better with the “attackers risk nothing for free crystals” mentality that the current CSM is pushing.
because structures are time wasting annoyances for larger SOV groups that used to enjoy reinforcing/destroying player dropped buildings (POCO, custom office, etc.) of any size in under a min from supercap blobs, and their aim is to go back to those days.
The changes that REALLY need to be made:
1 - see Road to Fanfest - Structure Updates - #92 by Thukker_Wanderer
Structures are too easy for low-effort attacks to reinforce, and the larger groups that punch down against smaller corps. Structures are not sufficient for them to hold their own, a group of 5 cannot defend against a group of 10 with an astrahaus…yet it’s too hard for a group of 3 vs a group 1 plus astra to defeat the group of 1 so we need citadels to be weaker? what the hell are you CSM folks smoking?
2 - Cumulative cost of structures – There should be some sort of penalty or cost for structures in addition to fuel for player entities that have a lot of them. Structure spam is too cheap for what it gives for the larger nullbloc entities, and there needs to be a stronger incentive for an alliance to need to think about putting up another structure that doesn’t hurt the smaller corps – or perhaps that is the intent, see Road to Fanfest - Structure Updates - #6 by Brisc_Rubal .
At the very least, something to make NS aliances not able to affordably put out 5+ structures per system providing easy safe havens at every planet in the ratting systems that have more anoms than entire literal regions of high sec, or 30+ structures in a structure spammed system to prepare for a war effort. Additional monitary costs, exponentially higher fuel consumption, or additional costs somewhere needs to be added to remove the incentive to spam structures that will generally not be regularly lived in, even in the short term.
Additionally, perhaps reworking Asset safety such that only 3 structure per corp (plus additional 1 per 100 members maybe) of the aliance get asset safety, and everything else is at risk would help with that. Alternatively, 10 ships, and two large freight containers worth of storage limits to asset safety per player or some sort of concept along those lines with better numbers to match pvp outpost stations being meaningful losses while not absolutely detrimental to an indy player’s prime hub getting destroyed.
they aren’t changing their defenses, they are changing their offensive capabilities. they certainly SHOULD make them more killable for how absolutely absurdly cheap they are to build compared to the power they provide
Incidentally, the ‘use the hacking minigame’ could be expanded to other structures, too. Hack hostile jumpgates to let your ships use them, burn out their LO.
Way to hit ball out of park. +1 to great feedback on the proposed changes. Q-targetting the “guided bomb” alone would lead to some misses, adding a skill element. Especially with a reduced explosion radius.
I’m told that a “less oppressive” PDS would give room for small frigate gangs to combat-scan warp into specific targets during the reload, gank and run without losing the frig fleet.
Totally agree that Astrahus today doesn’t kill a well-fitted Dread. Cap boosters, drugs, implants - they can be beastly. So, Revs are already soloing Astra’s in low and null if the defender can’t undock anything to counter a “solo” - which is sometimes bait for a hoped-for escalation.
If the Defender suspects a fleet is on standby that they can’t counter, they sometimes write-off the structure, and only send a gunner. Attacking fleet gets bored, and sometimes writes ‘wtb content’ in local.
Well, here’s the thing about that:
If the target is where the frigates will get PDS’d, either:
a) the target has a weapons timer, and so will get chewed up by the PDS, itself, or
b) the target is tethered, so get rekt, frigs.
What if players could help build and enlist the aid of NPC Empire or Pirate FOBs to act as an always-online dynamically scaling response force (with DPS/Logi) for designated structures?
Like rental offices, the prices for any corp designating additional structures in system could go up exponentially in cost. This cost could be in ISK/LP/Tokens. Costs over time could also become dynamic for defenders based on the level of destruction that dynamically scaling NPC response fleets incur.
In system NPC FOBs also provide multi-grid engagement objectives. To follow from the hacking mini-games @Arrendis advocated there is opportunity to have one squad break off to the FOB while primary fleet stays on player structure. This infiltrating squad connects with the FOB or comm beacon around to temporarily delay additional response fleets, modify friend-or-foe standings, or just gain simple intel on which structures have designated defense contracts for future attack priority.
You mean like CCP Burger said they wanted to do at Vegas a number of years ago?
Ah right! Burger talked about a lot of wild aspirational stuff then such as line-of-sight fire on guns.