Siege Green - Structure Updates Now Avaialble for Testing

I’m going to risk misrepresenting things but here goes:

I don’t think anyone disagrees that on a block level in nullsec, (medium) structure grinding as part of a ongoing conflict/deployment/etc. is offputing and can use balancing with regard to the cost and defensive power.

What people do disagree with is the current blanket change that has a disproportionate impact on the other parts of EVE. People understand that CCP can’t invest the time and resources to give everyone everything they would like to see. They know that choices have to be made on what resources are spend on. If that choice comes down to what can we do to make the most people happy and/or adress the issue that affects the most people, that is understandable.

Issues arrive when this becomes the standard approach We’ve seen people from highsec, wormhole space, lowsec, pochven and non block level nullsec speak up and raise their concerns and provide alternatives. If those are set aside because they do not meet the selection criteria of ‘the most people’ those groups will become smaller still as they are disproportionally hit by the blanket change. It can turn in a vicious circle really fast.

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I’ve heard it elsewhere, would it slightly help medium spam if a month long fuel capacity limit was placed on medium structures fuel bay?

Sure, folks still have unlimited hangar space to move fuel over, yet there is a time management logistics consideration for spreadsheet tracking that would seem to impact larger groups with more ‘roach motel’ structures than smaller groups with fewer (albiet likely active) structures.

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Yes, it would.

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There is an issue with the limited fuel bay though.

Nothing prevents anyone from having 10 milion units of any fuel in their personal hangar, or corporation offices. Which they can just clone jump into the structure, or just instawarp inty go there, or have alpha accounts for each system/constellation, and simply put the fuel from hangar to fuel bay.

Sadly that wouldn’t help, as much as I would love for it to matter.

All of the other debate or options seems irrelevant, because as @Brisc_Rubal mentioned, there is limited amount of dev effort CCP is willing to put into this issue. And since it is already on SISI - that means it has already finished development, and is now “in testing”.

Also, a speculation on my part, but as also Brisc mentioned, it seems that nobody apart from sovnull considers structure spam to be an issue. So I think this whole “nerf” came to be simply by representatives voted in by us, players, representing the majority of the players, e.g. nullsec, have been doing what they are supposed to - represent their voters. And I agree that it is too easy to simply anchor as many Astrahuses as you want, with infinite fuel, provided you have enough isk.

So the voters complained that there is many strucures, and they are unfun and pita to get rid of. There was even some letter by FCs that citadel mechanic sucks and is terrible and needs rework. I don’t think this is what they meant.

IMO this all stems from the fact that “abandoned” state mechanic is incomplete. It only works if the structure is really “abandoned” - which is measured by fuel + active module in it. Considering how cheap it is to fuel Astrahus + clone bay, then you can realistically fuel it for years.

So the structure spam can be also solved in other ways apart for the “limited fuel bay” which can be worked around as I pointed out above.

For example, you could increase the fuel costs for the structure every week depending on decrease in activity - real activity, people using the station, docking in it, any way you can measure “being active”.

The “activity” measurement could take in many inputs that mean people actively live in it, to combat simply 1 alpha char undocking+docking. You can measure things like changes in personal hangars (people doing things with their items), or dock/undock numbers. Online numbers and durations, etc.

Based on this metric, lets say that over the course of 1 month, the fuel cost would increase 10x? Maybe even more, 10x would be roughly 1m ISK per day. I would even make it exponential in time, the longer you are inactive the more fuel it consumes. Up to 50x for example.

This could have lower and upper limit, and its goal would be to increase the fuel demands of really unused stations. Such stations that exist simply to exist and bother other people in the area.

I think it is much better from game design standpoint to simply make these “unused” stations to be more effort to keep fueled and not drop into abandoned state. And since @Brisc_Rubal you mentioned that it shouldn’t be only for M structures, because they would be special. I agree! This mechanic should be for ALL structures. And even more noticeable the larger the structure!

Or you can keep the timers, but structure consumes waaay more fuel while in reinforcement. This would make it much easier to force structure to go into abandoned state, and it might actually be much easier to implement compared to my previous idea. Simple - shoot a structure’s shield, and the initial reinforcement timer will consume 90% of fuel in the fuel bay, or leave enough just for the hull timer, forcing you to login and put more fuel in, somehow.

Much easier to implement IMO, no need to create special metric, track it, have some feedback system on said metric, etc.

Ofcourse it is more effort to implement really, but I don’t understand what is so urgent about the NS structure spam, that this MUST be pushed through at all costs, even if it breaks some parts of the game? What is such a huge time pressure? We developed a feature, its now on testing, so we don’t want to remake it?

Doesn’t that kinda defeat the whole purpose of TESTING environment, where you put things to be tested and had feedback on? I think this whole thread shows some very good points and options. Like my first suggestion with Dreads + weapons.

/rant/
I don’t know, lately it seems to me that CCP is very heavy-handed with ANY change. Year ago it was industry rework, which made faction BS and anything above BS so expensive to buy, that nobody really wants to risk them. Now there are these 2 proposed changes, which follow the same line - industry change is reverted by half because, suprise, it was extremely heavy-handed, and the M structures can now be deleted in 1.5 day. Also kinda heavy handed?
/rant/

I don’t disagree that a change is needed, but these changes as they are will severely hinder small/medium groups. Why not just keep the timers but reduce the time between timers, something like Shield > 24hr > Armor > 24hr > Final. Then reduce the max fuel hold to 2-4 weeks (small groups already do this due to financial limitations).

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Its a rare day when I’m agreeing, generally, with Revenent.

While I’m not exactly fond of the reduction in timer you’re suggesting, the fuel limitation you and others already have suggested I would be in favor of for mediums.

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I really dislike the idea of metric based fuel consumption.

With a POS it was a royal PITA dealing with variability and planning for it.

I don’t think that jump clones refuelling monthly would be considered a problem, as that would at least be some maintenance indicating the structure wasn’t abandoned.

That’s correct, but at least then they have to do it. There’s a minimal amount of work going into keeping the structure fueled.

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Did they? Or did a select group (those FCs) decide to speak on behalf of all of null, without the rest of us being asked to weight in on whether or not their view is shared by the line members?

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Of course, however with clone jumps, alpha toons, and other travel you are highlighting there is still an additional time and tracking cost if you have to manage medium structure fuel even slightly more closely.

If you scale that up for large organizational structures that inconvenience cost seems it would become greater.

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Not even counted that having 10 Million Fuel per station stored is a serious investment on the side of the “offender” and also offers a serious reward in possible loot for shooting down the station. Enough in my book to absolutely justify 2 reinforce cycles.

Hint: 10 Million * 13.000 ISK per FuelBlock (current jitaprice) = 130B in Fuel. per Station!

So, can we put this absolutely unlikely scenario just aside? It just won’t happen. Not even 1 Million Fuel will be stored there. Probably not even 100.000 blocks. It’s just a strawman discussion.

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I mean, if someone’s got 130b in fuel stored in their fuel bay, I am all for that… cuz I’ll get a hundred dudes, kill all those astras, and use it to buy a keepstar.

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Besides keeping minimal fuel, I have also destroyed rigs after submitting longterm research jobs.

I also avoid using T2 rigs, having been introduced to hunters that exclusively kill structures fitted with them.

Imagine how thrilled I was when quantum cores were introduced.

It is getting to the point where upon expiration of the 15-minute vulnerability timer after the core is installed, medium Upwell structures should self-destruct instead of repping /s

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After reading the previous 416 comments about the update it’s clear that the vast majority of players are not happy with these changes. With everything that I’ve read it seems that many people including myself have run the numbers on what bashing medium structures will be like moving forward. You could say that bringing down a structure in wh space will take about 2 days total. It’s hard to fathom how people can see that as a good thing. I mean just look at a mobile depot. 2 days reinforcement timer. These changes would mean that a structure that cost hundreds of millions of isk and a dedicated hauler to set up would be just as easy to bring down as a mobile depot that can be carried by almost every ship in the game. That doesn’t make sense and I challenge anyone to explain it to me in such a way to make that seem like a good thing. For this to have been brought up as a good idea to CCP by the CSM’s just means that the interests of wh’ers was never considered. Nor was this idea completely thought out. This is just my opinion but it seems to be in line with the majority. I hope this update is reconsidered about it’s ramifications throughout the Eve universe.

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I’ll say it one more time for the people in the back.
Mobile Depot - 1 timer - 48 hrs. - 1.4 million isk
Astra in wh space - 1 timer - 33 hrs. to 39 hrs. - 1.4 billion isk
Someone please make this make sense.

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umm cores are not removable … or what is the mechanic to do that?

unanchor it.

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well, explain THAT:

Mobile Depot:

  • 1.4 million ISK investment

  • 1 timer

  • no fuel requirements

  • size 56 meters long axis

  • unarmed

  • needs just to be launced by 1-click

  • can be shot into timer with 1 ship (if the owner is just not around…)

Modern Upwell-Space-Station:

  • multiple billion ISK investment

  • 1 timer

  • needs hundreds of millions in fuel per month

  • size 44km long axis

  • armed with state-of-the-art missile launchers, electronic warfare equipment and fighter suqads

  • needs to be anchored, a hundreds-of-millions-core, and several hours with some vulnerability windows to get to full operational status

  • can be shot into timer with 1 ship (if the owner is just not around…)

lol.

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The depots (and the POSes for that matter) also don’t pop up on the system map.

:parrot: :parrot: :parrot:

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Omg :CCP: not only you want to shaft the cits, but now you also increase the price of the sub :joy:

Talking about bad timing :joy_cat: :joy_cat: :joy_cat:

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