Hi @CCP_Aurora hopefully this additional feedback will be useful to you, I’ll will preface this by saying my long winded narrative is focused around the use of Astrahauses in particular in Wormhole space to live out of.
History
When these ‘new’ structures were first released you had Citadels, the Astra, Fort & Keep. All were designed (& told as by CCP) as structures that would replace POS’s & stations to be lived out of, they were you home base structure. To act as such they would all share features amongst their size class such as high HP, significant offensive utility & 2 timers (excluding shield) to fight over.
When more industrial structures were introduced they lost alot of their defensive prowess in exchange for specific role purposes & cheaper costs. We were also informed that a FOB structure would be introduced at some point to act as a staging structure when invading hostile territory, which was not the original intention of Citadels.
The Proposed Changes
When looking at the changes I try to view them in terms of how they relate to the POS era, how they relate to the original design goals & how they relate to the current situation. My experience is in Wormholes, I cannot & do not speak to their use in K-space. I know for example that Astrahaus spam is a significant problem in null-sec because they are so cheap & easy to spam while providing strong defensive utility in the way of the number of timers & HP needed to bash. Suggestions on such a matter do not fall to me to make.
This entire post is focused on the changes made to medium structures, and changes I feel would be of more benefit to Wormholes that current. I know that not all will agree with my opinions presented as well, not all wormholers are alike same with any territory.
For those that aren’t familiar in Wormholes you have no asset safety (all items are dropped) & evictions can be completed within 4 days (from initial reinforcement to destruction of structure). The biggest change that matters here is the reduction for medium structures, especially Astrhauses to a single timer (combined armour structure).
This in my view, is a poorly thought out change that both does not take into account the original design goals of Citadels but also how Wormhole space operates. Currently the difference between an Astra & a Fort when deciding what to live out of comes down to requiring capital access / docking & identifying your defensive requirements, but they both operate & are used for the same purpose, a defensive home structure.
With such a change it will not be possible to destroy an Astrahaus (or any medium structure) 24 hours quicker than any other structure, but this is not the big issue & I suspect the timer length will be iterated on. The bigger issue is the lack of a second timer.
It is not uncommon for Wormhole groups to randomly bash a structure they come across without the intention of killing it, either because of boredom, just wanting to generate a timer they could possibly seed or as a grievance against the corp who owns it. Currently doing so to any structure creates an armour timer. Now in such a scenario the defender may not have information available to them about the attackers, if conducted in their off-tz when no one is around the defenders won’t know the size of the attacking fleet or their long term intentions. So it is natural to form & protect the structure during the armour timer against the would be aggressors without knowledge on who they are & why they have attacked. Since this is an armour timer it gives the defender some leeway, as their is a structure timer should the attackers return it does not mean the end is night should the armour be reinforced too. In fact the attackers then provide the following information to the defenders during said timer:
- The size & composition of the opposing force
- Who they are dealing with (are we talking multigroup force or a single corp)
- The intentions of the attacker (killing the structure or just meme reinforcing the shield)
Often times no one shows the armour timer & the defenders can relax.
Post Changes
Important here is the fact that such a change only impacts medium structures, and I’ll touch on this later.
With these changes if you are living out of an Astrahaus, which many corps especially small corps do, then you no longer have the benefit of the armour timer separate from the hull to find out all the above information. Instead any defender must now be prepared to either fully commit to the defensive of the structure & it’s loss, or begin evaccing all their assets out of the system / into another structure. Because it will be even easier to reinforce the shield of an Astra with these changes (losing damage cap on shield) it will even easier to meme reinforce an Astra to generate a timer you don’t intend to show for. This additional stress & burden put on defenders I suspect will cause considerable burnout.
The third party factor also needs to be taken into account, it is not uncommon for any eviction operation to be third partied (the act of a third group, separate from the defenders & initial attackers to involve themselves), at any point in the process another wormhole group could roll in (connect via a fresh wormhole to the system being targeted) & decide to intervene. If the initial party meme reinforces the shield the defenders may have to deal on the final timer with a third party group they don’t know exists. This 3rd party would have to put no commitment into the destruction of the citadel beyond attending the single timer, they would not need to log off in the system or conduct hole control. Currently if a third party attends the armour timer they would need to reinforce the armour & then wait in the hostile hole until the structure timer, giving the defenders more time & ability to defend the structure effectively.
So compared to POS’s the new Astrahaus will have a single timer, like a POS, however unlike a POS it will not require a significant force to reinforce. A well defended POS requires a fleet to reinforce & to spend considerable time or assets doing so, with it’s automated defenses it can push of a basic fleet or require a Dreadnaught for instance to complete the bash. An Astrahaus’s shield reinforcement requires neither a sizable fleet or any real commitment to reinforce.
Compared to the original purpose of Citadels the Astrahaus fails entirely, no longer is an Astrahaus capable of acting as a home base. With only a single timer to fight on, whereby the enemy can destroy the structure and loot all the assets contained with minimal effort from their part involved the structure no longer becomes defensible. Additionally having the hull value reduced by a factor of 4 reduces it’s defensive capability which none of the other Citadels (Fort & Keep) are affected by. This very much feels like the Astrahaus is being abandoned by CCP for it’s original purpose, a defensive structure to serve as home, & being entirely balanced as a Forward Operating Base. A structure we were promised during the introduction of the ‘new’ structures that has never materialised & one of the reasons we still have POS’s existing long after their supposed replacement.
Result
The end result of these changes means groups can no longer realistically live out of an Astra (or any medium structure) due to it’s complete lack of defensive properties. Instead they are relegated to use as a temporary base of operations whereby it’s destruction does not matter, where no loot can be stored as it’s too dangerous. For Wormholes the minimum structure that can now be used to live out of long term will be a Tatara, Azbel or Fortizar. In my view, that a Tatara or Azbel will be the replacement for an Astra for small groups because the Astrahaus no longer serves it’s original use is poor game design.
Will this change see groups leave wormhole space? Possibly. It’s generally impossible to predict exactly what will happen after such major changes, we’ve seen people claim “Wormhole space is dead” after changes such as removing NPC kill data from the API for wormholes, introducing spawn range when jumping a wormhole & other such changes added over time. What I do believe we will see is a reduction in the number of small groups who live out of wormholes, instead basing in k-space & diving in, an increase in average corp member size as groups band together or disband and join existing corps who this change won’t affect, and an increase in the number of Fortizars used to live out of, which present their own dangers for a group living out of them.
My own Suggestions
These suggestions are not applicable as all one (ie not to made all together), rather they are changes I hope would present alternative solutions singularly or combined for CCP’s desired result.
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Reduce all non Citadel (Astra, Fort, Keep) timers to a single combined armour structure timer, regardless of their size. Make the changes based on the structure’s role / purpose rather than it’s size so as not to only impact small corps. Why should a Raitaru be treated differently to an Azbel in such a manner when it’s small corps who field Raitarus for industry because of cost reasons. (Such a change would see more ‘content generation’ happen over Industrial structure timers.)
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Reduce the defensive capabilities of an Astrahaus to match their reduced cost compared to a Fortizar (ie a reduction in fitting / cap / HP), make them fine for small corps to live out of with their two defensive timers but less used by corps capable of fielding a Fortizar.
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Introduce a proper FOB (Forward Operating Base) structure type designed to be deployed as a replacement for the Astrahaus in Nullsec & POS’s in Wormholes. If these changes have been made due to the strength of Astras in Nullsec (which is how this feels) then you could tie deployment of Citadels to either who owns the Sov / structure limit in the system for Citadels or other alternatives.
My Concerns
This is my final little footnote to end on, and thats my chief concern with these changes. My biggest concern here is not the actual changes themselves so much but the lack of time taken in the present form to account for different areas of space and the lack of time to iterate on the current plans that aren’t tweaks of what’s already been proposed.
For example, with the proposed changes Astrahauses will have 24 hours less in Wormholes between initial reinforcement to destruction compared to L & XL structures. This could be easily adjusted so that they match up, however doing so still does not alleviate the issues that only having a single timer presents compared to having two. IMO having two timers is much more important than the time between each timer.
Additionally there seems to be a prevalent design philosophy stemming from CCP as of late (ie past several years) that the solution to balancing / introducing new content comes from adding additional very specific rules. In this example we have medium structures being treated differently to other structures. Rather than as current all structures operating under the same rule (same time required to kill, same number of timers) this will be altered such that a specific size of structure will have specific rules governing their gameplay that has no real logical progression (ie wheres XL structures having 3 timers instead of 2). I can understand that their may need to be differentiation, especially between types of structure (behaviour of Citadels & non-Citadels) but I would hope such changes made would be logical to implement & understand that does not add additional unneeded complexity purely for the case that it is easier to code / design.
