Oh well I have been meaning to try a few new games out.CCP call me when you sh** can everybody who thinks these changes are a good idea.
3 Likes
Realization I just had and posted on r/Eve âŠ
I remember Ultima Online in its heyday, with huge amounts of characters around the main bank and everywhere. Then they shifted the game towards PvP-only events and group-only play ⊠and it died.
The final straw for me in UO was when they added expiry to structures, and then foobar-ed accounting, not renewing my account, so my stucture vanished and all the contents dropped to the ground.
I was subbed to UO for 14 years. Iâve been subbed to Eve since 2009, which curiously just past the 13 year mark now with a structure update looming.
6 Likes
Hi @CCP_Aurora hopefully this additional feedback will be useful to you, Iâll 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 ânewâ structures were first released you had Citadels, the Astra, Fort & Keep. All were designed (& told as by CCP) as structures that would replace POSâs & 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 arenât 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 wonât 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 Iâll 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 & itâs 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 donât 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 donât 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 POSâs 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 itâs automated defenses it can push of a basic fleet or require a Dreadnaught for instance to complete the bash. An Astrahausâs 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 itâs 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 itâs 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 ânewâ structures that has never materialised & one of the reasons we still have POSâs 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 itâs complete lack of defensive properties. Instead they are relegated to use as a temporary base of operations whereby itâs destruction does not matter, where no loot can be stored as itâs 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 itâs original use is poor game design.
Will this change see groups leave wormhole space? Possibly. Itâs generally impossible to predict exactly what will happen after such major changes, weâve seen people claim âWormhole space is deadâ 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 wonât 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 CCPâs 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 structureâs role / purpose rather than itâs size so as not to only impact small corps. Why should a Raitaru be treated differently to an Azbel in such a manner when itâs small corps who field Raitarus for industry because of cost reasons. (Such a change would see more âcontent generationâ 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 & POSâs 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 arenât tweaks of whatâs 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.
4 Likes
I have just recently started reading through this tread. So far interesting comments. But one item I am missing is what issue is attempting to be fixed?
I see referenced to structure spam, whatever that is, and that is about it. Where is structure spam? And where is it causing issues?
What we have in this game is very similar to World War I or whatever it is called in the various parts of the world. Huge trench systems have evolved. Two major power blocks in Null and a large number of smaller blocks that align themselves to suit their needs at the moment. You have probes launched to search for weak spots in the large trench systems looking for a breakthrough that will âEnd war for all timeâ.
You have the âfrontierâ space, wormhole, that has to fight off the âsavagesâ of the Old American West. They build a village and fortify it against the savages to exploit the wealth of the system. They build with the resourced that they imported hoping to build a better life for their family and friends.
You have High Sec with the police force handy and on call for almost any emergency. You found your small business and hope that it will grow in this Switzerland of space. Hoping you too can become the next Nestle.
But the Great Powers rule most of the map board. Carrying out nightly raids on the other trench system looking for a weakness to exploit. Or in the rare cases actually causing a breakthrough but they canât quite get to Paris before the next trench system is constructed and (insert bad guy name here) are stopped.
I keep hearing âSpace is dangerousâ. But I donât want to play in that world. It is too much like (insert dangerous neighborhood here). I would not like to live there. I want to mine in peace and research my BP collection and sell the items that other folks use somewhere in that bad neighborhood and count my isk and âŠâŠ
If this game were truly dangerous why would someone even start to play. The older players should just hang off the new player stations and blow the new players away when they start on the first day and teach them to stay the heck away from that game.
But we donât. We want the new player. We want the new player to get hooked on the game and keep coming back for whatever it is they are looking for. We want them to build structures that they can call home and have some sense of security. To branch off their small group that they have managed to gather, as discussed in the latest video extolling the virtues of this game by CCP, and accomplish some goal that they have set for themselves. It might be in HS, LS, WH, or Null.
CCP has forced the creation of multiple stations. To mine a moon, I need to have an Athanor. To mine two moons, I need yet another. To react the moon material, I need one type of station. The build the next in the chain, I need another type of station. To build with the material something even grander, I need yet a third. So now I am a small/medium sized corporation in NS that 10 or more structures just so I can build T2 battleships. And my corporation can now lose it all because we are in the same time zone and one of the slightly larger groups have noticed us and want to kick over that anthill because they can.
So, my small group is left with a decision. Do we group or just say forget it, I have had enough of this âfunâ and go and do something like have a real life.
But all of this comes back to, What is trying to be fixed with this change? This does nothing to fix the complex situation that every long term player of the game has faced and âovercomeâ when starting the game. It does not make it easier to start this game. In many respects it does give a push to those that are just tired of the constant changes to how they âmake a livingâ in the game to walk away. Similar to all the changes over the past few years to farming, excuse me, mining and building. I have seen many long term players throw in the towel and walk away. It takes a great deal of work to replace that one long term player with another.
7 Likes
You make a great point and have made it better than I could hope. I am one of those small beginning players starting eek my existence from the stars. Every change seems to move any of my goals just a little farther out of reach, whether it be higher costs, changes to skill trees and changes to mining ships, or making my home just a little less secure.
I will keep adapting and moving as needed to survive.
It seems like the real life that Eve seems to mirror so well, The Biggest Corporations change the rules to the game when the little guy gets a start on some success. It is sad that with so much wealth and opportunity the rules need to be changed all the time to stop the inconvenience of a third trip to a station to finish it off. It is a game of counter and response.
If I understand the Station spam problem correctly, it seems to be a game of counter and response. A Corp figures the price of surviving is more stations than you can blow up in a day, so they pay the price of survival. Now the Large blocs want to be able to take those stations out in two trips instead of three, so they pressure CCP to change the Stations to make them easier to blow up and avoid the waste of time because no one shows up to defend against overwhelming odds.
Oh well just another brick in the road.
One thing I havenât seen mentioned, it the logistics of moving a large structure into wormhole space. It is impossible to get a large structure into a C1 unless you build it there. And even if you build it, you canât deploy it because you canât get a ship with a large enough cargo hold through a medium size wormhole. In the C2-C4âs it isnât as difficult provided your group is large enough to afford and fly an Orca Cargo vessel. You could build a freighter in the system but then how do you get it out. You canât repackage a freighter small enough to move. I know though, these are small details, and I shouldnât complain because as it has already been pointed out a thousand times, If you canât defend it, you shouldnât have it.
Thanks for those of you that read this far into the thread. I hope CCP thinks about the removal of the timer before putting it in the game. There are just some places where that change becomes inequitable to a far larger degree than its benefit to those that like the change.
As far as the Shield cap removal, I hope that change gets more dreads for my friends and I to destroy with Condors.
Fly your preferred safety setting!!!
1 Like
CCP, also from me.
Please do not apply this update to highsec.
I am a solo industrialist. Near my home system are Raitaru and Athanor owned by small corps. I use them to reduce production costs. If donât use them, I wonât be able to compete with major corps for product prices.
I have never owned a structure before and have never fought to attack or defence it too. So I canât imagine how this update will change the battle for medium structures. But at least I understand that medium structures are easier to destroy than they are now. I am very afraid that it will delight highsec wardec corps and they will destroy the Raitaru and Athanor I use.
Of course, I understand that medium structures can be destroyed even with current specifications, and we always have to take the risk of happening this if use them. However, nerfing medium structures may significantly reduce free Engineering Complexes and Refineries in highsec space. If this happens, manufacturing bases will be limited and it will be very difficult for solo industrialists to continue their business.
This may be a useless worry, but may become reality. You can test to destroy medium structures with SISI, but wonât know how it will affect life of players unless the update lives at TQ. And when it turns out that it was âoverkillâ, itâs too late. Not a few players will lose desire for playing EVE. The shock of being destroyed a playstyle is much greater than destroyed a ship.
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Another important part, in my opinion, of station balancing which I didnât see mentioned are the trade cartels some stations and namely the Perimeter keep has created. These things rake in trillions to a handful of people (and I donât think itâs an exaggeration to say itâs per day or at worst week). Last time with technetium and the R64s CCP did intervene at a point (I think the justification was the t2 mods prices). At the moment I donât have the data to assess how much of economical damage is having such % of the Eve ISK transactions fueled through the pockets of what is effectively 3-4 guys who have 0 business or moral obligations towards CCP or Eve.
But hey lets focus on the important things - remove the timers (possibly all) so goons and co can rat in pДаce.
3 Likes
Great post overall !
If you guys are removing the damage cap for the shields, why donât you increase shield regen to 5k/sec for medium structures and 15k/sec for large structures? This will prevent a single dude, or a dude with a couple alts from logging in the middle of the night and reffing the structure! So it will force you to bring a force to shoot any of these.
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because they have been told that the structures are âalready too strongâ and âneed to be nerfedâ. 
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My dude, a single Leshak puts out over 2K DPS without even being fit for damage. If you go full glass cannon and implants itâs almost 4K. Not to mention there are these things called Marauders, the Kronos can put out 3-3.5K DPS easily.
Edit: And Iâm not counting drones here, only guns.
WellâŠ
Weâre two weeks on, roughly, without any real sign of an answer to many of the raised questions or concerns, and only really clarifications of the original posting.
This leads me, unfortunately, to the conclusion that yes, small group collateral damage from the changes are indeed acceptable in the general sense, as has usually been the case before.
Iâd have preferred an upfront statement of such, instead of this stifling silence.
No. I am not unsubscribing. No, Iâm not quitting the game, and no, people canât have my stuff.
What I am doing however, in light of this, the previous structure changes, and the planned subscription price hikes, is consolidating my accounts down to two, and, well, canceling my plans to ever use mediums for anything meaningful until such time as they are anything other than an entertainingly easy kick over.
@CCP_Aurora @CCP_Zelus , I very much hope that whatever is planned FOR FANFEST related to structures, if anything, is actually good, and not further nerfs. But until then, we shall see what happens I suppose.
P.S.
Tell whoever it was that chose to put the Valkyrie battleship skins back in the NES that it was an excellent choice.
8 Likes
For what it is worth, I built a Rorqual in a C2, and self-destructed it when we moved out.
I think I got something like 700m from the default insurance.
Iâm not so sure about that, in this specific case.
Usually, changes posted here for âfeedbackâ are more of listed as a âsneak peakâ as you say.
But, due to the overall silence from CCP and large negative responses, it looks like this may have been put on hold for a time.
Hopefully for CCP to re-evaluate this perspective on player owned structures, and hopefully to get the nullbloc CSM folks pull their heads out of their rears with their views of âsmall groupsâ being a fleet of 100 or so.
In any case, be sure to holler in your corp channels, IRCs, and slack clones such as discord for folks to log into the forums and heart posts reflecting their views!
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Then there should be no reason not to do this! since it will be so easy to overcome anyways!
That, or it will be released on Fanfest patch day. 
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but there is one: It would be far too simple. (âŠand CCP has been told these structures are already too strong and âneed to be nerfedâ! )
We all know that the KISS rule of designing stuff that people should interact with is nonsense and you have to make things as complicated and unintuitive as possible to sell them as âfancyâ, ânewâ and âcreativeâ.[/irony off]
Just for reference:
A customs office (which should be a step below player-owned-stations) is listed ingame with 10.000.000 shield HP and a passive recharge time of 13h+53min+20sec = 50.000sec). That equals an average shield regen of 200hp/sec, or a peak recharge of 1.000hp/sec at 25% shields. (took the shield regen chart from eve-uni).
Now lets design a KISS way for M Structures:
They are bigger, more expensive and also of more strategic value than POCOs, so they should have more shields. Lets try 25.000.000 at 50% omni resistance.
Oh wait! SO MUCH? Well, thats not even as much as a Dread Guristas Medium POS Tower (30.000.000 + resistances) has. And that thing fires back automatically, can and will be equipped with lots of hardeners, does cost a lot less, does not need a core to operate (and reward enemies with) and consumes less fuel. So yes, 25.000.000 shield for an M-Citadel is absolutely fine and in line with other structures!
Now we look at the KISS rule and assume that a POCO and a Citadel both use Structure Shield Generators, so we set the regen time to 50.000 seconds as well. We end up with 500hp/sec average regen, peaking at 2500hp/sec at 25% shields. Now after 50% resists that pretty much equals 5000ehp/sec passive tank. Voila!
What do we have achieved now?
Whoever wants to attack this citadel has to bring around 10.000 DPS to the table. That equals:
- 3-4 Leshaks/Marauders or
- 6-8 Battleships/Tier3 Battlecruiser or
- 10-12 Battlecruiser or
- 15+ Cruiser or Bomber
You can try with less, but you will basically shoot a very very long time then as you will hardly overcome the regen. This makes sure an attempt to engage the station has to be at least somewhat serious, in most cases revealing the identity (and with that the capabilities and/or intentions) of the attacker, so the defender has the chance to evaluate his options.
4 Likes
Based on feedback we are going to be increasing the new minimum armor reinforcement durations for Medium-sized structures as follows:
- Medium structure in Wormhole/Triglavian system: 2.5 days (was going to be 1.5 days)
- Medium structure in Null-sec system: 3.5 days (was going to be 2.5 days)
- Medium structure in Low-sec system: 3.5 days (was going to be 2.5 days)
This will give Medium-sized structure owners slightly longer advance notice of a defensive requirement.
Additionally the random jitter time which is applied when picking the reinforcement exit time for Medium structures is being reduced to +/- 1.5 hours - so a potential window of 3 hours (down from +/- 3 hours - a potential window of 6 hours). This will narrow the uncertainty of the exit time for the defenders, making their choice of exit hour more meaningful.
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Thanks for the update.
The community still lacks a motivational reason, or goal, of these particular changes. What problem is being addressed, why are medium structures not in a satisfactory position, and what does a satisfactory position in the ecosystem look like?
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For years players have said citadels replaced outposts and POS - but neither replaced either one close enough. I personally liked where this was headed as if you remove the fact that POS use stront and M citadels use a digital timer, their RF and kill cycle would be pretty dang close â therefore we would finally have a replacement for POS or very very close - these changes fix the one drawback to the old POS where you could only go a max of 1D 17H without checking on it to see if it was RFâd - you get notifications either way - but the same rule applies - now the time between RF and kill is a bit longer - allows you to find friends get ready etc. but it stilll leans more towards full POS replacement.