Siege Green - Structure Updates Now Avaialble for Testing

Feature Previews & Feedback Balance and Mechanics
, ,
627

And yes, I view some forms of content as inherently better than others. A structure timer that generates a fight between fleets is, in my view, inherently superior to one that does not, for instance.

This change is going to remove fights over structures for small groups in low class wormholes (where L structures are not worth their cost or the attention they attract). Currently, the armor timer is our opportunity to force the attacker to show their hand. We undock for that to make them fight for it, and if we lose we can then decide whether we should evac before the hull timer, or go for round two.

Without the second timer, the first time the attacker has to show their hand is also our final opportunity to contest them. If we lose that fight we lose everything. So why would we not evac as much of our stuff as possible before that fight? And then, if we are going through the effort to evac everything anyway, what is the motivation to put up an actual fight when the time comes?

For our group specifically, we probably would still show up for that final timer anyway because we play Eve for the fights in the first place. But there are many who only fight to defend their stuff - when their krabs get caught or when their structures get attacked. If they already have to evac their stuff and have nothing left to defend, they won’t fight at all. And in our case, we’d show up to defend against the occasional eviction as we already do. But we wouldn’t be able to do this multiple times a month - and the single timer incentivises attackers to try it on anyway whenever they roll into us outside of our TZ.

I get that this change probably makes things better for a nullbloc FC. And I get that nullbocs are probably seeing bored members quitting the game because the game is pushing them towards stale structure bashing content. But small groups in wormholes are going to suffer for it. I can forgive you for considering us to be collateral damage for your preferred changes, but at least be honest and admit it.

6 Likes
628

/sigh

Just once, it would be nice if folks could take what I’m saying at face value and stop accusing me of being dishonest or otherwise ignoring their views. I understand the concern you guys have, but what you said here…

…is what I expect is the most likely situation for many of the smaller groups in WH space. I don’t believe that everybody that lives in a C2 or a C3 is a tiny, risk averse krab corp who won’t fight if given the opportunity.

I did my best and got CCP to get you an extra day on your timers. I don’t know if anything more is possible. Then again, we haven’t seen the final iteration on this and probably won’t until after fanfest. If enough people grab Devs to complain about the changes there, who knows what the outcome may be.

629

If you want to understand why people might think you are ignoring them, then this would be an example - you quoted that line but you didn’t acknowledge what I said at the end of the same paragraph:

When I say “we won’t be able to do this multiple times a month” I mean exactly that - it’s physically not possible for my group to continue to play the game in that way. People already ping our structures occasionally before these changes, so I expect it will happen more frequently after the patch.

I don’t know what your acceptable threshold is for how often people should be expected to take time off work to defend the single structure timer on their home, but we all have a limit, and this change will go above what some people are able to take on. To be explicitly clear: that’s not me threatening to quit because I don’t like the change. That’s me pointing out that this change potentially makes it impossible for me to continue to play the game in this way.

I haven’t heard anyone say that reducing the number of small corps in low class wormholes is an intended outcome of the change, but I do believe that it will be a result of it. Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong though - perhaps the intention is that actually L structures should be a minimum commitment? Perhaps the intention is that small wormhole groups who don’t have the flexibility in their IRL schedules to mount an eviction defence every month don’t deserve to keep playing this way? If people think that way then fair enough, but if it’s not the intent, then how are we anything other than collateral damage?

Timer, singular. You say you understand my concern, but I’m not sure you do. With the changes, we only have one timer now. That’s the fundamental issue - no armor timer to fight, force the attackers to show their hand and then make a decision to fight the hull timer or evac. At small scale, the attackers will just stay logged off for another 24 hours, while the defenders have slightly longer to evac their stuff. At larger scale evictions, it’s an extra 24 hours of hole control, which nobody enjoys on either side.

So, while I appreciate the effort, the extra day doesn’t really change anything. It’s still going to mean fewer fights because people have to evac anyway, and it’s potentially going to mean less low class content in wormholes overall as the amount of IRL time commitment to just live in that space goes up. We do want to fight, if given the opportunity. So give us that opportunity - an armor timer to defend before the hull timer. I don’t care if it’s only for Astrahus, I don’t have if we can only put a month of fuel in the fuel bay, whatever is compatible with what’s needed for nullsec. But give us the opportunity to defend it (or at least tell CCP to do so).

Instead, when you’re actively in favour of the changes, and this is just meant to soften the blow a bit for those of us caught in the blast zone, then I’m sorry but it rings a bit hollow. You’re promoting a change because overall you believe it makes the game better for some people, a lot of them even, and that’s fine. But it makes things worse for others, who you claim to be sticking up for. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.

7 Likes
630

Nobody should be taking time off work to defend structures. The point of adding an additional day and reducing the wobble to 1.5 hours is to give you more time to plan a defense, and set your defensive timers to a time zone that works where most of you can get there.

Or, if you need three timers, get a larger structure. Yes, I’m aware that makes you a bigger target, but you’re claiming you’re already a target now, so it’s not like you’re hiding with your mediums.

That’s not what I’m hearing from other wormholers, who are appreciative of the extra time.

I’m not pissing on your head and telling you its raining. I’ve already explained why I support the changes, and I do not agree with you that this is going to kill off every small sized wormhole group. Yes, I recognize that some people don’t like it, but some people hate every change that impacts them, regardless of whether it will do what they believe it will do. You think one thing will happen. I don’t. We’ll see who is right, and if I’m wrong and this does have a negative impact, then I’ll happily lead the charge to get the changes reversed. No, it won’t be too late at this point, because I doubt sincerely that you guys are incapable of protecting yourselves if things go the way you expect them to go right now. I expect you’re already planning contingencies for when these changes go through.

631

Can we make reinforce mode turn on at 25% shields, and burn Strontium for the duration of said reinforcement. Also can we remove asset safety?

1 Like
632

He did not say “every”, either.

1 Like
633

There is no “opportunity”. What you are saying is that you can test-drive your car against a solid rock wall to make a “new experience”. Unfortunately you won’t have a car afterwards, but hey, simply buy a new, larger and more expensive one!

There is exactly nothing (NOTHING!) to gain for a small C1/2/3 corp to fight on a single timer. Not even fun. If someone compes to evict, a successful defense ist 100% impossible and only offers fun and loot for the attacker.

There is no successful defense possible if a small WH-corp gets attacked by an eviction corp. Its impossible unless you get powerful allies. Which you won’t get any more because you cannot tell them who and how much to expect as attacking force. Thank you for understanding this simple point.

Which does not matter at all. Having 7 people online who can bring like 10 T2-fit combat ships is not better than having 4 people online who could bring 5 of these ships. Because all these ships are just additional killmails for the attacker who will bring Leshaks, Ikitursas or other HAC/T3 and more RR than you have members. Thats how an eviction usually goes and there is absolutely no way for the defender around it.

Not even counted that most of your available chars are sitting in logged-off freighters or haulers, securing your most valuable assets so you even have a slight chance to rebuild. Because you had only one timer and needed to go full evac when the station(s) were reinforced. There is simply no one left to fight, no matter when the timer is. The only reason to set a timer at all is to make it as uncomfortable to the attacker as possible, which would not help if its a serious attacker anyway. But we explained that already.

No.
You are currently a very bad target for eviction if using only a medium structure in a low-class-hole. So bad that the big corps do not want to waste their time with you and go looking for more lucrative stuff.
You make yourself a target with an L-structure. Thats why nobody does it.
Thanks for understanding this simple point.

6 Likes
634

Welcome to structure-based wars. I’m not saying what we had prior was “working” but they took wars and made them about shooting structures instead of interacting with players.

You also got a few points wrong:

The war is tied to the structure. So when the corp holding the structure is booted from the alliance you can still shoot at the structure and any characters still in that corp. The point of booting that corp is to isolate who can shoot at the main body of the alliance, obviously.

You can still bring allies in, but only to shoot at the corp holding the war hq that was booted and isolated from the main body of the alliance. You still get to end your war and trigger the 2-week cooldown.

This is the problem with structure-based wars even from a defenders perspective… If you bring a hammer so big that forces a group to shed their war hq corp it denies you potential content from a group like mine that just farms kills around trade hubs. Structure-based wars in Highsec are only really good for one thing and that’s basically just farming ISK. Yeah you can be a big bully but the amount of content outside of farming trade hubs and pipes is like 0.01% at best.

Not throwing shade here Kane, but we’re in the same group. It’s literally demoralizing how many times we’re told that there’s “going to be a fight” only to get blue-balled… and rightly so when we bring not just a hammer, but a hydraulic press to fight with + our blues. I don’t know if you’re considering just a manned structure a “fight”, but I don’t think that would qualify as the type of content that’s being discussed here.

Weekly our timerboard has “red” timers on them and in my experience almost every single one of them is a blue ball. A VERY small percentage of these structures are being defended (at least against a group such as ours).

3 Likes
635

Yeah get a bigger structure = more fun and rewards for the eviction blob.
If you do manage to rally a defending force the attackers will simply bide their time and then try again.

And it’s never 3 timers as the 1st attack is the shield, usually at a time when you are busy with RL stuff like work/sleep and have no idea anyone is about to make your next week a sleepless nightmare while you wreck yourself with anxiety over whether you bother to defend (still not really knowing who/what you’re up against as you only get one pilot on the notifications) or just give it all up and go play something else.

2 Likes
636

Yeah, but thats the point Brisc seems not to understand.

He seems to have the impression that you could somehow “put up a fight” or “counterattack” or “make plans” that have any effect if you are about to be evicted as a small corp. But thats not the case. It’s not like an amateur vs pro boxer where the amateur maybe can land a sucker punch right from the start and turn the tide. Its more like 30 pro boxers with knives, hammers and chainsaws beating up a bunch of 6year olds at the playground to get their pennies.

But thats probably the reason why no single good argument has been given in the whole topic while this change is a) nessessary and b) the best solution for the “problem” (a problem the nullers created themselves and are too lazy to solve with the tools that are already there, lets not forget that).

5 Likes
637

Now I’m picturing Mike Tyson juggling all three of those items while he punches people… thanks. :wink:

1 Like
638

I’d like to elaborate on this as I think it gives a somewhat incorrect impression of the situation, especially for wormhole groups.

The attackers have scouts, whether cloaked up in the wormhole, or an out of corp alt in the highsec scenario.
The attackers are not going to commit to a fight where they have less than 100% chance of victory – these structure fights are never about a good fight, they are almost allways either a 1-sided fight where the attacker has a notable and significant advantage such that the defenders might as well abandon it to lower their losses, or the attackers stand down and “blue ball” the defenders.

Niether of those scenarios provide a meaningful or enjoyable PvP experience. There is almost never a scenario where the attackers commit and then get pushed off in a traditional context; that is, ignoring log-off traps or other such tactics to fool the attackers into commiting and then ganking them. While possible and has happened, that situation is so far outside of the norm that it should be ignored in the context of this “greatest good for the greatest many” approach.

2 Likes
639

I posted earlier about how these changes will affect small wormhole corporations and their medium structures, making them almost impossible to defend. Adding an additional day will do little to remedy the issues that are unique to structures and corporations in wormhole space. Some here do not seem to grasp or understand why wormhole corporations will suffer the most from these changes. Or perhaps they do understand and just chalk it up to the price of change. So I decided to make a small list of how small corps that inhabit wh space will face challenges due to these changes that corporations in null, low or high sec do not have.

  1. No Safety Asset. - Wh structures do not have the luxury of trying to defend after the shields collapse knowing that the next blow may destroy their structure. Instead they will have to worry about getting everything off of it before it becomes space debris for their adversaries to pick through like candy from a pinata. Non wh corporations can mount a defense, no matter how futile, knowing that they may lose the structure but all the materials they have collected inside will be safe from pillage. As of now we can defend and know we still have another layer of protection should the defense fail to remove what we can from our structure. If these changes take place we will no longer have that extra time and will have no choice but to put all our efforts into saving our inventory and not the structure itself. It’s true we could bring very little into structures in the wh, but then what is the point of having a structure in wh space in the first place?
  2. Wormhole Corporations have no set path for reinforcement. - In hi, low and null you know your avenues of escape and routes for defenders to take. You know your entrances to your system and are able to defend and guard accordingly. In wh space they do not. One day their allies and corp mates may have two jumps to get to their wh, the next 40+. A wh corporation may have only two entrances to guard one day, and 8 the next. And if your attacker is determined enough, they may take turns rolling hole so that your reinforcements may find themselves suddenly having to turn around because the entrance they had is suddenly gone. This can also help the defenders should they be able roll the holes on their attacker, but then they may block out any reinforcement they had coming as well.
  3. No Clones Popping up to reinforce our position. - In Low, Null and High you can set your clones to your structures or nearby and pop back in should you get podded. Not an option in wh space. So if we get podded chances are it’ll be a long trip home to be able to help in any defense going on. True, the attacker has the same issues, but in known space the defender should always have the advantage here, not so in j space.
  4. No Local. - In K space, you know who is in your system, what corp they are with, etc. In WH space, we are fighting blind. Attackers will have most of the advantage here as they will be able to scout out your corp, your defenses and your structures without being noticed. That is why the extra timer is important. We will have no idea what we are up against until they pop up and start shooting. If we get lucky we may catch them as they take down our shields, but usually they do that when no one is home and the first chance we get to see who is out there is during the armor phase. Take that away from us and there is almost no way to mount a decent counter defense with the information we have, or do not have.

We all knew the risks of living in wh space when we moved in and were willing to take that risk when we had certain protection in place that would make it worth the effort. One of those was the introduction of structure. They allowed us to defend and use our little section of space without costing an arm and a leg and requiring a fleet of 20+ pilots to defend it at any given time. Destruction and eviction was always a possibility, but we had time on our side with the timers setup. Our corp has lost a few structures, and defended a few successfully. Take away that single timer, though, and it all changes. It does mean that much to any small wormhole corporation.

On top of trying to remove an extra defensive layer, you have also removed an offensive weapon, changed the timer settings to our disadvantage and added the Core system to make these structures more of a target. I do not understand how anyone can justify these changes to these structures that were supposed to be a corporation’s new home base of operations. As far as I can tell the POS is now a better defensive platform than the medium structure that was supposed to replace it. That makes no sense to me.

9 Likes
640

While that experience might not be yours, from this pilot who lived in NPC Null often fighting against the 4th largest group in EVE there were quite a few battles where a scrappy little corp with friends pushed off the larger element.

2 Likes
641

I’ve updated my post to clarify that it is from a WH perspective. There is no option for a surprise Cyno, or otherwise escalating a fight that starts which adds some additional risk for the attacking side in NS, though still very low in number when compared to the more common situations.

I did not include sand bagging from the larger groups – the “either whelp a fleet of whatever to us or we reinforce and then on next timer evict” that force the smaller groups to either be content or start moving out if they don’t show for the armor timer, and that is perhaps more prevalent than I originally implied. Very much unsatisfying for the smaller group, but better than getting evicted, but I wouldn’t call that an actual attempt to kill the structure, as they very well could do that if they actually wanted to.

I think that the “scrappy underdog fight” is more often something that falls into this category, they are looking for a fight not there to bash the structure, but hitting the structure gives the notification and they’ll sit on the cidadel for a bit to see what comes out when the little hornet’s nest gets kicked.

642

Since personal experience was asked for earlier in the topic, I can say that I have witnessed such a fight just today. An Astrahus was defended on Armortimer, against an attacker who had reinforced the station overnight.

That was like several hours of content, only possible because there was another timer to fall back and seek help or evacuate in case the attackers would have come with an unbeatable fleet. Had there been only one timer, the smaller defenders had to evacuate instantly because you cannot risk to give Jackpot loot to any attacker, else you are branded as permanent Pinata and they (or others who notice the station killmail) will just track where you rebuild and kill you again the next time they roll into your hole (or just leave a scout or track your killboard to check if and where you rebuild).

You remove that timer, you remove content and the last straw small corps have to defend at all.

9 Likes
643

My small Corp moved into a C3/HS static some years back. Was before structures, so we lived in a pair of large PoS with dreams of building a couple carriers in the hole.
I seem to recall that the POS also only had one timer, that was dependent on the amount of Stront you put in it. In the end it was too much work and most of our people drifted to other play styles and we left.
I always have felt Wormholers are badass. Living somewhere the devs never intended, using mechanics never designed to allow it.
Seems to me structures made living in a hole a little bit easier. Little bit more convenient.
These proposed changes take some of that away, so I get why WH corps are upset over it.
WH’s have almost always gotten the short end of any changes though. I still feel like they are doing something the mechanics weren’t designed for: living on the edge, in the grey between null and empire.
Wormholers inspire me. They represent the ingenuity and creativeness that is the Eve player.
Wormholes were hard. Structures made them a little easier, now perhaps they will get a littler harder again.
Perhaps if I had structures then I could have made it work, or maybe life out on the edge should be hard.

644

No reward without risks, right?

Ok. Let’s reinstate the local blackout and get rid of asset safety.
That’ll boost the economy. It’s for the betterment of the game as a whole. More destruction. More fights. The Blue donut would shatter like sugar glass after a few months.

Inconvenient for you? Who cares. It’s for the good of the game.
And besides, I’m bored.

HTFU. You’ll adapt.

3 Likes
646

Which Blue Donut is that? The one where FRT just attacked Horde supers? The one where Fi.Re’s been burned out of 2.5 regions, despite Horde and TEST coming to fight against the Imperium? The one where BRAVE is fighting basically all of their old allies to re-establish themselves?

Hell, your whole career, nullsec’s been in a more or less constant state of open warfare, from the 2018-2019 Tribute Campaigns and the FRT/Legacy war to Beeitnam and the current GEF deployment. Honestly, you kids should actually learn what the politics are before you start trying to base your opinions on things that are almost never true.

You live and hunt in lowsec. If you’re bored, you’ve got no-one to blame but you. All four years you’ve been active has been part of this malaise brought on by changes at the dawn of AEGIS sov and citadels.

Will you? What happens when your little group can’t make a move without Snuff or DW sniffing at your tails, because they can?

1 Like
647

You’re funny. I made my first Trillion back in 2004. Passed a MOo guy in LS awhile back and it made me tear up. But you demonstrated my point for me…, kid. When the heavy hand of the nerfbat comes your way, you’ll not put up with being told to sit down and shut up for the good of the game either. All these changes to citadels is based on incomplete info (like your assement of me) and the false notion that changes that benefit a 5000 man corp (which there aren’t too many of) are more valuable than steam rolling a 5-10 man corp (of which there are many many more of).

I didn’t come here, kid, and make an attack on you. You obliviously don’t recognize a little sarcasm when you see it.
Keep your personal attack ■■■■■■■■ to yourself.
And have a nice day.