in other words you are worrying about a hypothetical problem you can’t identify in reality
This is correct, and every group of hunting size in low and null is already doing the ‘ok, so we need 3 dreads to 1-cycle Raitaru/Athanors, 5 to 1-cycle Astras… how many can we hit simultaneously?’ math, even if only as a matter of academic interest.
Hell, I’ve got a fit for high-speed, low-drag ‘there is no way the enemy can stop this’ reinforcement of the shields on a keepstar, and I’d be shocked if my counterparts in the other blocs don’t already have the same fit worked out.
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Not at all. I’m not ‘worrying about a problem’, I’m pointing out to Brisc that he is the one saying ‘shield timers’ get defended. Now you will have 5 minutes to defend. After that, it’s too late. So this will only reduce the likelihood of him getting the fights he wants.
Edit for the sake of completeness and thoroughness: When he says ‘shield timers’ there are 2 possible ways to read that: either a)defending the shields, or b)when it comes out of the shield RF cycle.
If it’s (a), then the 5-minute thing applies. Heck, Forts will only need 13 dreads to 1-cycle.
If it’s (b), which most folks call the armor timer, then that’s when the majority of fights have happened, because even if you lose and the structure gets RFd again, your fleet can tether and you can extract with minimal pointless losses. Except now that won’t be possible, so groups will be less likely to defend. Fewer fights.
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AFAIK tether doesn’t go away on a fueled structure, until it explodes. CCP Aurora said here that all services will be online, because it’s an armor timer… that just happens to be the only timer. People sometimes lose ships while watching the fireworks under tether during hull timers, and not warping away / safe log / dock and log - before the explosion 
Sometimes in life you just need to stop and smell the roses.
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Yes, I know. The impact tethering has on why people don’t currently defend hull timers is that when you lose that timer, you lose tether.
Which means, when this change goes live, once you lose the armor timer on medium structures, your fleet will not be able to tether (because it will explode). This means that all of the ‘because we lose tether’ that currently applies to hull timers will apply to the (only) armor timer of medium structures.
Which means they will defend those timers less often, ie: fewer fights.
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that is exactly what you are doing and continuing to talk in circles won’t change that.
Shields are virtually never contested now on medium structures, this change won’t do anything to change that. The time it will take to ref a medium structure is also irrelevant. It takes only a few minutes to ref an astra at shields at the DPS cap. laughably, your example of refing a medium structure with three dread cycles, is more resources than you can ref a medium structure now. (two cycles)
Armor is not even commonly contested on medium structures. Even fully rigged T2 medium structure at around 5-6 billion isk, requires losing not that many muninns and scythes before the feet losses cost more than the structure loss. Anyone who is fighting on medium structures now, are not contesting to protect against a loss and this won’t change that. What it does do is remove the tedium for the vast majority of medium structure bashes that never get contested.
You are shifting on going on the large structures. those are a very different problem - sometimes shields are contested on large structures and I think this totally eliminates that. and I don’t think removing the shield DPS impacts the terrible grind that is citadel bashing hardly at all. Your suggestion that anyone would deploy 13 dreads to kill a fort is ridiculous. If there is going to be a response at all, 5 minutes is more than enough time to bridge in dictors, form a fleet and wipe out every anticap fit dread on grid. Your own example of trying to impress that it will be ‘so easy’ to kill a fort is totally absurd and will never happen outside of niche strategic operations
Not to mention the fact that both armor and hull are down a substantial amount, my astra fit in pyfa shows shield/armor/hull at 9m, now the shield is 14.4 but no damage cap, and armor is down to 7.8m and the hull is only 1.8, so i sense the fight will be over quite fast, that 1.8m hull will be gone fast even Vs 1 dread.
Wow, congratulations on misrepresenting things. Currently, it takes 10 minutes to RF an Astra’s shields w/1 dread. With 2 dreads, it still takes 10 minutes. 1-cycling an astrahus is not currently possible, because of the damage cap.
The resource at issue is time.
For you. Or me. Or any of the bigger blocs1. That is very much not the case in j-space, or for smaller LS/HS groups, or even in Poch, where yes, they’ve been defending medium structures. So, again, good job misrepresenting things. We are far from the be-all, end-all of structure warfare.
Funny, I didn’t think reffing the shields would kill a fort. Or are you misrepresenting things again?
1. Though, for a lot of SIG deployments, we do tend to use medium structures to bait out fights, and guess what! Those get defended on the armor times! Or… used to. Though, you know, most of that was well before the 14-month war, and since your 6 months in null vastly dwarfs my 10 years, I’m sure you’ve seen so much more of what kind of fighting happens out here, right?
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Oh, hey, look at that… Horde successfully defended an Astra’s shields…
last night:
1h30m or so in.
Huh.
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Players: “Giant blobs are unstoppable.”
Brisc: “So what? Just join a giant blob and you won’t have that problem.”
Honestly, I am surprised that anybody bothers to build any of these sandcastles.
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Honestly, what I can’t understand is why people bother replying to a career politician 
CSM is effectively a nullsec lobby that’s obvious for everybody with 3 digit IQ.
If anything, as a member of a small wormhole group, I am willing to put down my structures and wait out for CCP to see for themselves the stats after such a change, if they are so unable to predict what is to happen.
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I am addressing exactly what you were saying, and you are still wrong. 5 minutes or 10 minutes, it doesn’t matter on a medium structure. The extra 5 minutes does absolutely nothing. If someone brings enough of a force to ref a medium structure, they are generally going to ref it. 5 minutes isn’t saving it when the shields are saved now.
that has already been addressed not only by me, but by others as well. Your reference to ‘the small guy,’ and again, groups defending their medium structures aren’t doing it out of a consideration for protecting the value of the resource. They are risking far more to defend the station than the station is worth. your Pochven example is the biggest strawman I have ver read. How many medium structures are left there again? And how are 5 minutes helping them save it?
Are you back pedaling from your feigned concern over large structures now? those are an entirely separate problem in these changes, and a minor one that only serves to discourage conflict. But what is it? do you care about the damage cap on large structure shields or do you not? You can only have it one way.
Another perfect example of where the timers don’t matter and the only point is the fight for which these changes, change absolutely nothing. It is really unfortunate that you are this unaware of how eve online works after a decade.
Another content deployment…
Sand castles are a very apt descriptor for medium structures. They are nearly disposable assets. If you want to avoid that, then upgrade to a large structure. This is not hard or confusing.
Again, wow, nice misrepresentation. It’s not the ‘5 minutes’ that matter in that case, it’s the fact that defending the armor timer currently doesn’t leave you unable to tether, so you will lose a considerable chunk of that defense fleet if the attackers bring overwhelming force. The reason you don’t get a defense will be the lack of the hull timer. Which, you know, I’ve made clear repeatedly. So congratulations on demonstrating that you’re arguing dishonestly, and in bad faith.
A) There was never any particular concern, just pointing out the math.
B) I’m not backpedaling from anything, I’m pointing out how you’re willfully misrepresenting my statements to argue against things that weren’t said. More dishonesty on your part, though. Not exactly a shock.
No, just the Rampage Inc. stream. But you know, I’ve pretty much given up on any hope of you being honest about anything you’re talking about.
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Other ways ‘structure spam’ can be handled:
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HTFU. Hey, remember back when Sov was based on towers and towers were the main ‘structure’ so every moon ever had a tower on it? And every moon in high sec had a tower from people trying to do their own research towers? Yeah, ‘structure spam’ is nothing new to Eve.
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HTFU. You own large segments of space? Well yes, you’re gonna have to maintain those, and that means clearing out antagonistic structures. There should NEVER be a point where you can finally kick your feet up and say ‘Yep, we cleared all the structures, time to sip on some lemonade.’
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Limit the number of structures in a given system based on celestials. Going back to towers, they had to be on moons. Sure, some systems had a hundred moons, others had eight. However moons you had, that was the limit on structures. Do similar with structures. Base the number off just planets and moons, or planets, or planets, moons and asteroid belts, whatever. Personally, I think it’d be funny to put your structure in a belt and have fleets pinging off asteroids as they try to siege it, but w/e.
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Limit structures in a system based on Ihub upgrades. Have a level 5 system? Cool, you can have 25 structures. Have a level 1 system? Cool, you can have 5. Oh, but you want a high level system with few structures so you can have your nice farms but be safe from annoying people looking to kill your ratters? Okay then, tie the number of structures to an upgrade in the Ihub that can either increase OR decrease the maximum number of structures allowed anchored in any given system.
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Hey remember when you’d get email notifications when a non-alliance tower got put up in your space? Yeah…
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Instead of nerfing these structures into the ground so they’re completely unusable and still making them cost an arm and leg, pick one. If you want them to be easily killed, back off on the price and core. If you want them to still be expensive, then they HAVE to be worth the cost to put down. And if you’re not willing to do either of those, then acknowledge you’ve come to the table to strong arm changes convenient to you and screw everyone else.
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Fix POS’s. What? 8 years now, POS’s have been in some state of limbo? You clearly don’t want people to own structures because it’s too inconvenient to manage your space from those mean 200 man alliances picking on your 10k+ mans alliance. So, make POS’s the ‘small’ structure class so people at last have something they can stage out of with some sort of viability that’s not sitting in a perpetual ‘Oh well, maybe CCP is finally going to kill this home next update, too.’
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Accept that people being able to anchor on the edge of your space and harass the huge alliances is the ONLY major downward pressure on group size in this game. Everything else incentivizes for bigger being better. Space harassment of miners, farmers, etc is the only thing in this game that de-incentivizes groups from just growing and growing and growing at all. Taking this set of changes not only annihilates small groups from the structure market entirely, but also takes/greatly inhibits the ability of even medium sized groups from applying pressure. ‘Oh, they’ll just anchor a fort’ and you’ll just bring 200 mans to kill it because it’s a 14b isk killmail, where 2 dozen australia houses anchored around is a real PITA for the whale, as it should be. Literally the entire evolution mechanic of wolves picking at the flanks of larger animals to slowly whittle them down.
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Instead of a hard nerf bat over the head(as CCP always does when it breaks something and doesn’t know how to fix it), make smaller changes that affect over time. And not stupid things like adding a third of the structure’s value in one module that always drops. Increase build cost, increase fuel cost. Hey, anchoring charters are still in the game, put 'em to work. Hey, even better, put an upgrade on your Ihub that makes ‘Insert whale alliance’ charter so people have to get hold of charters to anchor in your space and then we can start the whole game of espionage to get hold of your charters vs people trying to keep others from getting hold of them. Even something as goofy as that is better than nerfing these things into oblivion.
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Limit structures per system just based on 10. That’s it. 10. It’s stupid, putting an arbitrary limit on it, but it’s better than making them useless and blocking large swathes of the playerbase out from them just because they didn’t blue up enough people.
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If there’s some grand scheme where there’s a carrot at the other end of this stick, then start talking because right now all your offering is a whole lot of stick because ‘12 prominent FC’s and the CSM said so.’
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If medium structures are going to be so pathetic, then make them not show up as a shiny blue icon in space. These things are much less significant* than supers and titans, and supers and titans don’t get marked in space whenever they undock. Medium structures shouldn’t either, then. At least give people the chance to try and stealth their way into existing/harassing/whatever.
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If you’re going to push through all these changes as are anyway, then put new structure modules or rigs or something in that give people the option to fit for their armor and hull reinforcement timers. IDK, make it a low power module called Emergency Counter measures or something and make it consume more fuel, but fitting it will give that extra timer back that you’re taking away so the groups that intend on living in and fighting for their homes still have that option and those who just wanna anchor the structure but don’t care if it dies can still be killed easy enough.
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Finish the FOB concept. Oh wait, see fixing towers because that’s what they are.
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Increase structure size. A packaged australia house is what, 8km3? And a Fenrir can dock in that? Uhhhhhh… the laws of space and time say hello. ‘Oh, but it’s mostly empty space’ yeah, no, still doesn’t work because CCP long ago gave up on trying to make things work appropriate to size and scale. This is one of the reasons the idea behind capital ships in Eve is so fubar’d, but that’s a different topic. I get that increasing the size of M structures creates a problem for frigate holes in particular, but hey, pair this with something like finishing FOBs, or finally bringing POSes into the modern age and then there’s solutions there that works. Plus, now people can sell Astrahus’d WH’s for many isks.
ALL of these, with all their problems, are better ideas than just bludgeoning medium structures into the ground because specifically null blocs are tired of having to monitor their space, at the expense of anybody smaller than them having an even harder time/less reason to put out structures.
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So,yeah.snuff guys can destory all buildings in ls,and anyone can do so.The LS is killed again.
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A lot of these are potentially viable solutions, but there’s one that needs addressing:
Not possible. POS code is ancient, undocumented, and not understood. Attempts to fix POS’s in the past have broken parts of the game that are completely unrelated to towers. Somehow, the POS code is tied into all of it, and nobody knows how. The programmer who designed POS code and failed to document it, before you suggest trying to lure him back? Literally hit by a bus.
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You can ‘fix’ POS’s by duplicating/recreating them under the new structure coding/rules though. Make a new structure class. Call 'em small structures. Hey, call 'em FOB’s, or staging structures, Deployment towers, or whatever. Something to that effect. Put 'em on the new access list system and then make the hangars basically like access listed mobile depots.
I get that the old POS code is a disaster and Eve needs to be re-coded from the ground up because it’s broken. But there are ways that it can be worked around. Might break a few things, but hey, when has CCP changed anything in Eve that hasn’t broken something for a month after?
I didn’t know the old guy was hit by a bus, but no, I wasn’t going to suggest trying to lure him back. The only thing I wouldn’t be sure about would be the bubble itself, but if worst comes to worst, you can always replace it with tethering, though that’s less ideal.
There’s probably at least half a dozen other ways that structure spam could be moderated, especially out in null sec, that could all be controlled through the system management side or maintenance cost side.
A couple other quick ideas off the top of my head that other people have put forward would be degrading structures in hostile space when not maintained, entosising structures to have various effects, adding more gunner positions and fitting options to structures to require more than just one dude in a gunner seat, decoupling the actual offensive mods of the structure to similar batteries like POS’s had, siphoning off fuel from hostile structures in your space similar to the way the old siphon units sucked away moon goo, expanding the actual defensive fitting options for structures like bulkheads for example, or even doing something really crazy like system effects based on the Ihub(or your own structures) that could tamper with hostile structures in space. I’m sure there are several dozen more, too. So many of these would be better and more interesting solutions than this, though, and they wouldn’t so heavily stack the deck against the smaller side.
I will link back to this again because I feel it’s well past time that people stop and re-read it and understand that yet again, we’re at this point where a set of proposed changes is about to deal immense damage to part of the community and CCP is just barreling forward. EVE Online
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I think you’re asking the wrong question, Brisc. Yes the armor fights low/w-space/etc needs might be less that 1/20 of your tedium in volume (or not, not like you gave numbers either).
The question is though how big a percent they are of smallscale fights outside of big blocs fighting. If you are willing to take away a significant portion of that because keeping it is not worth your tedium, you’re building a game only for your playstyle.
And what I’m worried is that an EVE that is increasingly about fewer on average bigger groups as opposed to more distinct groups, some of them tiny, will suffer. Almost certainly the spaces most affected by this will stagnate and a lot of activity that is there now will die. Whether the game will in the long term survive the attitude that sacrificing other areas to support big bloc gameplay is acceptable collateral… well, none of my concern I guess.
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