Let’s go down the numbers:
- No. These are replacing jump bridges, which do everything these do except for needing an ACL, allowing tolls, and passing capitals. In fact, while JBs do have fatigue, they also have a 7LY limit, not 5LY as these will be. Also, ‘range much farther than regular ones’… uhm… what?
Have you ever looked at the distances crossed by some stargates? Regional gates cross more than 5 (or indeed, 7) light-tears, but so do some constellation gates within a region. These new gates will not, for example, circumvent the Y-2/ZXB chokepoint between Fountain and Delve, or the J5A/B-D gate between Fountain and Cloud Ring. Not even close.
- Do you think nullsec groups don’t do this now? At max fatigue, it’s 30 minutes before you can jump again. It takes 3 jumps to get that high.
- There is literally a cyno beacon in every system in Delve. Other groups have the same thing set up. The only difference here is the new beacons will use ACLs, so allies can jump in as well. That means holding your own space will be less important, and null groups can consolidate more if they have half a brain, freeing up more of the map.
- The only thing that prevents this now is the price tag. And even that doesn’t, when there’s a war on. In the final stages of the Northern War, every system in the constellations around the defenders’ keepstars was cyno jammed. We had to take down the ihubs in those systems to break their ability to anchor jammers.
Right now, they’re all in range of a POS’s guns.
As things stand right now, all of the dire predictions you’re making are in effect. when this change goes through, though, things get… interesting. For example: right now, someone comes along and RFs your jump bridge. Then they leave. You bring out a few faxes or a dozen logi, and rep up the jb, turn it back on, and keep going. Elapsed time? Maybe an hour.
Once these structures are in, someone comes along and RFs your Ansiblex (the gate), if you’re lucky, it’ll come out of RF in an hour and you can defend it. If you’re not lucky, you can form up to defend it tomorrow. But you’re not getting it back online until then. And the same is true of the beacons.
Wanna know the really funny move that’ll happen, though?
People will put 3 jammers in systems, because they can. Only one of these gets to be online. Only the online jammer gives notifications (because anchored-but-offline structures don’t give notifications).
So the enemy comes in, finds your jammers, kills the two offline ones outright. They can do that. Then they start shooting the third one. As they do that, they are anchoring 2 jammers of their own[1]. That means when the defenders go to anchor their own… they can’t, unless they’re willing to blow up one of the attackers’ jammers…
… but by then, the attacker’s still got an open window to bring capitals in, which is what you desperately needed to avoid in the first place.
And you think this gives a defensive advantage? Oh my, no. [/Farnsworth]
- Because if you paid attention, Lebowski said that you don’t have to be the guy who owns the space OR the IHUB to anchor these things someplace. The intent, obviously, is that people who live in space with someone else’s ihub can anchor a defensive jammer if needed, but it’s going to be used offensively, trust me.