Citadel spam is absolutely out of control. Not only in places such as Perimeter and other next-to-a-hub systems, but in nullsec, as well. One of the big reasons for this is that the Upwell structures are absolutely awful to kill.
In order to make them more killable, I propose that all Upwell structures should receive only their first two timers, allowing them to be killed in just a few days. In sov nullsec, where you can designate a system as your Capital, any structure in that Capital system will receive the third timer.
This would help to lessen the headache of killing a structure, which should naturally lead to more of them dying. At the same time, it provides a pretty sizeable increase in āhomeā systems in nullsec, and would provide additional value for nullsec structures over highsec structures (beyond the rig bonuses).
Itās already been proven easy enough to kill Citadels in Perimeter. And Citadel spam even in Perimeter is barely at the same level as POSāes, everywhere else itās vastly vastly rarer than POSāes.
If I recall the stats correctly itās something like 1 in 5 astās have already been killed, Forts & Keepstars itās a bit rarer, though keepstar stats might get skewed upwards via the number that die during setup because of giant null groups wanting to shut down the mid sized groups.
Feel free to go back and check CCPās Dev blog on it if you want to though, and get the exact numbers, Iām running only by memory from them.
In short, No, they die easily enough anyway especially in highsec where the defences on them are an utter joke.
Iām interested as I track the structure kills (highsec only) on a weekly basis and the last stats I remember CCP publishing, >90% of Astrahusās were still alive.
The Citadel mechanincs in their current form are about the safest mechanics in the game. That has been proven over and over again in null, especially where it is possible to go multiple weeks without any vulnerability timer.
Check back in CCPās Dev blog history, they posted the kills to date somewhere a few months after Citadels were introduced for a date. Itās entirely possible your memory is more correct than mine, not going to argue without searching myself but I donāt have it as a convenient saved link, even if it is 1 in 10 thatās still fairly common deaths.
If itās possible to go multiple weeks with no vulnerability in Sov Null, thatās something that could need addressing, once chance a month to start a fight doesnāt sound ideal, but thatās a tweak to the ADM stats & effects, not a change to Citadels themselves.
OK sure, Iāll go find it. If itās the same figures I remember, no Citadels have been killed at that rate and that certainly doesnāt match at all with the figures I have.
Edit:
Was revealed on the o7 show and posted by Nana in the thread CCP Fozzie asked in:
Since then, the number of Citadels has exploded and the deaths havenāt kept up. It will be interesting to see if we can get updated stats. Iāll reach out and see if we can find out.
Sorry, but they are incredibly easy to kill - especially in High Sec.
You cannot repair a Citadel - it has to stop being damaged before it can self-repair.
In high sec you can have neutral remote reppers repairing your attacking ships - the Citadel receives no such benefit.
It is a true Enderās Game scenario: unless you are there to shoot space ships, you go straight for the Citadel kill. So long as you can mitigate incoming damage from defenders via repair or removal of defenders, you are guaranteed a structure kill in 7 days.
Give Structures the ability to receive remote repair and you can take away the third reinforce.
Your stuff, which is perfectly safe and canāt be killed (outside wormhole space).
So purely based on POS mechanics alone, which could be attacked at any time (and could defend themselves on their own) and then dropped everything, POSs were at far more risk of loss than citadels are.
Citadels now are killed more frequently than POSs, which is a stat that has only just recently changed. Iāll run the stats again off zkillboards api and post the figures here since the start of last year (citadels and ECs not being there for the whole time).
But weāll see if we can get an update from CCP on the overall survival, since that will be the best stats (ie. it will include a measure of total deployment also).
Iād be curious too, as I donāt see this Citadel explosion people are talking about in any area of space I live in, so Iām wondering if itās actually only a perception based on a few systems being quite anomalous compared to the rest of EVE. Not saying thatās 100% the case, but putting it forward as an alternative possibility. - Also those stats are from only 22 days after Citadels went live. Iām sure there was a second stats released a few months after with some pretty graphics but I canāt find it. Regardless you are right, we need updated stats because stats at a time when most Citadels will have only been up 1-2 weeks is not very useful.
In either case I do agree that Citadels arenāt in an ideal spot, but removing an entire timer isnāt a good solution especially when they are so weak in high sec & possibly low sec (Not 100% sure if low sec gets the void bombs, didnāt think so). Asset safety being cost free in the same system is one area I can see being changed to discourage Citadel spam in a single system, if it costs you to the same system even (at a lower rate obviously) then trying to hold a system by chaining through multiple citadels is going to bleed you significantly and the cost difference of just evacing to a totally different system starts to become more sensible. (I.E. 5% vs 15%, 3 citadels later and you could have just paid the 15% once and gotten out of the area).
Looking at POS also isnāt entirely accurate, since really people never put stuff in the POS to be at risk of loss. Research could be run out of stations for 95% of POS lifetime, and manufacturing even the odd cases it was worth the costs people put the bare minimum into the POS. Losses of items in POS were primarily WH space, and the odd idiot who put there entire life into one. Everyone else lived out of stations & outposts exactly because it was silly putting stuff into a POS
Stuff that gets tied up in asset safety for a period of time. But it is irrelevant. My main point is that the upwell structures are easier to destroy in high sec than elsewhere.
I still think a comparison of the overall destruction of POSes (with online and offline taken into account) to new structures compared to their anchoring would be an interesting study.
I was wrong above. POSās still outstrip Citadel losses in highsec by a long way. Itās Engineering Complexes that have recently matched the POS loss.
They canāt fit AOE weapons in highsec. They also donāt have to face capital fleets though. I am not sure how that balances out and am willing to accept their defences are not sufficient in highsec, however, it is far too easy to tedium tank them by time zone or by moving vulnerability windows, or just spamming more than the attackers have the patience to attempt to kill.
An actively defended citadel should a tough nut to crack, but an abandoned one where the owners have left the game or been driven out of a space not so much. It agree in highsec that the added defences of manning the Citadel add little to your defence which mostly comes from the deterrence afforded by the boredom of shooting one in the middle of the night for no reward.
Sadly though, that does not make for compelling game design.
The damage cap though is the same everywhere, so even bringing capitals is useless after the damage cap is reached, which is part of the tedium of killing Citadels in low and null, especially when there is nothing really to be gained because all assets are perfectly safe.
Edit:
Looking at the numbers, highsec is substantially safer for Citadels in practice, than either low, null or j-space, though itās the worst place to have an Engineering Complex:
The safest āaffordableā structure to put up in highsec is a Fortizar. Less than 1 a week is killed as opposed to 6.5 per week of Astrahus.
The worst to have in highsec is a Raitaru, with 10.2 killed per week.
I was surprised by how many Citadels are being killed in J-Space given the low population. There might be something to the claim that asset safety discourages conflict (or at least doesnāt motivate people to attack Citadels in other areas of space).
Ehh, you canāt say that (safest = fort) authoritatively based just on the loss-per-week value. There are far fewer forts deployed. Youād want at least a āper-capitaā loss rate to say which is safer just on the probability of it being blown up, and from there youād probably want to look at the average value of a loss against the per-capita loss rate to see which is āsaferā in terms of expected loss value.
That said, itās kind of surprising to see a thread with people actually supporting the unbridled nuisance that is Upwell structure removal.
This isnāt about difficulty (hell, go ahead and buff their non-AOE weapons for all I care), itās about the sheer soul-sucking tedium of grinding them, even when entirely undefended.
Even the vaguest hint that an op is about grinding down a structure and I suddenly remember that I have to log off to practice my underwater basket weaving skills.
I mentioned this earlier in the thread: You can bring neutral remote repping ships to the field. Ignore the defenders and go straight for the kill. Since the Upwell structure cannot be remotely repaired, you are guaranteed a kill unless the defenders can out damage the tanks and reps of the attacking fleet. Outside of High Sec, anyone else is free game if they show up on grid.
[quote=āPetrified, post:15, topic:9017ā]
You can bring neutral remote repping ships to the field. Ignore the defenders and go straight for the kill. Since the Upwell structure cannot be remotely repaired, you are guaranteed a kill unless the defenders can out damage the tanks and reps of the attacking fleet. Outside of High Sec, anyone else is free game if they show up on grid.
[/quote]Not really. Neutral repping isnāt a thing anymore and hasnāt been for years. Anyone who reps another player who is in a corporation that is at war immediately goes suspect so the neutral logi can indeed be shot by an enemy citadel (or anyone in New Eden for that matter).
True, bring enough in-corp logi to tank the citadelās DPS and you are much safer bashing a structure in that only your legal opponents can get involved, but that is how highsec is suppose to work - you have defined opponents. There is plenty of time to add allies to a war to help defend your structure and anyone can join your corp, and the war immediately to join the defence.
A manned, but unsupported citadel is not suppose to be a serious threat on its own but rather a force multiplier for the defence fleet. I am not convinced that they are enough of a force multiplier in highsec, but their baseline offensive capabilities seem sufficient to drive off solo attackers and small, opportunistic gangs on their own. If you make them able to solo whole fleets, they just wonāt die, especially in highsec where most groups are smaller and made up of more casual and newer players who canāt bring 12 guys supported by T2 logi to a fight.
The fight is suppose to go on between fleets on-grid with the citadel, not with the citadel itself. If you canāt beat the opposing fleet at least once out of three times, you are going to lose that structure. Seems to me working as intended and I see no āguaranteeā of victory for the attacker anywhere in the design, even if they bring enough logi to tank the structure DPS (which, I must say is pretty much a requirement for any attacker to meet). Their ships are held on-grid for the defending fleet to shoot like fish in a barrel at their convenience.
