EVE General Discussion

Being able to pull down POSes before a war starts is one of the biggest problems there is with the wardec mechanic, no skin in the war from either side.

I'm glad CCP are now fixing this mechanic which has created so many false expectations of what this game is all about. If you don't feel comfortable having a citadel at risk, make use of one owned by a corp able to defend it. You can carry on doing industry if that's your thing, you just will need to make sure you either have some Pvp players of your own, hire mercs, or just don't deploy the citadel. Don't complain because you don't like being vulnerable, that's what placing a giant structure in space is supposed to do.

The attacker risks their fleet just like everywhere else in this game. In fact, citadels unlike most mechanics, keep the attackers from fleeing. Much like the entosis mechanic, the Citadel's automatic disruption of the attacker's warp drive prevents them from fleeing and allows the defender to counter-attack.

New Eden is not an especially fair place. There are no mechanics that automatically allow you to automatically retaliate against an attacker. If you want vengeance, you have to go out there and earn that revenge. I don't see why you think Citadels should be something different.

Pretty much this, you can easily get back all your stuff but the Citadel itself is both an investment and a liability. The same as undocking in any ship is potentially a liability.

Instead of running away we are trying to encourage you to stay by giving you big guns instead

BTW if you are not comfortable investing in your own citadel you could use someone elses[/quote]
IMHO is this a great misunderstanding. There is no liability in EVE. People need to have a reason to defend their citadel. This has nothing to do with cowardice or carebear but is strictly rational!

Let's take a look at the situation from the defenders side:
1. Can we win? These guys are no seasoned PvP player so they are at a disadvantage from the beginning. Sacrificing ships for a lost case is throwing good money after bad. So it might be a good decision NOT to fight just to minimize you losses.
2. What happens if we win? The other side can prolong the wardec indefinitly so the chances are high that you will have to do the same next week and the week after and..... PvP isn't their playstyle and you are forcing them to do it again and again. Risking their ships and the citadel so there are multi billions at stake for something you don't want and even a victory will just buy you a week. A good fight might even encourage others to attack you cause you are giving them what they, not you, want: good PvP.
3. You are training non PvP corps to be cowards! Every industrial or mining ship is just a target. Miners/freighter pilots ALWAYS need to flee because they have nothing to defend themself. Why doen't give the Skiff 5-6 large turret/missle points but no benefits for damage/falloff etc? Maybe even ultraexpensive ammo with a big bang? You are training every industrial pilot to be a coward because even for a Billlion he will not get a ships that will give him a chance to defend himself.
4. Many Industrial-Corps will do the math: how long will I have to profit from the citadel till I reach break even? Is it worth it?

What to do:
1. People take greater risk when the stakes are small. Player die a dozen time in a Battlefield match because there is nothing at stake when you die. So maybe raise the insurance? Or make citadel defender contracts mercs which will be paid if the citadell survives the downtime.
2. Give it a meaning! If you defend your Citadel the wardeccs of the attackers are lifted and they can't wardecc you for 4-8 weeks. There are enough other targets out there. In Low and Null you don't need a wardecc to attack. Give them something more then just another week before the same happens again.
3. Give guns to the miners. Where is the imbalance to gameplay if you are sitting in a belt with big guns sucking astroids dry?
4. Accept it: It's smart and there is nothing you can do about it. If things have a meaning in Eve you will always do the math if risk and reward are balanced. Maybe make a citadel insurance with weekly fees?

In the end NOT defending a citadel is the same decision PvP players make against overwhelming odds: They dock up to minimize the losses. And dismanteling a POS may be smarter then to defend it because you might even encourage the attacker to come back again and again.

Yes, I pay to have fun, and my fun derives from the fact that Eve is a PvP sandbox where I can compete with the other players for power and resources. For New Eden to be a sandbox, it cannot have balanced matches, or "free" revenge. Players have to have the freedom to tell their own stories by initiating aggression, and players have to be vulnerable to their opponents for any of it to have consequence.

If you want balance, or fair fights or the absence of permanent loss, go play Eve: Valkyrie. You can then be assured who you are fighting, and that if you lose you can demand a rematch and get all your ships back. But Eve Online is a PvP sandbox where your stuff is not safe nor permanently yours. You have to defend it: that is a central pillar of the game; and you have to defend it everywhere, including highsec by design.

In this game it is often the people who least want to fight that you most need to shoot. It is the haulers that are carrying valuable cargo and miners/missioners who have fit expensive modules to their ships that least likely to want to fight yet the most important for you to shoot if you want to gain resources from another player. Highsec is not suppose to be a safe space for moving cargo, grinding resources or doing industry. It is a place like any other where the players can interact and jockey for power and resources.

You have every right to not want to fight and actively avoid it - I know I do when I am engaged in production and carrying valuable items - but you are not entitled to not have to defend yourself. If you are influencing the shared economy of New Eden, you are vulnerable by design, and it is you that is responsible for providing for your defense even in highsec. If you accept that fundamental truth of the game design, you will have a much more enjoyable Eve experience.

You can moan and whine about how unfair the game is, but that isn't going to change anything. You have no power to make such sweeping changes to the fundamental design of Eve where nowhere else is such a requirement necessary. The sovereign space of the Imperium is currently being attack by a coalition of 50+ alliances, who, almost without exception, do not hold sov. In this game, there is generally no requirement for you to have to put something at risk to attack - that just serves to limit conflict in a sandbox game about player freedom.

I am not sure why you keep harping on the point. I even said that I think it would be good idea to encourage all corps, even those who declare wars, to have structures in space to promote conflict. More structures increase the likelihood people will fight over them and gives industrialists something to build which I agree with you, is a good thing. But if you are benefiting from a structure, it is you that have to defend it from anyone who wants to take a crack at it, just like if you undock a mining barge to generate ore into the economy, you are a valid target for every other player in the game. If someone explodes you, you do not get an automatic recourse for revenge, you just lost a round of PvP. Citadels are exactly the same.

There is a reason the top 4 regions ranked by most destruction are primarily highsec. Why would I go hunt targets in the sparsely populated, and poorer regions like in nullsec? Players grow fat and complacent behind the protection of CONCORD, and I choose to harvest those players for much of my resources instead of grinding it into the universe myself.

Being a pirate, even in highsec, is very much intended game play. It always has been. I do not want anything that CCP has not already built into the game. I am just playing the game as it has been designed.

You need to shoot them because they have valuable items that make you more powerful if you take their stuff from them. Also, it is fun - yarrr!

Look, you don't have to like piracy as a playstyle. You don't have to engage in it, you don't have to even respect it. You can look down on pirates and say bad things about them (within the terms of the EULA, of course). But it is intended gameplay in this PvP sandbox game. There is almost no NPC risk for players in highsec, so without the intended vulnerability to other players nothing would ever get destroyed. This would kill the primary purpose for doing PvE and industry - making things of value - as no one would need the stuff you make.

That distaste for piracy and the good vs. evil game play it enables is part of the motivation behind the design of the game. The ability for players to explore the morality of their choices in-game, and allowing the players to play the role the villains rather than cartoonish NPCs like most games, is one the most compelling features of Eve. Without evil there can be no good and so forth.

But this is all much deeper than necessary to understand Citadels. Think of them as powerful ships in space that cannot move. Just like any other ship, they can be attacked by any other group of players in the game. There is no requirement for your attackers to give you a rematch, nor, other than 50M ISK for a wardec, are there any hoops the attacker needs to jump through to be allowed to shoot. You are benefiting from that structure, so you have to defend it from the other players, just like when you fly a freighter, a mining barge, or an exploration ship.

Actually, I think it will be easier to have a citadel rather than a POS, less fuel worries! Right now POS's suck down fuel just to put the forcefield up, but the Citadels wont use fuel for just being up and for using the very basic functions like docking, but they WILL use fuel when you are using various modules such as industry, guns, etc.