EVE General Discussion

We actually did a lot of research on Citadels for weeks but its hard to catch every forum thread, reddit post, NSA stored data recording of EVE conversations etc. lol I try but there is only so much I can do at a time.

In any case, it will be fun to watch it explode if nobody takes us up on offer to help defend it. We thought it would be a nice way to help miners in the area and potentially provide a hoe away from home for some but it's all good. Just learned a hard lesson about what not to do.

You're right, I have been trying to build a corp to help new pilots learn various facets of the game while struggling against the glass ceiling of High Sec. Not being able to drop Manticore bombs on the fleet attacking us due to High Sec restrictions really made this painful. I wouldn't do it again thats for sure.

I honestly feel a new corp would benefit more by establishing themselves in a WH or Low/Null than trying to do anything outside of mining (and even that can be harry) in High Sec.

Citadels = Pinatas in space. There is absolutely nothing you can do to defend it if you're a small'ish corp.
Also, I despise how CCP raised the tax by 500% just for the sake of citadels.. F your citadels, blow them all to hell.

Sure, he did not use the word "better", but he still expected to take down some ships with it.

But just because you bought that shiny new Battleship or Carrier, you cannot expect to get some guaranteed kills with them. The same applies to citadels. You cannot assume that it will get kills, just because "It's a citadel". If people know how to handle it, then there is no reason for the aggressor to lose ships.

So the notion, that people assume that something will get kills just because it's a battleship, carrier or citadel is a fallacy. Something that is relevant to the OP, since he clearly stated, that he assumed a citadel would be at least able to take down a few ships with it, just because "it's a citadel".

CCP has stated that the target group for the Astrahus Citadel was small corporations and below, including single industrialists.

"Medium sized Citadel structures will be around 5-25km in diameter and are tailored for individual or small groups of players. They will be able to fit some appropriate defenses to offer resistance against most kind of assaults including capital ships. Moreover, players can dock inside them with sub-capital ships"

The above was copied and pasted from the SHAKE MY CITADEL post by CCP Ytterbium about 1 year ago.

Right now, I don't see ANY of that being true, or even remotely true.

Am I expecting a Citadel to fend off a 50 man battleship gang? No, I am not. But the OP stated that he had expected to have some fun blowing a few ships up as he was being worked over.....well, he should have been able to do just that according to the CCP plan.

Is there a way to fix Citadels to make them more defendable? Surely not without causing major ripples in all 4 areas of space. Is the real culprit, at least as far as high sec is concerned (due to fitting defensive systems limits), the wardec mechanic that lets a small corporation be wardecced by a vastly superior force thus preventing them for properly defending themselves? Again, the fix needs to take into consideration all 4 parts of space.

What will happen when industrial structures come out? They surely won't be able to defend themselves, not in high-sec anyways. So who will benefit from those? Low-sec? Null-Sec? W-Space? The latter 2 I would wager.

I myself have an alt corporation, and I am waiting to drop my medium. I was initially temped to setup in some quiet high-sec system, but now, I may need to deploy to Low-Sec and drop a Large so that I can fit AOE weapons and maybe make the citadel a greater threat. But I'm gonna wait till I get more data on the citadels. Who knows, with the upcoming Rorqual changes, I just might finally take that beast out in lowsec with a large citadel parked in system and mine with it.......maybe.

It's almost like a number of us predicted this, brought it up repeatedly, and CCP utterly ignored us only ever testing Citadel defences with the XL Citadels in Null sec environments.
There are multiple ways that citadels could have been made viable in high sec that could have been used, instead they made them weaker in defence in high sec than a S POS can currently be. Given a L Pos is meant to be what a M Citadel replaces this is ridiculous, but CCP are steadily eroding the sand box in an attempt to force people to play the way the null lobby wants them to play.

Your best bet is to build up an active corp of 50-100 members and then start hunting for 0.0 alliances. Or find other corps( of any type but active) and make an alliance. The latter is more difficult for many reasons im not going to go into. I recommend finding a 0.0 alliance thats already established. Wormholes are another option. I dont know much what goes on with wormhole warfare but your citadels would likely be safer, though your members wont be near as a safe as a 0.0.

As for your current dilemma, bombers are good for soft targets or in large amounts. I know your first instinct is to fly something cheap and easy to replace( t1 battlecruiser and smaller small t2s) and this is one of the differences between indy people and pvpers. Pvpers are all in or all out. Indy people tend to want to be only get their toes in if at all. All your really doing is giving them free kills cause they are bringing their A game and they arent going to fly a cheap ship.

A lot of people say if you want to learn to pvp fly cheap ships cause you will lose them. I cant really argue with that logic but IMO... if you want to win pvp engagements leave the cheap stuff at home and bring your good stuff. Anything but a full commitment to a battle and you lost before you undocked.

Their are two ways to counter logis. One is to bring superior DPS and out DPS them. Probably not going to happen for you. The second is EWAR and your own logis. So what you do is :

1) Pick either shield or armor tanks. I would personally go with shield because of lack of experience with pvp( shield gives everyone a little more reaction time. )
2) You want shield logis( for shield tanks) and the buddy system. Logis can literally generate cap out of thin air with the buddy system. This allows you to run reppers longer and makes you more immune to neuts.
3) EWAR - This will help solve some of your numbers problems. For logis you want jammers and neuts. So falcon/rooks setup to jam. They are going to be squishy and almost definitely primary. They need to stay out of range as much as possible and not get tackled if they can help it( even if they have to leave the field briefly). You can fit a neut on combat ships, I personally would toss a couple of shield buffer tanked curses in the mix . A curse will get 40-50k EHP heavy tanked. Also it wouldnt hurt to use jamming drones on the logis. You guys swarm logis with jamming drones you will likely break locks on them fairly easily. You dont want your logis to target anyone. They are rather squishy( usually) when they lose all their buddies. No buddy logis can lock them and they will be fairly easy to remove from the battle.
4) After that what you primary is really up to you. Typically tackle is the next primary then heavy ewar then heavy dps.
5) remember if your not tackled but getting hit you can always bail. Always be aligned to something and always moving in a fight.
6) For DPS ships you want buffer tanked ships. Most of your mids should be shield extenders and passive or active amps ( and MWD) Your lows should be DPS mods and power diag systems and always a damage control...always. Power diags are quite useful for shield buffer tanks. Rigs should be shield extenders or resist rigs( only resist if you got a resist hole after fitting mids) then weapons in highs... only faction or t2 ammo( depends on the weapon and situation on which you use) leave the t1 ammo in the dock. Ship types dont fly anything in t1 smaller than a BC, you might as well undock in a mining barge. Any combat t2 or t3 works. IF you really feel froggy buffer tank some rattlers. They can absorb massive amounts of damage and put out a lot of dps. Vexor navy issues can be deadly against certain fleets.
7) Tackle. You need ships that can tackle. Intys are always a good choice for tackle buy 6 of them cause you will lose 5 in the first 15 minutes of battle. You need to hold the logis in place so they just dont warp when you break lock and start dpsing them. If you want something less squishy use an onyx ( tanks like a battleship) or possibly an arazu( very long point). Have corp mates toss a long point on their dps ships. You want multiple points on the same target.


There are hundreds of variables that you will only be able to counter with intel and pvp experience. You will still likely lose. You may not. What you do have going for you is your fighting highsec wardeccers which isnt near as bad as fighting a fleet of players that are use to other players fighting back. They will likely have some experienced pilots but they will also likely have some that have no actual combat experience or very little. Their FC may also not be very experienced, good, or may of gotten lazy wardeccing and make costly mistakes. Or they might be as good as null pvpers.

Either way... use it as a learning experience. Go down with a fight and have fun. you can always make or buy more isk.

Citadels are basically defenseless currently.

The only times they have survived is when there is a defending fleet that is equal / superior to the attacking fleet on grid.
If the citadel wasn't there the defending fleet would still have won or atleast tied the grid contest.

Until they are patched so they provide a reasonable force multiplier for their cost, non alliance backed corporations are much better just sticking to POSs. Which are much less likely to be attacked due to

- long structure grind boredom factor
- ability to fit significant ECM and DPS.
- No expensive killmail making it a attractive target.


Biggest problem is that citadels can not defend against subcaps. Citadels are great against caps.. but they cant apply meaningful dps and don't have enough ewar options to defend against 8+ subcaps.

The problem is that CCP have balanced citadels for capital supported large fleet vs large fleet combat in nullsec / lowsec.

That's why as a small / medium sized corp in high sec / wormholes your screwed if you deploy a citadel.


Honestly the problem is they called them ''Citadels" because that word gives the impression that you are buying a fortress. and back in medieval times a citadel could be defended by the few against the many. That is not the case for EVE's citadels.

They should have called them ''Honey Pots'' because they are good at enticing larger size groups to come together and fight for the purposes of blowing up / defending a citadel.

Citadels are not to be used at this stage unless you want to offer something to KM hunters. They are way underpowered, much weaker than a large POS, and even a 4-5 BS fleet can take down a fortizar, let alone an astrahus.

We intended to install several in our w-systems but after trying them on sisi we decided to wait until ( if ever ) CCP cares to fix that and make them a worthy replacement for POSes. The thread that signals this problem is more than 4 weeks old and so far nobody from CCP even bothered to reply to it.