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So, i haven't seen anyone address a number of concerns with the citadel system as a whole. Forgive me if i simply missed them being answered and please point me towards the relevant post.

First and most immediate concern is the number of service mod slots that is available on Raitaru. Its 3. That means that i wont be able to run all the industry mods and a reprocessing mod at the same time. The implications of that are pretty obvious for anyone who lives and mines in a remote system, like wormholes. You would need to swap mods or have a second structure in system. Very annoying.

Second concern kind of interlaces with the first one and was also partially dressed. Fuel costs. They were lowered recently to acceptable levels. However another change that may still be viable would have been the removal of startup costs for service modules. I mean, why are they there? To make it so that people cant turn on mods to do things and then turn them off for fuel saving? If that's the case, then its dumb. The only 2 modules that are exploitable like that are 'Clone bay' and a 'Reprocessing mod'. The other mods need to be turned on continuously to do anything considerable. And even exploitable mods are not that protected by that mechanic. You simply need to do your things once in 4 days to save fuel. I would not even have an issue with 3 mod slots on Raitaru if there were no startup costs. I could do my industry in batches, but now i cant simply because it costs too much.

Third concern is not an immediate one. I feel like there are too many structures coming. Different structures for different purposes. That are not limited by the number of moons in the system. If there will be more structures for other functions like reactions and those Drilling Platforms, whatever they do, we will have a logistical nightmare on our hands. These structure will have to be fueled, protected. You will have to remember what does what. And it will still cost to set them up. Also with these structures being fundamentally different like that they offer a lot less flexibility than POSes(as much as i dislike POSes for their UI). You simply can not have a single or even 2 structures that are specialized for your particular needs. And that may be solvable by cooperating with other people and using their structures. But that's not a solution for wormholes, because our system is our own and hardly a solution for k-space, because people like to have their own space home. New structures simply don't offer much flexibility.

This inst a separate concern, just separating thoughts as i have droned on quite a lot in a previous paragraph. What i would have done about the whole structure thing is:
1)Have them still orbit moons, we have to have some kind of restriction there. simply because these structures are affordable for anyone who can get battleships on regular basis.
2)Have them be customisable the same way T3 cruisers are. Simply make their role be chosen by player in accordance to his need by 'subsystems' and only further improved by 'rigs'. And if you make the subsystems interchangeable with maybe a few hour delay then we can have an engineering structure be transformed into something defensible, like a POS entering a 'death-star' mode. It still would remove the stupid safety mechanic of a POS being unanchorable in case of wardec AND give people a chance to defend it. Engineering complexes are paper structure and no one would want to put them up if they can be casually teared down by a single well fit battleship. The subsystem mechanic will also offer more interaction and gameplay, thats at least engaging, because you will be continuously choosing what you need NOW, as opposed to being set with what you buy. Because frankly, you CCP may have not created the service modules for ECs at all, since who the **** would fit anything else on this structure, geared towards 1 thing only - Engineering.

I'm done, i may have gotten carried away by the end of it. Please forgive me if i have gotten a little emotional there. No offence, i still like EVE. What i don't like is the needless structures that will be all over space, resembling a forgotten graveyard.

No, you are right about being able to defend it if you want to anchor it, however there has to be a reasonable toughness of anything you defend. Raitaru is simply not defensible. You can easily waste an Astrahus, we actually did it and we are FAAAR from combat oriented pilots. And well, not ALL about POSes is bad. The UI is horrendous, the one who thought of it should be fired. Anchoring times are kinda dumb. But the customization options are what offered a lot of gameplay to them. It is true that POSes cant be both industry oriented AND defencible. But it can be one or the other and that is what made you assess the risks on a daily basis. Anchoring a rigid structure like a citadel makes you assess the risks on a much larger scale and plan for months or quarters even. And for many people EVE is not a game that you play THAT seriously. And that is cutting a lot of gameplay off for more casual players. I like living in a wormhole and i pay to keep playing in it. Please don't make it overly tedious to play like i enjoy. Not hard or challenging. Tedious.

And the structures themselves have even less appeal when you remember that they cant do reactions or moon mining. And that future structures will have those modules to most probably be kept fueled. Right now i can run t2/t3 production in a single medium POS. For 20 blocks an hour. It is valnurable as **** and cant do anything else but run 1 hybrid reaction array(including silos), design laboratory/experimental laboratory, component assembly and ship assembly. and it all costs about 500 mil. Why would i want a structure that simply CANT run the same thing on its own. Like, seriously, if gas reactions will be a separate service mod, it will be impossible to run all that in 1 Raitaru. And honestly? Having a separate reprocessing service mod is just plain stupid. I can hoard my materials and reprocess them once a month. All at once. Just leave reprocessing rigs to boost repro efficiency. The rig will occupy a rig slot and this will be a natural downside to having it over some other useful one.

Honestly there are just so many things wrong with these structures. And im not speaking out of some addiciton to POSes, i havent played long enough to get addicted to them and when i intitally put up one - I hated it. I looked forward to having citadels until the introduction of ECs... Until i realised that to keep the funtionality of ONE medium POS i will need to put several structures that are essentially gigantic space colonies. How dumb is that a structure that is basically a space CITY is unable to do the same thing as a strucure that looks like our current Earth space stations? Sans the shield of course, our stations dont have that.

Now, i get it the reason for these restrictions are large structures. Fortizar, Keepstar, other big EC have to be better than their smaller counterparts. Otherwise whats the point? I also get that simply increasing its durability is not answer, since no matter how much tougher large structures are it wouldnt warrant their price over a smaller but able to do the same thing structure. But CCP, limiting low-level structures like Astrahus and Raitaru like you do, to intorduce a clear efficiency improvement per structure size is bad game design. You have the upper limit of functionality, i get it. L and XL strucutres cant be too good, or rich players witll make small time ones literally unable to compete with them. But you also have a lower limit of functionality, the one you are ovestepping now. Dont make smaller structures worse to show how good bigger ones are. Just make the difference less obvious, or if you cant do that yet, scramble bigger structurees until you CAN.

Of the 4 potential starbase assault fleets (they never attacked after seeing we'd defend) on my large hisec POS over the past 7 years, no attack has had logi.

The last group, however, did use a lone third-party Osprey when they attacked another tower in the same system.

Most attacks seem to be "opportunity" attacks, and are looking for AFK-able targets. This might not be the same for EC, which are considerably weaker, but the three multi-day timers are even more annoying.

I guess you are right about them not being an improvement over POSes, but a replacement for them. And thats fair, we will deal. But i really don't like the necessity for multiple structures as opposed to a higher modularity of a single one. Its just going to grow annoying and it really raises the isk bar for single or small group industrials. With how rigid ECs are, space will grow into a junkyard. Bleh. At least introduce a limit per system.

can i get a clarification on something?

the rig list image ( http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/70592/1/Engineering_Complexes_-_Rigs.jpg ) explicitly lists "ship rigs" for the equip manuf. rigs,

and it also lists "Structure Components", "Structure Modules", "Upwell Structures", "Starbase Structures", and "Fuel Blocks" for the struct manuf. rig.

nowhere does it mention "(upwell/standup) structure modifications", ie the rigs for citadels and the new EC.

will there be a way to get bonused build for those, or do we have to use upgraded amarr outposts / poses to build them?

like, it would be nice if i could build an m-set structure manuf eff rig and fit it to a Raitaru, to then build an xl t1/t2 rig there.....

We've been promised "cities in space" many times over many years. No sign of a delivery on that promise yet.

The reason for keeping the structures so heavily separated has been said to be a balance one: that it's easy to balance structure defences when they know there will only ever be one of them involved in any one combat at any one time, but impossible to balance them if a theoretically infinite number could be anchored on one grid.

So I don't know why they didn't leave defences off of the ECs (and future structures) entirely and just allow you to anchor them within weapons range of a Citadel, that way you'll have the option of using Citadel defences (but only ever one Citadel at a time) to protect all the other structure classes. You then have the ease of balancing defences on only one structure class and just balancing vulnerability, EHP and DPS cap on all the others. This would mean the ECs would be defensively weak and dependent on either fleets or nearby Citadels for their defence and it would also allow us to build those cities in space that we were promised. It would also allow us to balance our defensive, economic and industrial needs by choosing different size classes of each structure accordingly.

You want an XL Citadel sitting in the middle of your cluster of ECs, drilling platforms and other things so that you have maximum defence... go for it!

You're a small industrialist in HS and feel that an M Citadel will be sufficient and cost effective to defend your M EC and M drilling platform from occasional threats... go for it!

You feel you can do without a Citadel entirely and just rely of passive EHP, war dec mechanics or fleets to defend them... go for it!

You could still allow some short range weapons on the non-Citadel structures, but keep a short minimum anchoring distance restriction that excludes an overlap on those weapons. So the point defenses could be allowed on all structures with no overlap being possible due to a small anchoring exclusion zone around every structure, but all the long range Citadel only defences would still be able provide an umbrella to protect all other structures within their range.

This idea would also allow M and L Citadels to be up-powered a bit to fulfill this role effectively without making them ridiculous and without making any gulf of performance between them and the non-Citadel structures, because the Citadels are there to be tough, to provide defence and provide a flexible centerpiece to any structure cluster.

Having that kind of system, with those kinds of choices and the reality of building your own structure cluster of whatever size your needs, purse and ego demand would be awesome. But sadly we've been given this unambitious cop out instead.

Ahh Drilling Platforms (the one structure,with 4 different specializations + a few other roles thrown in) The be all and end all for miners, manufacturers - Only problem is, that thread is over a year old and has never had ANY followup. Leaving me wondering - What exactly are Drilling platforms, what will they do and how much is it going to cost me to do it...
If drilling platforms go into use as suggested in that thread - There will need to be literally hundreds of them in each constellation, what an over the top waste.

Devs have gone out of their way to introduce new structures that, 1. limit small group and individual opportunities. 2. cost more and more to buy and operate. 3. are more and more vulnerable.
EC's are just a bad idea in their current guise, Drilling Platforms could well turn out to be the nail in the coffin. So if your right and having what could be done in a 1 bil isk pos now be done in 3 or 4 or more structures which add more and more pvp grinding for those wishing to kill them, more and more time spent online (more than many want to commit to for a game) is CCP's "vision" for what was once a great game - Then yes this is that vision (with all available information and the blanks that are yet to come, it is a really bad one)..

Sadly, it isn't a very good or well thought out one - Or, CCp is just being CCP and not bothering to inform its customers about their plan.

I hope a bunch of F2P kids will keep CCP's doors open because I can see all these overly cumbersome structure sets encouraging a lot of veteran players out of the game or at least to become less involved in it (same thing really).

Finally and I don't know how many times this has been stated - CCP, not everyone wants to belong to a nulsec blob alliance, try designing the game for your player base and stop trying to force everyone to fit your idea of what New Eden (supposedly a SandBox) should be. Every new structure set removes a bit more from the sandbox.

Want to see for yourself how systems can become junk yards for structures - Go to Perimeter,

I agree entirely, this is what New Eden inhabitants deserve.
Although, defenses on a medium citadel are mediocre at best so my thinking would be; Each segment of a space city could add offensive slots to its defender (the citadel it is attached to).
Eg; Medium Citadel with medium EC (module) attached - Would gain 1 weapon highslot and 1 fighter tube, up to a maximum of 4 weapon highslots and 5 fighter tubes (light and support fighters only). The EC and other modules would take on 60% of the defensive capabilities (shield, armor, hull) of the citadel it is attached to, so all it needs is rig slots (limited to manufacturing, reprocessing etc) and service modules.
Each module can be destroyed, so a medium citadel with 2 EC modules attached would yield 3 killmails.

Large and Xlarge could be treated the same way, with only the defensive/offensive capabilities needing to be kept in balance.

Citadels are home and EC's, Drilling Platforms (whatever they are) and anything else Devs decide is needed to replace pos's, become modules and New Eden residents get to build cities in space..

Vulnerability times could be increased slightly to somewhere between current Citadel times and proposed (overtaxing) times of EC's.

Terrible idea.

Basically, you're making it so that all non-citadel structures are either bound to a citadel (thus multiplying the price of any industry operation) or just a target. Today, they have a moderate potential to be a force multiplier.
A much simpler idea than the one you describe, with a similar result, is to give more bonuses and service slots to citadels so they can do every piece of industry.

I like where CCP is taking us.