Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So one of the major focuses of the new sov re balance is to de-emphasize the ability to roll your fleet into a giant ball of caps and be untouchable. The removal of a super blob being an instant I win button is no doubt good for the game and I will not argue against it here. However I feel that with the new system as currently proposed there is a shortage of feasible roles for caps. This is where I’m going to go radical and suggest something that will probably make some minds in Reykjavik explode.
I suggest we bring back the structure grind…..sorta.

Ok ok, take a deep breath, put down your pitchforks and let me explain. Under the sov system currently being implemented you do not need to deploy capitals in order to take sov or presumably capture enemy structures. This is good, and i am not looking to change that. What I am suggesting is making capitals the optimal tool for destroying structures.

Side A is in a fozziesov war with Side B. Side A decides it wants to capture the citadel in ABC-12. It uses its entosis mods reinforces it and proceeds to win the currently proposed 3 reinforcement timers. Citadel flipped OP success GG GG. Side B being a resilient alliance of space friends retaliates by recapturing the citadel that was just taken. This in turn causes side A to double down and decide to blow the ****** up.

What im suggesting is in order to destroy a citadel the attacking side must grind a modest amount of HP lets say 20mil ehp (Half a Large Pos) IN ADDITION to winning the entosis battles. As well in order to flag the citadel for destruction they must grind the HP BEFORE the entosis battle is over. If the attacking side successfully grinds the 20mil ehp (shield, armor, structure) and wins the entosis war for each timer the citadel explodes and glorious killmails are had. (Don’t ***** at me about the HP cause every single one of you will happily grind 100mil EHP to kill a leviathan.)

If someone wants to remove a citadel but cannot or simply chooses not to grind the HP. There could be a mechanic where they offline and tear down the citadel after they have taken control of it. This would trigger a 24 hour vulnerability window that would have to be defended.

As far as loot mechanics go, any of the various suggestions would work here. Im personally partial to the suggestion 10% being sacrificed to the loot fairy, 40% being lootable by either side, with defenders getting first dibs, and 50% being moved to the nearest structure owned by the owner’s alliance or the nearest NPC station whichever is closest by LY.

If the structures owners are taking it down after successfully waiting out the 24 hour vulnerability window, then in that case Interbus would move the all of assets contained to the owners nearest structure or nearest NPC station whichever is closest by LY.

Approaching the new structures in this way will allow smaller entities that may not have a large capital fleet to successfully fight a cap heavy entity in a sov war, so long as they can handle their business with subcaps.
Entities that have Caps will now have a tempting target worth deploying them for with the caveat that in order to be successful with them they will have to win not only the citadel grid, but also all the entosis grids as well potentially thinning out capital support fleets making caps more vulnerable which in turn makes more killmails.


TL:DR
Scenarios:
Side A attacks Side B
Side A does not grind HP but wins entosis battle: Structure pushed to next timer Non Destructible
Side A grinds the HP and wins the entosis battle: Structure pushed to next timer and is flagged destructible.
If Side A grinds the HP the first timer but fails to do so for the second timer and wins the entosis battle, the structure is sent to final timer but is no longer destructible.
Side A grinds the HP but loses the entosis battle: Structure is saved, but HP must be repaired.
Side A wins all three timers and grinds the HP all 3 times. Structure explodes. Killmail generated Side A gets some loot. At least Half of side B’s assets saved.
Side A Captures structure and elects to tear it down. Structure goes Vulnerable for 24 hours. After 24 hours if not reinforced Interbus moves all assets to their owners nearest structure or nearest NPC station whichever is closest by LY.

Yeah but let us destroy the NPC-Stations too and shoot the wreck.

I would love to destroy the traidhubs.

+1

i can also see interesting scenarios where, depending on the importance of a particular structure to the defenders, a capital light enitity can punt a few timers and dog pile everything they got on the capital grid. Depending on what caps you kill and how many, the defenders may even lose the structure but win the isk war.

I prefer it staying as is with once the attacking side finishes the last link timer the structure pops(except outposts atm) rather than is captured like you propose

This seems to be a super complicated system... easy way is to set a 30-60-90 day self destruct timer. bam done.
People have time to get there stuff out and or win the station back before it goes boom.

so you advocating the only way to blow up a structure is capture it and wait 30 days??