EVE General Discussion

... immortal words as said by the cat in Tom & Jerry after being blown up :)

Or, at least this is the conclusion after reading the quoted blog statements below and having no reply from the devs regarding the monumental lies that caused so many players to spend the equivalent of 2 to 20 months subscription price to build or buy defenseless structures.


https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/building-your-citadel-one-block-at-a-time/
"New structure hulls are going to replace Starbases, Outposts and Deployables over time (please refer to the end of this blog for more details)."
"While the medium structures should be similar to a fully fitted Starbase"

The medium structure ( astrahus ) is far from having the capabilities of a fully fitted starbase.

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/back-into-the-structure/
"Structure combat is more exciting: Structure combat leaves a lot to be desired, as the AI target selection is lacking, while defensive options are limited and not that effective."

As they are now, the citadels are a lot LESS effective in defense compared to POSes.


Before thinking about locking this thread : note that it was written, against my better judgement, at a GM's suggestion after several petitions. I think he really believes, the poor guy, that the devs do not know about this issue and will actually bother to answer.

I won't believe it! No matter what they say, I KNOW, for fact, that it is not butter.

Okay, I don't know what specifically inspired the spawning of this thread. I have some very limited experience defending an Astrahus with my corpmates, so I'll speak on what my experience has taught me.

The way this "citadel" thing ended up playing out is like this - for all intents and purposes, the citadel basically acts like a big ship. By that, I mean, you need to have it fitted right, you need someone in there that has the SP, and you need to know what you're doing. When it comes to citadel defense, it's basically a very large, immobile ship, that is only utilized correctly when someone with tactical forethought or experience is manning the guns.

By itself, it cannot do much except repel an attack by a small, disorganized, and inexperienced force. Any real commitment to an attacking force, and you have to field a proper defense fleet keeping in mind that the citadel needs to synergize with your fleet. Think of it as fielding a capital ship: you need to have support on field that can help a capital land shots, right? Same deal here. It's a defense force multiplier, not a force unto itself. And yes, not all that great a multiplier either. But this is EvE, people should be expected to be fielding spaceships, it's not a tower defense game.


I hope you didn't yourself plop down the isk to invest in these only to be disappointed. It's wise in EvE to let the hilariously rich people play with the new toys and/or mechanics first and figure out the nuances as such. Like, the way Drifters were wrecking ships left and right.

If Devs promised some things from the onset, and those promises didn't pan out, please don't direct too much ire at the devs for it. Yes, they should probably scale back promises and expectations a bit, but they have a game to sell, and modesty rarely sells well. Beyond that, they probably had every intention of following through with their (however vague) promises about citadel capability, only to find that making the structures have so much power may have completely broken something. So, after finding this problem, they have to scale back until they find a decent balance point.

When things like citadels are released, and people don't riot about overpowered toys suddenly flooding space, that's the result of a lot of behind-the-scenes quality assurance and testing, making sure stuff works properly. And after they get the new toys in the ballpark of where they think they should be, those toys get released to SiSi to see what the creative playerbase can do with them. That live testing gives them the information they need to finally adjust things to their liking.

It's a complicated process, lots of things can go wrong along the way, especially power levels of new things that pose a threat to throw everything out of whack. Try to be understanding and patient with the process; as it is not an easy one to go through and impossible to every truly master.

Quite frankly, the ire should be directed at the Devs.
We repeatedly told them at every stage of development, and gave them the numbers to show that Citadels were monumentally too weak compared to POS.
They refused to listen and only ever tested with XL Citadels in Nullsec vs a fleet where they actually are decent due to the doomsday, and ignored all the other sizes & locations with regards to balancing.

So yes, the Devs to deserve Ire over Citadels, I've got months left on them since I use 12 month subscriptions, but between this and daily XP grinds being introduced unless something amazing comes I'm going to be gone in a few months since their direction of development has become more and more neglectful of anyone but the null blocs.

However, they have advertised medium citadels as being "replacements for full-fitted POS", and not "a big immobile thing that can be destroyed within half an hour by a 5 BS fleet if you do not field your own ships in defense".

I completely understand the need to field defenses against a large fleet. But a medium citadel needs that against a fleet that would have absolutely no chance against a "fully fitted POS". As shown repeatedly in forums, even since this expansion was only on sisi, medium and large citadels defenses are completely inadequate against subcap fleets.

TBH my main problem with Citadels is that everything stored inside them is magically 100% safe no matter what, and can even be transported an infinite distance from inside a secluded wormhole to a safe npc-owned station instantaneously if/when the citadel is destroyed. This is 100% against what has up until recently been a fairly core principle in EVE: Anything player owned is at risk, and anything *inside* a player owned structure/vessel is also at risk. Even in sov space, your items may not get given to the conquerors - but they are locked inside a building you can no longer access. Similarly the POS towers these aim to eventually replace? They destroy or drop every single player owned item inside when they are destroyed.

Citadels should *either* be able to defend themselves *or* provide 100% safe storage for player items. NOT BOTH.


So stop whining and luxuriate in the fact that you have something *no* EVE player has ever had before - ZERO RISK.
(yeah yeah I know the structures cost money - but you can store an infinite value of things inside without risk - and people do so in the ones that actually get used for tax free trading/etc near jita)

Well then in the interest of balance - even the smallest Citadel puts up far more of a fight than an NPC station or a Player Owned Outpost without a defense fleet.

So once again my core point remains: Stop whining and enjoy your new OP toy.

A player owned outpost needs a large capitals/supercap fleet to be destroyed. Besides, the OP was discussing the citadels as replacement for POSes - which put up much more of a fight.

As i have tested myself on sisi, one medium citadel cannot destroy one bhaalgorn, let alone defend against a fleet of more.
As we have seen on the live server, one medium citadel PLUS 2 carriers could not destroy even one ship from a fleet of 11 subcaps containing 3 guardians, two faction battleships and 6 hacs. So its does not perform very good as force multiplier either.

I suggest you try it before making a statement.

An undefended player owned outpost requires any solo ship to destroy. They don't fight back. Learn 2 EVE.

I am also inclined to believe that your fittings on both your citadel and your carriers suck - along with your skills. Though I will grant you that the modern carrier is *not designed* to fight a heavy RR fleet. You would have done better with almost any other support ships.

I have no use for a Citadel, so I see no reason to get one. They don't even draw fights, because despite all your whining about how weak they are, they are everywhere and very few people bother to waste the time destroying them.


You also have extremely generous invulnerability windows/etc for your citadels. Plus lets not forget the magical damage-limiting that means you can only deal an extremely limited amount of DPS to the structure. Citadels are in fact CCP's first step in attempting to remove the "who has the bigger blob" factor from structure warfare.... Perhaps I'm not the only one who hasn't bothered to research them.


You guys are clearly just grasping at straws to give yourself reasons to whine, and ignoring all of the unprecedented benefits that are being thrown at you with these new structures. HTFU or GTFO. This is EVE.

On the contrary. You should read more before saying anything here. Like you showed you have no idea about asset safety, not you show you do not know about outposts.
http://www.eve-guides.com/outposts/FAQ.php
To take over ( an indestructible ) outpost you first need to destroy all the POSes that keep the sov. Try do that with one ship.



First you show you do not know eve, then you admit you are discussing citadels defenses when you have never tried one, and now you start cursing. Good way to show your real IQ man.

#1 - Destroy was Dark's word, not mine...

#2 - Uh...no...you don't have to kill any POSes.... You have to take down a few other *undefended* structures... Still doable solo if nobody opposes you, and it doesn't even take all that long with the new mechanics - just the timer game mainly. Perhaps you should read up on sov mechanics if you wish to keep debating this? You are literally citing a non-official game guide from ***2008*** to make your argument now.........

#3 - You seem to be the one who doesn't know EVE...

#4 - I don't need to know the defenses - I know they *have* defenses, and in my opinion that already makes them too powerful given the other benefits. Again - stop whining.