EVE General Discussion

Place them all in one system and place them strategically to create space ascii. Have you noticed that a citadel bracket icon in space already looks like the stars are giving you the bird?

You still haven't provided a clear reason why attacking a structure should be some sort of complicated operation that requires dozens of players to even get started on other than your own personal whim. How does setting a high bar of entry and locking out swathes of smaller entities from attacking structures make the game better?

I am willing to entertain the idea that Citadels and Engineering Complexes are too weak offensively and do not function as a sufficient force multiplier (although the killboard data doesn't seem to support this given how rarely these things die in highsec), but I have no clue why you think they should be something put up on a pedestal such that only large groups should be entitled to attack even though a single player can deploy them. Why is it so terrible a fleet a dude and his two buddies can take a crack at a structure? That is better than the alternative of sitting around doing nothing because their corpmates didn't log in.

As for can-flipping I could care less about the specifics. I joined the game when it was in the process of being removed and in my eyes in the grand scheme of things it is a slight variation of the suspect baiting we still have today. But the point was there were plenty of avenues for creative antagonists to create content in highsec. Read blogs of the era and you'll find hilarious tales of can-flipping, awoxing industry corps, ninja salvaging and so forth that gave highsec life (and eventually got me to try the game), all of which are gone now along with the artists of the era. Now things change and people leave the game, but it is not surprising if you remove content-creation tools, people are going to leave the game and interesting things will stop happening in highsec leading to decreasing player numbers as both antagonists and prey are bored out of the game.

Now that sounds overly pessimistic. We still have ganking and war declarations creating content in highsec, and actually these new structures promise to generate even more content given CCP finally patched the wardec/structure loophole, but wardecs and modern ganking are not really a casual, solo-friendly activity for an aspiring highsec antagonist. Highsec is now lacking casual, accessible tools for new player who wants to play as an antagonist leading to less and less happening there as both new aggressive-minded, and new industrial players have nothing to do.

The sad irony is that Eve is more likely to die a slow, lingering death from the inertia of all these buffs to safety the carebears say they want, but actually remove not only the excitement of the risk of players, but the very reason for players to do stuff. For most people, accumulating resources in the near perfect safety of highsec grows stale after a few months and unless they find a larger goal, these players will leave the game. This is why nurturing conflict everywhere in this game, including highsec, is so important.

Anyways, to tie this back to the OP, this is the primary reason Citadels are in the game: they are conflict drivers. It makes no sense to make them invulnerable to everyone but the largest groups in the game (who ironically were the ones attacking the structure the OP was lamenting over - if you make it such that PL cannot explode a manned citadel then who could?). They are there to be built, fought over and destroyed (and by groups of all sizes), creating content at each step. That cycle of construction and destruction is how Eve is suppose to work.

I am still confused. Why do you think setting an artificial bar to attack is challenging? Isn't attacking the citadel of a 25-man corp with just you and your two friends a challenge? If anything, making it such that you require 20 people to attack a citadel removes the challenge, especially when most structures in highsec are deployed by small groups who will be curb-stomped by such a fleet.

I also don't see why you are all for preserving "casual content" for some players (like citadel owners), but making such that other casual players cannot even attempt to attack a citadel. How is it good for content generation that it is impossible for one 10-man corp to attack the in-space assets of another 10-man corp?

As you say, having a citadel should actually mean something and be something you are required to show up to and defend, even to a group smaller than you.

I don't know why I continue such discussions with you. I am just reiterating CCP position on the matter. They were transparent on the game design reasons for how they implemented citadels and the other structures. You can disagree with them, or perhaps be more constructive and point out areas where they may have missed the mark they were aiming for, but largely your posts in this thread are partially rambling thoughts on how you would design a space game and your personal views on how other players play the game. Well, your thoughts are noted, but I am not sure what you are hoping to accomplish.

If you think citadels are underpowered, then perhaps you could suggest some tweaks in your own thread that would support CCPs vision that they act as a force multiplier while still enabling groups of all sizes and in all sectors of space to fight over them.

It is a shame that none of the AOE weapons are allowed in hisec, the super weapon i can understand. A war dec on a corp owning a citadel should result in the citadels in hisec receiving exclusion zones during a war dec. You get a warning when you attempt to warp to the citadel and a choice to continue or not. By entering the area during a war you accept the possibility of taking damage from the citadel when not close enough to be anchored and protected by it.

I am reminded of the good old days of people scanning me down in the lvl4 recon mission part 'toxic cloud' and taking damage, Or even getting instantly popped if they were in a frigate.

You set up an artificial bar by saying they had to be possible to be attacked by solo war deckers, as I said enjoy the content when I drop 80 of them with no defences and you have to work out which ones are actually making stuff and hence are important to me because defending them is pointless for the people who want to put them up in hisec. If you don't like the reality of things don't reply or post even.

Most of your post was rambling on about content which is naff content and talking pap around making hisec totally safe and that this caused the game to lose its subs or what not and you do that again and again.

Simple thing is that Citadels are too weak in hisec, they are so weak taht the best approach is to treat them as dispoable assets put up loads of them and make the attackers wack a mole to work out which one has an impact. Eve strategy of boredom at its finest, cause and effect because players like you wanted it so one man and a dog could kill a citadel in hisec, great job mate!

So everyone should run around in corvettes with no modules fit in them and empty clones too, I actually will do that with Dracvlad in the next war dec I get.

By the way it was the CSM who got CCP to remove the market from the medium citadels, great job there mates screwed that one up totally.

Calculate the DPS the launchers actually put out once you take target sig & some speed into account.
Then consider what happens when you neut the structure to it's cap of which there are not things like structure cap batteries to help,and even if they were there are so few slots.
Logi just outside 250km with sniper DPS is obviously one solution. But you can just fit your logi/dps for ECM and face tank all the DPS also with how miserable it is.

Sure they should require 'defending'. But someone turning up to gun is someone defending. If no-one turns up they don't shoot at all. And they are meant to be a force multiplier, so that 1 guy turning up to defend should count as 5 to start with. If 4 people turn up they should count as 20.
Otherwise why bother to turn up at all when the attacker outnumbers you, which is the current situation they are in for highsec, where it's so irrelevant once the attacker has more than 3 people it's just down to fleet size. And this is the issue.

I am enjoying myself a lot and even more so because none of you lot can stop me.

Let me clarify. I'm not making a point. I am trying to get others to weigh in.

Other than the attackers movements just like a flock of birds (nice job ladies and gents), the whole thing was BORING! If that's CCP's objective, Congrats! They made citadel fights BORING! Even the attackers were "Ho Hum" about it during and after the fight. The fight (sorry, there was no real fight, that requires 2 sides).....I mean the attack itself was uninteresting.

Something as BIG as a structure or citadel should be able to handle the 1st hundred or so attackers. Defenders in ships should take out the rest.

It's sad when NPC mining fleets have better hit points than a citadel!