EVE General Discussion

When I was in 0.0 I had the impression that most were basking sharks..., just filtering plankton

We saved a freighter pilot twice from a bumper, the third time he died when the bumper spammed duels at him and he made an error, that player was bumped on every trip he did, he logged out when he realised he was in a duel and I have not seen him since, he was a eager solo player with one account. Well played sirs...

In my humble experience with POSes it was so hard to take a Large one with the right setup, Citadels just seem too easy. Sure, more hit point, timers, you get to choose when to fight, but you have to actually show up and bring some friends. POSes on the other hand...fully automated pest control. Also the price on large and X-Large citadels is not even comparable, but you have more perks don't you - Market, Doomsday, etc.

Either way, this is the future, we have to deal with it. Deploy structures at your own risk folks, but do expect them to blow up when you do so.

If CCP ever removes the NPC stations, this is when things start to get really interesting. No total safety anymore.

I dont have an attitude. I play within my means. Something thats lost on this new generation of entitled eve players.

You baffle me. You respond to a serious discussion of the game with a throw-away line and a non-sequitur partial anecdote about some player who lost a spaceship in a game about building and losing spaceships.

I have no doubt this putative person you are referring to was not bumped "every trip" nor do I think the fact you haven't seen him means anything. Perhaps he just learned form his loss and isn't flying freighters solo anymore through Uedama. Or maybe he realized he didn't really want to be playing a full-time, competitive PvP sandbox game and moved on. Whatever man, his choice.

Eve is a game about conflict and competition. If you are going to throw your hands up every-time someone loses a virtual asset in a game build upon destruction of virtual spaceships, you are a) going to be throwing your hands up a lot, and b) you are not going to be having much fun. Things in Eve are made to be broken. Try embracing that for a while.

But really, what does this have to do with structures being vulnerable? If your archetypal bright-eyed freighter pilot deployed a citadel solo, he might also find it explode from under him. So what? That is what this game is about. If you opt to flying an unsupported freighter to benefit from its amazing ability to move cargo (instead of the smaller, but near-invulnerable DST more appropriate for the solo hauler which I generally prefer in highsec) then you risk that you might lose it to an attack, just like if you deploy a citadel without arranging for a defensive fleet, you might lose it. Risk vs. reward. In fact, even if you take all precautions you might still be outplayed and lose it. That's the game.

Both freighters and structures are completely optional. You can pay other people to take that (tiny) risk and move your stuff or rent out a structure and let the other guy worry about defending it. I was just looking yesterday and there are already low-fee (<1%, some even at 0%), public Engineering Complexes in practically every other system nearish the trade hubs. I was thinking of deploying one as an exercise to see how they work and to cook up a batch of Catalysts and Taloses and fittings, but there really is no need - I'll just use one of the public ones. If you want to deploy one for their benefits, accept the risk you might lose them and the responsibility to defend them. If you do not want to risk losing them, then just don't use them and retain your near invulnerability if that makes you more comfortable.

The choice is yours and that is what this game is about: choices and trade-offs.

It is near impossible to die in highsec if you are defending yourself. You acknowledge this fact in this very thread when you were bragging about how immune to attack you are. Yes, unsupported freighters are vulnerable as are now the new player structures (both completely intentional), but as a whole, highsec is incredibly safe.

You do raise a good point. That probably is an oversight and should be looked to be fixed or using other people's ECs may never catch on. I certainly wouldn't do any high volume industry in a EC I did not trust.

To the OP:

I understand your frustration with the defense capabilities of the citadel structures completely.

I run a corporation with just myself and have no capacity to defend any of my structures other than the defensive capabilities provided by the citadel itself. HOWEVER, I think that you are looking at the situation from the wrong perspective. Personally, I consider a citadel to be a disposable structure with a useful life of 7 days at the minimum. I do not fit any defensive modules on my structures because that is just a waste of ISK.

When I anchor a citadel, I start a 7 day timer and begin to harvest as much ore and ice as I possibly can in order to pay for the structure, asset safety release, and finally a profit.

Think of a citadel as a consumable tool that enables you to generate income rather than a permanent safe haven. I love the fact that I can avoid purchasing and risking a jump freighter or paying a delivery service to move ore out of null sec. Never before has a solo/small corporation been able to stake a 7 day claim in null sec risk free essentially (minus the citadel cost).

Sometimes I get to the point where I start praying that someone will come and blow up one of my citadels so that I can get stuff moved out of null sec.

My advice: Start thinking about how you can utilize a citadel to your advantage rather than wishing it did something that it does not. Citadels are a very useful tool to small corps. It just depends on how you leverage their abilities.

I have a suggestion; leave the citadel's offensive capabilities alone and instead have a remote repair module on it that pretty much turns an astrahaus into a multipurpose caforce auxiliary. You will still need to defend it but when it reps 10k dps in both armor and shield your defense fleet is a able to do a lot better job of defending while outnumbered. (Or you can bring a couple of normal logi cruisers and if they can rep the citadel you can just plain ignore a small fleet.)

Who in their right mind would want to attack a citadel under 100%+ time dilation? Personally, just going through the agony of dealing with tidi is enough of a defense provided by the structure.

hisec is pretty much the unsafest area of new eden, its plain chaos, especially around tradehubs ( god how i hate jita) . suicide gatecamps. killright scams, undock games, duel invite spamming, fleet invite scams,burn jita events and so on and on and on +always check ur suspect status after leavin lowsec...
0 is the safest ( when ur in an ally/corp) u see if neuts come to local, there is an intel channel and u always can differ friend from foe because of...u guess it...local.

The more I look back on it the more the height of casual play was the height of the game.

I'm thinking about the ancestors of the Sperm Whales versus the Megaladon Sharks right now. The Sperm Whales had basically no defense against these sharks. But one is extinct and the other is not. Why is that? Well both had challenges aside from whales being eaten by sharks and sharks being eaten by other sharks. But the whales were able to breed better than the sharks. The Megalodon is gone. It was badass though. They based a movie on it that scared people off the beaches in the 1970s (I saw it when it was in the theater - damn I'm getting old).

Now if the oceans of say 3 million years ago were run by CCP, they would have let a few sperging sharks convince them "This is a PVP ocean hurr durr" and plankton would have gotten nerfed.

But the sharks don't eat plankton. They ate whales. See where I'm going? What happens when you nerf plankton?

I'm starting to get a little Greedy Goblinish now considering how everything has been a move towards monetizing not the casuals, but the sharks. Think about it: free to play and micro transactions (NES stuff) was unheard of back in the golden age. The only nerfs we have truly seen to ganking only so much as involve requiring more gankers. Think about this.

When Herr Wilkus published his "tornado trifecta" it was nerfed in a week. Why? One player with a tornado taking out three ships, that's why.

Then how long did it take to get rid of hyperdunking? Love to be a fly on the wall for that one.

Freighter EHP? Sure it seems like miners cried and CCP stepped and fetched, but the gankers are just as hornswaggled as it appears the citadel owners are right now. Every "gank nerf" had the appearance of being coddling of carebears, but all it really did was require more gankers to do the same thing.

And someone probably figured it out. Who is the most egotistical player in the game? Who absolutely will not quite, even if it means multiple accounts?

No Herr Wilkus with tornado trifecta, but look at those "Kusion fleets". How much do they cost? Took a while to get rid of hyperdunking. Note that bumping remains, but the problem is already "solved" on the gank side - multiple accounts are involved. But look at the counters to bumps: yes multiple accounts.

Wreck EHP might not have been raised to coddle the gankers, it was to see if AG was to fall to the same avarice and ego as gankers. Would the wreck shooters now go and get multiple accounts so they can "hurr durr adapt or go back to wow!"? Of course not. They are a little more intelligent than that.

But... but... without the casuals the ore prices go up! Yes, and then what does it take to feed a PVP habit? PLEX? Or maybe some intrepid players run entire fleets of mining ships. Multiple accounts.

To a lot of people who have played this "hurr durr get a second/third/fourth account" routine looks like a scam. I remember in the golden age casuals and PVPers with just about an alt for everything including scratching their own ass. New players would come in, see that, and be like "are these people nuts?"

But it's an old game, an MMO dinosaur. Maybe someone figured out a way to keep the subs up while the attrition of players followed a normal path - or maybe this is at the cost of casuals, who don't have too big of and ego and more likely not to care about leaving? Maybe the bad reputation and weaponized boredom has taken its toll too long?

This citadel thing is just another facet of what's starting to look like one big scam. When the game was all about "be the villain" we got lots of villains. Now it's all about "build that sandcastle" and looks what's happening now. How do we stop it? "Hurr durr hire mercs" (provide content for sharks) or don't (and provide content for sharks).

What if citadels were the last hurrah for getting casual players fed to the sharks?

Welp.... CCP means "crowd control productions" after all. Well played. I'm impressed.

Now it's time for a shower.