Warfare & Tactics

The option to use LP to clear out unopened plexes. It's not hard to be that guy that opened all the enemy buttons. This could help save LP investments if other sources of LP are reduced with changes, and allow us to invest a little more in keeping upgrades high in home systems during down-times.

The option to burn out active cloaks in system.

Bonus to PI resource pools planet side.

I realize some of those are not structure specific. Allow Citadels to be anchored/linked to ihubs permanently (or until they are destroyed), and give them a unique style appropriate to faction, with a discount to upgrade costs for system level depending on structure size. Have them become the ihub, basically.

Fuel consumption, obviously.

Administration Hubs
System level should dictate the level of agents available for FW missions.
They should also allow corporations/alliances to tax LP earned in plexes within that system, feeding it either directly to the iHub, or to a pool for distribution to other systems.
System level should determine the frequency and efficiency of the new NPC patrols we can expect, and Admin Hubs should allow us some degree of control over their actions (whether they patrol hostile/friendly space, clear plexes, etc.)

Observation Arrays
Increased effectiveness based upon adjacency and system level.

I'm sure there's more.

LP taxes to corporations and alliances have been discussed with CCP. Both will require an extensive rework of the lp store and lp distribution system. While that would be lovely, and the current state of the LP store has been extensively discussed, taxing LP is out of the scope of these structure changes.

Do not forget about "neutral citadel" where neutral corp can allow to dock anyone of any militia... Tbh FW docking mechanics go obsolete with citadels, so that is one of reasons why all tier's bonuses must be apply only to faction holding system...

how about the owners get to restrict access to anybody? sounds like a bonus to me of putting up the isk to get one then anchoring it.

i don't know if thats a good idea but the other elephant in the room beside fuel is the vulnerability window.

lets say the window is set to 1h, the upgrade lvl could change that +-15mins or so (just as example, balancing would be difficult i imagine)

but again, not sure if thats a good idea given how broken plexing currently is. Adding stronger bonuses to the upgrade lvl with a weak foundation might break even more. (small vulnerability windows are bad for content etc etc)

yeah. but that is the case for all citadel FW bonuses and was also the reason why we never got useful bonuses in past

Ive spent years telling cerain to go to homesystems if he really wants a fight. Now you want homesystems to be the hub of pve with increased NPC patrols making it harder to find pvp without simulated intervention. Homsystems dont need npc by virtue of people living there. Everywhere else doesnt need NPC patrols because its a bad mechanic shoehorned into fw for experimental purposes which has no beneficial impact that is worth the negative impact on pvp.

One viable change to NPC strength based on a bonus system would be their tank. Level 5 (or whatever) gives the plex rat 2x the tank. This does not impact on those seeking pvp. Many single frigs can still complete a novice. But it would encourage more micro gang content if you actually want to take a larger plex.

Though im sure my simple suggestion is just an immature gimmic and your convoluted and intrusive Npc patrol suggestion is golden lol.

So there's a few different things here that I think we need to unpack.

First, I think that home systems ought to be tough nuts to crack, given the impact of losing them on their occupants. Think of what would happen if (god forbid) Fortress Eha or Vlillirier should fall. That's a huge deal. You're right though, that it should be primarily due to player defense rather than NPCs, but I'll get to that in a second.

Second, a lot of the angst in FW discussions is the lack of impact of Tier on things, as well as plexing mechanics. A lot of folks don't like the requirement to actively deplex against folks that have no intention to fight. You know my stance on this, since I think that if you want to keep a system its on you to defend it, but we ought to acknowledge that there's a widespread complaint.

IMO, players should be able to invest in things that make their lives easier. Citadels are that kind of thing, in that if you invest in it (and defend it) you can have a home wherever you choose. We in GalMil do similar things by manipulating Tier levels to ensure there's enough deplexers on our side, which reduces the overall burden on our PvPers to do maintenance deplexing.

This kind of thing would have a similar impact, and yet there's potential for it to go even further - and I don't think folks have considered the impact that hostile NPC patrols will have on deplexing, in addition to their impact on offensive plexing. If we're having random hostile NPCs bouncing in on defensive plexers, essentially what you'll be seeing once NPC patrols are introduced is an environment where there's a lot more pseudo-PvP happening all over the place.

If that's going to be the case, and I think it will be, then we'll have an even harder time keeping our homes safe. Especially when assaults become easier with Citadels.

So, IMO there's opportunity to be had here in terms of introducing service modules that will help FW corporations keep their homes, without being overwhelmed by hostile NPC patrols they hadn't previously had to deal with. It would also satisfy a long-standing complaint by FW pilots that there's no incentives to upgrade their homes, and that there's no greater or lesser importance to any particular system.

If a service module like this is introduced, then there should be different ones for each size Citadel, with increasing effects. The final impact of these modules should be capped at the largest active module size and the system upgrade level (should that mechanic still be in place). So a Medium Citadel would have less of an impact than a Large Citadel, and having multiple Citadels of the same size wouldn't stack.

Oh - and there's no reason this same thing couldn't be used offensively. For example, I drop a Large Citadel in Hasmijaala with one of these modules in it. This would mean that there will be more Gallente patrols spawned in a Caldari system, making it more difficult to deplex and defend. That to me gives even more player control of the shape of the warzone - being able to truly decide how easy or difficult it is to take or hold a system.

And as always, there's ways to counter it. Dropping 700mil+ Citadels all over the place isn't going to be THAT common, and since they can be destroyed (and the service modules offlined at some point during that process) there's always a counter.

I dunno. Seems like there's some interesting space to play with here, something we've not seen before.

Maybe.

Another thought - require fuel for anchoring in areas you don't control?