Putting the Faction Back Into Faction Warfare

Last month I wrote a piece detailing how citadels are negatively impacting the warzone in a post called Game of (Citadel) Thrones:

All of this means that if an attacking force gets a Citadel to stage from, all the home field advantages of the defending force are lost: the attackers have the same ease in restocking and reshipping for participating in the attrition warfare. Worse: the attackers have the luxury of making multiple pushes over any period of time that they can muster pilots and fleets for, while the defenders only need to slip up once to find themselves on the cusp of losing their home station.

At that time I declined to offer suggestion as to how to address the emerging issue but last week I made time for an interview on my podcast with Scylus Black of Templis CALSF alliance, part of the Caldari Militia, who is running for CSM and I wanted to help out. During that interview I asked him ideas for addressing the impact Citadels are having on Faction Warfare and he wisely deferred promising to consult with the Faction Warfare community if elected for ideas.

But I'm not running for CSM so I can be an armchair developer. So let's get to work.

The Problem 

To reiterate, the issue is that citadels circumvent the main faction warfare mechanic that provides a benefit to owning a system, namely the station lockout of the opposing militia. This removes the defender's advantage in a system assault where the attackers anchor a citadel and de-incentivizes assaulting a system where the defender is living out of a citadel stronghold.

My Proposed Solution

I went over in my head many different options but ultimately there seemed to be shortcuts to circumvent all of them by using neutral dummy corporations to own the structures instead of militia. There seemed to be no subtle way to address this issue, and I'm a big fan of subtle solutions. But I'm not opposed to bringing out the sledgehammer when required and I feel this is one of those times.

So I propose we extend the station lockout mechanic that currently applies to NPC Stations in faction warfare systems to anchored structures in said systems.

What this means is that if your militia does not own the system, you cannot dock at a station or citadel or engineering complex (or in the future, drilling platforms). Yes, not even structures that your corporation/alliance owns. Yes, this is a huge deal, but it returns to the forefront the concept that owning a system in faction warfare *means* something tangible AND important. It means that losing a system is a significant blow to your militia if you have assets there. Yes, you could drop militia to become neutrals and get access to assets but that is not a trivial step to take and you cannot do other militia related activities while in that state. Its a non-fatal pain in the ass and its what made faction warfare system assaults/defenses feel so important to the pilots involved.

HOWEVER, there is a downside to this approach! Militias still need a way to operate even in a limited capability in a system owned by the enemy and by locking out all structure we once against will see attackers forced to use Player Owned Stations as forward operating bases to stage out of, but we know CCP's long term plan is to get rid of these archaic bug laden boondoggles.

So the second part of my proposal is a new special citadel class structure which I dub Astrakamp that has the offensive and defensive capabilities of a Raitaru engineering complex (maybe less) and can be bought from the militia loyalty point stores and, most importantly, is exempt from the station lockout mechanic like current structures are now.

Militias could use it as a forward operation base in lieu of a POS without having the durability of a full blown Astrahus citadel. This special structure can be fine tuned for balance between attacker and defender without seriously impacting other parts of EVE because while other non-militia entities could choose to use it as well but really why bother when you can get a full-blown Astrahus instead?

With these two changes you make ownership of a system in faction warfare important again without pushing the use of POS mechanics as forward operating bases, and introduce a balance lever specific for faction warfare, i.e. adjusting the properties of the Astrakamp to find the right balance between system offense and system defense.

Game of (Citadel) Thrones

In September we saw the Battle of Aivonen where Gallente Militia spent a week of hard fighting to take the capital system from Caldari Militia. Recovering from that setback CalMil quickly retook Aivonen and proceeded to launch a counter-offensive on the warzone, taking a large number systems and highlighted by a 3 week long assault on the Gallente capital system of Vlillrier in Placid region that ended on Dec 23rd with the system's 7 year streak of being held by Gallente coming to an end.

Throughout these sieges one thing has become readily apparent: the home field advantage for defenders has been greatly diminished by the rise of Citadels.

* * * * *

Picture this: its before the release of citadels and you are in faction warfare trying to launch an assault to take an enemy home capital system. One of the big points of faction warfare is that the controlling defending faction can dock at the NPC stations there while the opposing attacking faction is locked out. Sure, one can use neutral alts to gain access to the station to retrieve assets and such but the members of an attacking militia cannot make use of the hangers, repair facilities, and safety of the station.

This means in a war of attrition while fighting over complexes in the system to drive contested level up (attackers) or down (defenders), the defenders can reship in system in the station very quickly while the attackers would have to find another source for their new combat ships. To get around this, the attacking force would make use of Player Owned Stations, aka POSes to stage out of. However a POS lacks a lot of the convenience of station hangers, permissions for allies not in the owning corporation are tricky and problematic, and restocking the hanger arrays is not as easy as jumping into a station with a jump freighter. 

The upshot of this dynamic was that mounting a successful assault on a home system of an enemy was very difficult if the enemy was well organized and had good pilot numbers.

* * * * * 

Fast forward to now. The first step in attacking an enemy home system now is to deploy an Astrahus, maybe even more than one. 

A citadel has many advantages over a POS for staging:

- permissions for access to allies is trivial using the access lists

- allies can rent an office and have their own organizational hangers

- jump freighters are virtually invulnerable jumping to and from a citadel

- handing out ships via trades or contracts is possible

- ship repair

- clone bays

- unlimited storage

But all of this convenience is dwarfed by the fact that while POS can be attacked any time, Citadels have owner determined vulnerability windows thus allowing them to dictate the timing of the initial battle. 

All of this means that if an attacking force gets a Citadel to stage from, all the home field advantages of the defending force are lost: the attackers have the same ease in restocking and reshipping for participating in the attrition warfare. Worse: the attackers have the luxury of making multiple pushes over any period of time that they can muster pilots and fleets for, while the defenders only need to slip up once to find themselves on the cusp of losing their home station.

* * * * * 

What this means is that NPC stations are quickly losing their cachet as homes for militia corporations and alliances, and they are being replaced by home Citadels that they cannot be locked out of by plexing enemy fleets. Furthermore, as faction warfare moves to concentrate on attacking and destroying enemy citadels, this provides upward pressure on fleet size and more frequent bat-phoning of capital heavy nearby entities top provide more firepower for destroying these large structures or counter-dropping firepower as deterrent for enemy fleets. No longer can a militia remain agnostic to the politics of the low sec entities that they share space with.

I am not sure this emerging gameplay is the in the best interests of faction warfare as a whole, but I see no immediate move or change to address the current issues. I only hope that CCP is observing the developing situation and making plans for faction warfare in the future to help it remain an independent and engaging game system in low sec that is not subservient to unaligned low sec entities. 

The Wormhole Conundrum

Keepstars are huge extra large citadels of which only one exists so far. Wormhole dwellers alliance Hard Knocks built the first and only one in a C5 wormhole system, an amazing accomplishment not only for the cost of the BPO, materials, and construction, but also the danger in transporting from high sec to the wormhole and then build the citadel in space. Kudos to them. Fort Knocks Keepstar will always be remembered as the first.

But it does create a bit of a conundrum.

You see, this impressive feat of engineering creates a structure with massive stats and defensive capabilities in an area of the universe that is notoriously easy to defend with determined pilots. And the extra large citadel is designed to combat against fleets of capitals and super capitals. In essence, as long as Hard Knocks has pilots the citadel is extremely difficult if not impossible to destroy since an opposing force would have to work around the clocks for a long period of time against hostile residents to build up the military force to even challenge the doomsday wielding structure.

The irony that the area of space never initially intended for long term occupation and pilot safety now has one of the most unassailable player owned structures in the game is not lost on me.

While I like that wormhole space has evolved from the initial vision of CCP designers into something wholly emergent I have concerns that wormhole space is going to eventually because a series of next-to-impossible to dislodge large and extra large citadels where pilots are only evicted from internal drama or burnout. This is the exact type of stagnation FozzieSov was created to disrupt in null sec.

I suspect CCP will live to regret allowing extra large Keepstars deployed in wormhole space as long as there is no efficient way to bring a large fleet quickly.

Astrahus Experiment Was A Success

The whole idea with plunging into the citadel construction was to try something new and see if I could make a boatload of ISK while doing so, and if Astrahus production would be a revenue source going forward to compliment capital construction.

I'm happy to report that 1) boatload of ISK was made and 2) seems to be a very profitable activity going forward.

Market Data as of May 13

I built 5 Astrahus so far and made just under 5 billion ISK profit, including the one Astrahus I donated for zero profit to Aideron Robotics, and I was not even gouging the market for as much as I could have. As you can see by the graph above, the price of an Astrahus appears to be settling in the 1.5 billion range which is still pulling in about 400-500 million ISK profit for me and my current stockpiles of Planetary Interaction materials. With the capital production, I was happy with a return of 100-200 million per unit so those citadel numbers are amazing.

Long term, within the coming months, I expect Astrahus prices to normalize in the 1-1.2 billion ISK range depending on how the price of planet materials fluctuates in that timeframe. I doubt we'll ever see a 600 million ISK Astrahus unless the market becomes oversupplied since they are so easy to build and the supply outstrips demand as the rush diminishes to POS like levels.

For the second BPO I purchased, I don't need it to rush production so I've sent it to the copy labs to make BPCs to sell. If you want one, let me know and I can hook you up.

Meanwhile, I updated all my spreadsheets and have been consolidating mineral stockpiles at my staging system to restart the Ninveah Enterprises Moros line once more. It seems the capital changes have not negatively impacted Dreadnoughts in general or the Moros in particular so its time to get back on that horse.

To illustrate just how profitable the Astrahus experiment was, I made 6.6 billion ISK profit building 17 capitals and compared to 5 billion ISK on 4 Astrahus citadels (disregarding BPO costs of course). My shareholders are extremely happy.

For the record, I've invested 50 billion ISK in new and researched BPOs for Project Vulcan, including the 12 billion for the two Astrahus BPOs. My shareholders supplied 5 billion of that ISK to purchase the ME10 Moros BPO.

Kirith's Grand Emporium

Aideron Robotics is in a rebuilding phase of corp life, recruiting and expanding fleets. Part of that expansion of activity as the decision to learn more about citadels by trying to deploy on in our home system and defend it.

A citadel is deployed in space and is invulnerable for 24 hrs while its built. Then, after its deployed it has 15 minute window in order to repair itself and get its shields up. The citadels you hear about getting destroyed are all getting hit during that repair period.

After seeing some other low sec citadels getting blown up good we debated holding off but decided to go ahead as the death rate was relatively low and we felt that even the experience of defending it would be a good lesson. I donated an Astrahus to the corporation and we planned to deploy it Saturday with the aim of it coming out of construction during our prime Sunday night fleet time.

In the hour lead up to the go live point we prepped a large fleet and dispatched scouts to watch the two entrance systems to Fliet. I expected reports of a large hostile T3 or battleship fleet any minute as the countdown continued. At the fifteen minute mark we were keyed up to undock as powerful fleet as we could muster which is either impressive or unimpressive depending on what we were facing.

And yet, intel reported nothing... WAIT, a lone pilot in a nemesis, perhaps a cyno for a black ops fleet or titan bridge? Silence... but nothing.

The timer hit zero and the citadel was online but vulnerable. We quickly attempted to put fighters into it and began a hilarious routine in which we 1) couldn't figure out at first where the fighter bay was, then 2) discovered neither of the two leaders trying to use the fighters had the new skill trained, and 3) when I tried to take control of the citadel (amazing feeling by the way) I lacked permissions! Finally we got squared away and I was able to load and launch fighters which I used to attack a friendly unfit Incursus as a test. By the way, the key to activate the move mode for fighters is 'Q' only if you left the default key bindings. The more correct thing to say is that the Approach key binding is the same as the fighter move mode command.

The 15 minute timer expired and our citadel, named Kirith's Grand Emporium thanks to my donation, was safe! OP SUCCESS!

We're going to use it to become more familiar with Citadel mechanics and defending/attacking them. Welcome to the Citadel Age.

BB 74 - Building the Future

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 74th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

The Most Important Reveal at Fanfest Was......
So when this Blog Banter goes live Fanfest will be over. Hungover geeks from around the world will be departing Reykjavik after a five-day binge of important internet spaceships and partying. Whether you were there in person, watched the streams or read the dev blogs on your mobile hidden under your work desk there was probably something in there that gave you a "nerd-boner". What for you personally was the most important thing to come out of Fanfest 2016?

* * * * *

I'm a sucker for prognostication. I love seeing plans and hints of plans and speculating about what it all means and how I would accomplish them, or change the plans entirely. So the most important things to me were these two pictures from Sand, Cider, and Spaceships blog on Day 3:

These two slides combined tell us the future of EVE and its propagation of user owned structures. 

So we know from above that Manufacturing and Research in outposts and POS are going to be covered Industrial Array structures in the fall. We can also speculate from the round tables and such that the Drilling Platforms for moon mining (and ring mining perhaps?) and reactions are a thing for next year, and I believe I heard that small "Stargates" are going to replace the jump bridges of the current POS networks. Not sure where Cyno Beacons and Jammers will fall, observatories or Admin Hubs? I'm still not sold on the need for Advertisemtn Center structures as per their description from the original dev blog:

H.     Advertisement Centers
Structures mainly aimed toward propaganda spreading.
Service module possibilities: Text advertisement, billboard replacement, being used as gigantic monuments with no purpose (except to show how big your e-peen is by showing the statue of your glorious alliance leader). Could also involve frozen corpses somehow.
Rigs possibilities: Anything affecting what’s above.

Regardless, we know now from fanfest that CCP is pleased with the direction and acceptance of Citadels and will continue to push forward with that vision. This is the most important thing to me to come out of fanfest. 

Astrahus Construction Update

Its been a month since I last updated about my efforts to prepare to build some Astrahus Medium Citadels, so let's do that, shall we?

I stockpiled what I thought was the materials required to build three Astrahus citadels and moved them to a building system in high sec (yes, you can build Citadels in high sec NPC stations). At that time it was looking like medium citadels were going to cost around 1.2 to 1.5 billion just in materials to produce.

A week later on, I logged into SISI test server and started looking at the blueprints and discovered some discrepancies compared to the dev blog. Namely, I could not see where the new Structure Fuel Blocks were going to come into play in the construction process. I asked on twitter and was directed to the Structure channel on Tweetfleet slack and there someone pointed me to an updated version of the dev blog at EVE Guardian website. There I learned that the ratios of PI materials had changed and Structure Fuel Blocks were completely removed.

The latter was especially important because the price of Strontium Calthrates was skyrocketing and was a major driver in the price climb of the materials cost. Removing the fuel blocks brings my material cost down to the 830 million ISK range which seems more reasonable. It does mean I have a ton of extra supplies to sell back to the market but I'll take any loss as a cost of preparation for April 27th.

With more confidence in the requirements I started building the required structure components for the first citadel. Now all I need is that sweet Astrahus Blueprint.

Project Vulcan - Set Course For Astrahaus

Last week I ruminated about Citadels and if I was going to invest in them and after comments on my post and talking to people both in and out of corp I've decided to make a go of it for nothing else than to say I tried.

I started laying down the plans of what needed to be accomplished prior to the Citadel expansion even going live in order to be able to build Medium Citadels, aka Astrahauses.

- I need access to Structure blueprints, either copies or originals, in order to start building the structure components.

- I need the Structure Construction (currently Outpost Construction) skill on my building alt which requires Anchoring skill at level V of all things. If the expansion comes faster than expected, or the skill needs to be at  a high level, I might have to invest in a skill injector or two.

- I need to stockpile some planetary interaction materials and minerals

And some things I need to find out:

- Confirm I can build Astrahauses in high sec stations
- Find out when exactly the expansion is scheduled for release

I plan to build three out of the gate and see how the process flows and if it is worth integrating into my build projects full time.

Project Vulcan - Citadels and Competition

I've been pondering Citadels a lot lately in regards to how to fit them into my small time industrial operation, or even if I should. Here's my train of thought.

A lot of people are going to purchase Medium Citadel BPOs on day one and start building them. That will drive prices for the components required to build them, while the excessive competition to build them will saturate the market and drive prices down, quickly eating up profit margins. And then assuming I can get about 15% profit on each unit (~100 million ISK let's say), I'm looking at having to sell about 60 of them to start to get a return on the investment into the BPO. And that's assuming I can get good prices on the structure components I need, or look into getting the eight Structure component BPOs I need, either unresearched at ~200 mil each or researched at around 350-400 mil each (if I'm lucky). In other words, it feels like a large investment for possibly small returns.

The other alternative is to simply buy the Medium Citadel BPO and put it into research for the next year to make copies of later on once its at ME10. I'd still be tying up ~6 billion ISK for a year but the returns on the copies are certain and I can resell at a profit if desired. Plus it gives me time to allow the market to settle and evaluate at that time if building Citadels is profitable enough.

But wait! There's more!

I've been alternating building Archons and Moros, but the new Force Auxiliaries are coming and with them will be new BPOs to consider buying. I figure I'll need to get at least the Amarr version, the Apostle, and I'll probably consider buying two so that I can stuff one into the year+ researching time to get it up to snuff.

Here's the Archon BPO that just finished researching from ME9 to ME10. Check the install date versus the end date; almost 10 months, and that does not include the time to get from ME0 to ME9.

TL;DR: I'm definitely adding a couple FAX BPOs to my library, still on the fence about the Medium Citadel BPO plan.

Citadel Blueprint Thoughts

After my recent windfall and discovery that the price of Utu frigates has climbed far beyond my means, I put the ISK aside to save for the coming of Citadel blueprints which is coming a lot faster than I expected. From the dev blog "The First Citadels: HELP UPWELL CONSORTIUM BUILD THE WORLD OF TOMORROW" we find out that some BPCs are coming very soon:

From January 26th, Intaki Bank’s special accounts manager Lee Brinalle, will accept contracts (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Contracts_guide) from capsuleers for the item ‘Research Component’ to help build the citadels in 5 locations in New Eden. To reward you for your efforts, each Research Component contracted to Lee Brinalle, will entitle you to one entry in to an Upwell sponsored prize draw. The lucky winner of the draw will receive a unique token that can be exchanged for 1, fully researched, Astrahus citadel BPC.   

But wait there’s more! Upwell would like to create 5 prototypes in different locations, so as capsuleers manage to provide the Research Component quota  needed for the first citadel, Upwell will increase the rewards for each additional prototype citadel:
Citadel 2: One additional Astrahus BPC
Citadel 3: Two more Astrahus BPC’s
Citadel 4: One more Astrahus BPC and Upwell Branded Apparel for every capsuleer who contracts a Research Component
Citadel 5: 1 Fortizar BPC
(All BPCs will be fully researched)  

So the more ‘Research Component’ items you contract to Lee Brinalle, the more chances you have of being selected during the prize draw.  There will be a draw for 1 Astrahus BPC after February 9th, where all capsuleers who donated Research Components will be automatically entered and in with a chance to win.  If all 5 are completed, the draw will be for 5 Astrahus BPCs and 1 Fortizar BPC. In addition, the top contributor plus all prize winners will have their names immortalized on the descriptions for the prototype citadels they helped construct.  As the prize draws will happen at the end, all entries from January 26th - February 9th will be a part of the draw for each reward.  

You can start collecting Research Components any time, but starting January 26th, remember to contract them to “Lee Brinalle”, for your chance to be in the running.

So at least one BPC will be rewarded on Feb 9th for a Medium Citadel (aka Astrahus) and maybe up to 5 of them, and possibly one Large Citadel BPC (aka Fortizar). I don't know for certain if the BPCs will be released close to that date or awarded once the Citadel expansion goes completely live, or what lead time they will have on BPOs will be.

Speaking of BPOs, I looked into the earlier dev blog "BUILDING YOUR CITADEL, ONE BLOCK AT A TIME" and found the relevant information there about costs and availability:

Regarding the blueprints themselves:
- Like all Tech I blueprints, they will be seeded from specific NPC corporations through various areas of space, including high-security areas.
- The price tag will be ten times the hull cost, thus 6b ISK for a Medium Citadel, 70b ISK for a Large Citadel and 700b ISK for an X-Large Citadel.

And further on:

Details on the Citadel blueprint themselves are available below:

So the Large Citadel BPO is definitely out of reach without completely liquidating my capital BPO collection and I have no interest in that at all. However, the Astrahus BPO is within the price range, low enough that I'm considering buying two and putting one immediately into ME research while building with the other.

Another alternative is to invest in some of the Structure component blueprints, or the more expensive service module blueprints like the Market Hub which is estimated at 7 billion ISK for the BPO.

Lots of places to fit in but its hard to determine where the most bang for the buck will be.

Providence Will Burn

Providence will burn.

If there is one sure thing to come out of all the Citadel dev blogs, Providence is going to burn.

* * * * *

Providence is a weird null sec region. Its shallow null sec, with not one but two exits to high sec directly and another two connections to low sec. Its true sec is not very good so making ISK from ratting is consequently poor so its never been overly desirable to large coalitions to add to their empires. As a result the CVA alliance / coalition often lives there due to role play reasons and because other coalitions like to have someplace to roam for farming kills. Occasionally CVA gets kicked out but they bide their time in nearby lowsec and slowly work their way back in eventually. No one wants Providence more than old CVA.

But the most peculiar aspect of Providence is the fact that its positively infested with player constructed outposts. Its easier to count systems without an outpost, 8 this morning, than it is to count the rest. That's 8 empty systems out of 84 systems in total. That's right, 76 outposts. There are other similarly heavily constructed regions, but Providence is the only one not claimed by a major null sec coalition.

As a result, the major empires often visit Providence for various reasons with varying degrees of force. Sometimes just a "for fun" deployment to get fights out of CVA and their small allies, other times to drop in on some other's deployment as "honourable third parties", rarely with the goal to remove CVA because they are known to at least try to defend their space and give a fight.

But other times, most notably this past summer, major empires use Providence as a testing ground for new mechanics or doctrines. For example, when Fozzie Sov replaced Dominion Sov mechanics several entities invaded Providence to get a handle on the intricacies of the new mechanics against and opponent that did not present a significant threat in retaliation. CVA is not a threat to invade Deklein ever.

* * * * *

Player Owned Stations, aka Outposts and Player Owned Starbases, aka POSes, were both designed to give players something to own where they could exist and perform certain tasks or store assets. However they are two entirely different mechanics with vastly different rules about owning, destroying, taking, and working in them. You could not have purposely designed two more disparate systems for accomplishing roughly the same goals at different scales.

CCP is smart and rather than trying to marry two vastly different and barely understood legacy code bases into one working system, they are circumventing the issue and creating a new system to obsolete the old ones: Citadels. The new constructs will fulfill the goals of player ownership at both the small corporate or even personal level up to the alliance / coalition level under a single fresh code base. As Citadels come online, the lights in the old POSes and Outposts can go dark.

* * * * *

Or can they?

For POSes, its pretty straight forward. Stop allowing fuel to be made for them after Citadels have been around for a while and you have encouraged players to make the transition to the new constructs. Those players that have left the game and the POSes abandoned in space will slowly go dark as fuel runs out and will be destroyed by attrition over time if their owners did not take them down themselves.

But Outposts cannot be so easily retired. They don't require fuel and cannot be destroyed. How can we convince players to move to new Citadels when old Outposts offer much the same funcitonality but in safer confines?

The only answer is that after Citadels have been introduced and established as working as intended, CCP will add the ability to destroy Outposts and remove the ability to build new ones, thus allowing attrition over time to remove the old structures to be replaced by the new Citadels.

* * * * *

So you are a large coalition and you hear that CCP is going to allow Outposts to be destroyed. Are you going to destroy your own assets in your own space? Nah, not unless Outposts lose a lot of functionality and it becomes an economic necessity to remove them. Invade a neighbour and start a full blown war? Maybe. Or will you descend on Providence, filled with Outposts defended by an enemy that cannot effectively retaliate, a region known for being a test bed of new mechanics? Think of all the juicy tears and killmails to result from going from system to system and reducing the years of hard work to ashes without any repercussions at all...

Providence will burn.

Citadels, Entosis Links, and Low Sec

The recent dev blog titled "Citadels, Sieges and You V2" there was a very surprising change in direction from CCP:

Long story short, we have had long meetings about the structure attack system, and came to the conclusion that, while Entosis Links do indeed achieve our design goals for the Citadels, they are not actually delivering an experience we are satisfied to provide.
- It’s not fun being shot by massive structure weapons while being unable to retaliate in kind, it gives players the feeling to be helpless while they watch a timer go down
- There is gameplay involved in applying damage that Entosis Links do not preserve, like range, speed, falloff or positioning
- It devalues capital ships as a whole, especially Dreadnoughts, which were specifically introduced to assault and destroy static structures
- Last but not least, there is a visceral connection in shooting a structure down to destroy it. Having guns blazing while watching the target hit points go down is a very strong visual and adrenaline factor that Entosis Links remove out of the equation.

Well that was certainly an about-face!

This feels like an admittance that the gameplay in the current new sov mechanics, while "achieving our design goals", is not exactly lighting the community on fire with excitement. They don't want to back 100% out of Entosis Linking as the attack method for sov control as they have invested so much into that design mechanic, but they've decided they don't want to use it for new game play. Its like Strategic Cruisers all over again.

By deciding to go back to a modified damage system with mitigation beyond a threshold:

The way damage mitigation is going to work is pretty simple:
- We set a maximum limit on a structure, say, 4000 DPS
- Every time damage is applied to that structure, we check all cumulated damage done before that within a specific time frame – let’s say 30 seconds
- If cumulated damage on the structure would exceed 30*4,000 = 120,000 then any further incoming damage is reduced, or negated to preserve that amount over the last 30 seconds
- Mitigation is counted after shield, armor or hull resistances are applied to incoming damage

What this amounts to is a limit to how many ships can effectively pound on a structure. I won't bore you with the probably changing details but suffice to say the bigger the citadel, the more ships you need to reach the damage threshold. This allows CCP to pretty much guarantee the minimum amount of time required to attack any citadel, which in the dev blog seems to be a goal of about 30 minutes.

TLDR; The fastest you can attack a structure is 30 minutes assuming you meet or exceed the damage mitigation threshold.

This is a huge win for null sec and a minor loss for low sec.

In null sec, attacking something with an Entosis link that is unoccupied or untended deep in an alliance's space is relatively easy. But now Citadels are going require a fleet in order to attack in any reasonable time frame, something that is hard to accomplish on the down low deep in enemy space. For all intents and purposes, alliances are not going to have to pay much attention to their assets in the back field unless the enemy commits a significant investment to attack them, at which time its worth defending for the fights and kills.

In low sec there is no safe backfield. Almost every system is within range of several threatening entities. With the Entosis link as the attack method, it means the big boys on the block now have the the hammer for both defense and offense. This is already something we see with flipping systems in faction warfare when we try to attack the IHUB; it has to be quick and fast and full of fear of a drop. Entosis linking, which can be done with less investment, would have even the playing field a bit for smaller entities.

I think. I'm not sure. We'll have to see how it plays out in the coming months.

Welcome to my Citadel

On my podcast I already raved about the dev blog introducing Citadels but I'm going to go into again here because I cannot stress enough how much I like it.

I've lived and worked out of Player Owned Stations, aka POSes, before in null sec, low sec, and wormhole space over the 8.5 years I've been playing this game.

I still remember that feeling of awe the first time I saw one back in Pelille in my misspent youth. Someone was showing me how to scout out moons and we warped in to check it out. The large glowing sphere, the mysterious icons with names I saw nowhere else like Moon Harvesting Array, Silo, Corporate Hanger Array, etc. Some time later my group of friends decided to set up our own POS and I began to learn the Byzantium art to anchoring and setting up a "stick" of our own. And began to learn the horror of fueling calculations (be thankful new players for that evil has been vanquished at least).

Later on I would join a null sec alliance and our corporation would live in a stationless constellation and we, all 20 or so of us, would live out of one or two POSes. In order to have some private space for modules and loot, we each had anchored a secured cargo container at least 150 km from the POS itself so you could do short warps back and forth instead of having to slowboat around the POS itself. God, I hated that.

And then having to unanchor that thing? And all the structures? Evil.

I once had a high sec research POS in my solo indy corp but got war decced and it was destroyed in a long weekend I was away with family. That's when I decided that solo POS was not for me.

All this is to say, POSes are evil. They are overly complex, use mechanics that are not really shared anywhere else, and are generally a pain to setup, manage, and take down. Pretty, but pain in the ass.

And up until recently, the only thing outside of null sec Outposts that players could erect for themselves to live in, and Outposts require a magnitude larger amount of resources to make and then you could lose it in the next sov war.

Citadels hold great promise to fix this frustration. By using well understood and common mechanics (i.e. fitting modules like one fits a ship) and introducing station like docking and asset management, we enter a new age where players can come toegether to erect, live out of, and defend their own home without having to be part of a huge alliance or deal with the terribleness of the current POS mechanics.

I'm very excited.

Of course, there is a fine line to be traversed here in order to make feasible. In low sec, a common conflict driver is control of the Player Owned Custom Offices in the areas in which entities live. They are in a perfect balance of risk versus reward versus effort triangle where it takes enough effort to reinforce and destroy them that people are not doing it willy nilly but not so much effort that only the big entities can even consider doing so. Citadels, being potentially a lot more valuable than a POCO, will attract a lot of attention of people willing to expend more effort to reap the possible rewards of good kills and tears, so need to be sufficiently hard enough to justify the effort while not being so hard as to be impossible to reinforce and destroy.

So I eagerly await to see the final product for Citadels and how they change the landscape of low sec and beyond because I think they have tremendous potential for interaction and excitement.