Hello again dear spacebros extraordinaire and welcome back to another structure blog by team Game of Drones. We have previously talked about the structure defense mechanics, asset safety, time has now come to discuss how they are going to be built.

Missed a structure blog? Have a look at the following:

• Back into the structure – blog introducing the structure changes and long term plan.
• Shake my Citadel – blog listing the first structure class to be worked on, as well as general mechanics.
• Citadels, siege and you, v2 – blog explaining capture and defense mechanics for our new structures.
• I feel safe in citadel city – blog listing how assets are going to be saved and moved on structure destruction.
• CSM Citadel FAQ – A detailed FAQ covering all important aspects of the new structures. Compiled by the CSM in conjunction with CCP. Available in English only.

Overall plan

Let’s have a look at the global plan and explain the various item types that can be acquired before going into details.

• The Structure Hull: the most obvious piece to the feature, a structure hull works on the same manner to a ship hull by having various slots, attributes and bonuses tailored to a specific purpose. For example, Citadels, the first type of structures to be released, are specialized into defense and various corporation support roles.
• Modules: these are structure modules that fit into a structure’s high, medium and low slots. Similar to their ship module counterparts, they require powergrid and CPU to be properly fitted. Active modules also require capacitor, fuel, or both depending on the circumstances.
• Service Modules: these are unique modules for structures which give them capabilities you would expect on regular stations like manufacturing, research, reprocessing and market for instance. These also are going to require powergrid and CPU on top of requiring fuel to be activated. The structure hulls, unlike Starbases, will not require fuel block to be operational — this is being moved into service modules.
• Rigs: again similar in functionality to what’s currently available for ships. The Tech I structures we are going to release are all going to have 3 rig slots, with 400 calibration. Fitting rigs consume calibration and require the matching hull size. For example, one cannot fit a medium rig into a large citadel. Rigs also give unique bonuses to activities installed through service modules. More details on that specific point will be unveiled on our next blog which will cover structure fittings and bonuses.

With this in mind, let’s go over them one by one.

Structure Hulls

We had a look at how various structures were currently built right now and we came up to the following conclusion:

• New structure hulls are going to replace Starbases, Outposts and Deployables over time (please refer to the end of this blog for more details). Most of those require Tech I materials and it would thus be illogical to introduce new material types to build their replacement, especially if the new structures themselves are going to have a Tech I level to start with.
• Deploying outposts through intermediate platforms (nicknamed the “eggs” by our playerbase) is an unnecessary and quite cumbersome step we wish to avoid. If anything we would like those new structures to work like Deployables: drag and drop them in space, and voilà, your delicious structure Soufflé is in the oven. No container to fill with materials, no extra downtime shenaningans. You just need to wait a few hours for it to deploy.
• We want to cover a very broad price tag with new structures. While the medium structures should be similar to a fully fitted Starbase, we want the X-Large to be quite an expensive goal to achieve. This should require significant effort to complete, not something easily achieved by just anyone.

With all of this in mind, we came up to the following:

• Medium Structure hulls will cost around 350-700m ISK in materials to build.
• Large Structure hulls will cost around 3-7b ISK in materials to build.
• X-Large Structure hulls will cost around 30-70b+ ISK in materials to build.

To do this, we are going to overhaul and use Station Components currently required to build Outposts.

• We are renaming them from Station to Structure Components
• Their composition of Planetary Interaction materials and minerals will change quite a bit to be more consistent.
• We are adding a new Structure Fuel Block type to manufacture Structure Components. More on how to build those will be explained later in this blog.
• We are adding 3 new components to fill our needs. They are: Structure Advertisement Nexus, Structure Telescope Lens and Structure Acceleration Coils. We are considering adding those around December to give players time to acquire and research them before the introduction of Citadels.

Exact details are available below:

Which thus give us this build layout for the Citadel Structures:

The picture above doesn't show that we may add janitors, exotic dancers or other types of personel to be required in the final product manufacturing as well. After all, these structures aren't going to clean themselves.

Which may be compared to Outpost composition on Tranquility there:

Or if you prefer, here are the total PI, mineral and fuel block composition for the new structures versus existing Outposts:

Structure hull volumes are set so that:

• A Medium structure hull may be deployed from an Industrial, Large and X-Large require a freighter. Yes, we do are aware this make things more complicated to deploy a Large or X-Large structure in low class wormhole space. This is intended.
• The hulls will not yield materials when being reprocessed to avoid compression shenanigans.

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.

We want the prices to be that high to keep a long term goal and investment for industrial players, while making sure there is gameplay involved with selling blueprint copies to third parties. Please note the Citadel Hulls and their associated blueprints are the most expensive structure set due to the importance regarding asset safety and home defense. Other structures will vary in price based on their role and intended persistence.

Details on the Citadel blueprint themselves are available below:

On a similar note, we will most likely rename the Outpost Construction skill to Structure Construction, since Outposts currently are following the same evolution trend than dinosaurs.

Structure Modules

The modules fitted into new structures are fairly simple to build. They only require Tech I minerals and the new structure fuel blocks. If and when we release Tech II or faction modules the material build-up will be properly modified to match. Please remember the list below is not exhaustive of all the modules we will release over time, but only represent the first batch we intend on delivering.

Structure module blueprints are again worth 10 times the value list above. Exact details are available below.

The most observant people among you may notice defensive modules we didn’t list in our previous blog on the topic which warrants a quick explanation.

• Repulsor Field: this is an AoE module that pushes everyone away around the target location. Exact bumping speed depends on the mass and velocity vector the victim(s) had at the time.
• Ship Tractor Beam: tractors the target along a certain vector back to the structure. This will affect the velocity vector of the target, so while it will not warp scramble the target directly, it may prevent it from aligning.
• Multi-spectrum ECM: an ECM module that can be loaded with different scripts / ammunition to change its racial sensor strength.

Service Modules

Service modules are more similar to structure hulls than the other modules. While they do not require Structure Components to build, they do require a mix of PI materials, minerals and the new structure fuel block.

Again, this is not the exhaustive list of all service modules that are planned for structures, but just the first batch.

Structure Rigs

Except from the hull themselves, rigs are going to be the most expensive piece of equipment to acquire. That is because they are going to offer great bonuses to the installed hull, and overtake the upgrade system currently in place for Outposts. Again, we’ll save the exact bonuses for the next structure blog not to overwhelm you guys all at once.

Rigs are entirely made from existing and regular salvage. Since we are going to have both Tech I and Tech II variations, they will be built in a similar manner to ship rigs, but with a much more expensive cost. We are aware such requirements will increase the demand for salvage, and increase rig price as a result. We will monitor how the market evolves and take additional measures if need be.

Below is an overview on the various rigs we want to release in the first batch:

The rig names we have above are generic categories to show their building costs. Exact rig types are much more numerous. Their associated effect and bonuses will be further explained in our next blog.

Blueprints:

Tech I rig blueprints will be available from the market through NPC sell orders. Tech II rig can be invented or found in sites as BPCs. Prices are going to be 100m ISK for a Tech I Medium Structure rig blueprint, 500m ISK for a Tech I Large Structure rig blueprint and around 2.5b ISK for an X-Large Structure rig blueprint.

Fuel blocks

As mentioned above, new structures are going to use a new type of fuel block, which will be required to manufacture the various hulls, modules and online service modules.

As a consideration for players living in null-security space, we are investing coming up with more ways to build such fuel block to reduce the logistic hassle to haul four types of isotopes around. For example, we are considering adding 4 more blueprints to build the new fuel block with one racial isotope instead of 4, but increasing the amount to compensate.

So it begins, the great market speculation of our time

Please remember all of those numbers and requirements are work in progress and subject to change before the release. Nevertheless, we wish you happy stockpiling and merry market manipulation hunger games. See you guys for our next blog, which will tackle structure hull fittings, bonuses, layout and why it’s usually better to upgrade to a larger sized structure if you have the means to do so.

Big shout-out to CCP Maximum Cats for graciously allowing us to use various Citadel concept arts for this blog.

[ Original Dev Post ]