Dev Blog: Forsaken Fortress – coming 26th of May

Greetings Capsuleers,

Coming 26 May, further improvements to the gameplay mechanics of structures will be introduced in the Forsaken Fortress update as part of the Eclipse Quadrant.

Since the introduction of structures with the Citadel expansion, thousands of structures have been built in New Eden. Many of these structures have been used for a variety of purposes by players, with some structures acting as Headquarters, key strategical beachheads, or even as logistical warehouses. For some of these structure deployments, their use may have dwindled over time to the point where they are no longer maintained by their owners. As a result, these forsaken fortresses proliferate in space as ambitions, conflict, and entrepreneurs rise and fall in New Eden. Cleaning up your sovereign space by removing these abandoned structures can be a frustrating experience, a topic that has been brought up by the community and CSM alike.

In the continuing journey to frequently iterate, there will be changes made following the last structure update of Kicking Over Castles, from 10 December 2019. The Forsaken Fortress update will introduce a new structure state – ‘Abandoned’ – alongside the existing Full Power and Low Power states to formalize the mechanics of structures being abandoned. This will apply to both standard structures and FLEX structures. In the update, structures will transition from Low Power to the new Abandoned state if they have not consumed any fuel from service modules for 7 days.

When a structure enters the Abandoned state, the following structure abilities will no longer be available to it:

• No Reinforcement Phases – The structure will have no reinforcement phases, meaning it can be destroyed in one session (Damage caps will still be in effect. If a structure is currently in a reinforced state at the moment the abandonment timer expires, then that reinforce timer will operate as normal but no new reinforcement phases will be allowed).
• No Tethering – The structure will not provide any tethering assistance.
• No Asset Safety – Items will not be put into asset safety when the structure is destroyed (Wormhole located structures will continue to operate with no asset safety for all states).

Onlining a service module in a structure that is in the Abandoned state will return it to Full Power, restoring its abilities provided that the structure is not damaged, as service modules cannot be onlined for a damaged structure. If a structure survives through a Hull Vulnerable repair cycle and transitions back to the Shield Vulnerable phase, then the service modules will automatically attempt to re-online themselves, provided there is fuel available to do so. This is important in order to ensure that a Full Power structure with sufficient fuel cannot be prematurely forced into the Abandoned state by pushing it through a hull reinforcement and then allowing it to repair.

Two diagrams are included below that detail the new flow of structure states (Full Power, Low Power, Abandoned) and the phases (Shield, Armor, Hull Vulnerable).

Standard Structures:

FLEX Structures:

As mentioned earlier, this update to structure mechanics follows the topics and discussion in the community from the previous update to structures – Kicking Over Castles. As the journey in 2020 with EVE in Quadrants continues, it is hoped that these regular balance changes, game health improvements, and permanent meta changes continue to excite you and bring about further discussion to engage in.

These changes will be coming live to the Singularity test server soon, so keep your eyes peeled for further communications on that from the EVE social media channels.

Until then, Capsuleers, fly safe o7