Vulnerability

Player Owned Customs Offices have their own different reinforcement mechanic. See Player Owned Customs Office for more details on that

Vulnerability is a game mechanic used by most deployable structures to encourage large, planned fleet engagements and enable both attacking and defending groups to more effectively and fairly engage in structure warfare.

• Structures cannot be affected by any form of Electronic Warfare.
• The structure will limit the amount of damage it can take per second as defined by its damage cap attribute. This damage cap cannot be exceeded and dealing more damage will result in the excess damage hits being reduced or showing as zero.
• When the structure is damaged it will have 15 or 30 minute repair timer. If the repair timer reaches zero the structure will heal completely to full shields.
• To pause the repair timer the structure must receive damage that is at least 10% of the damage cap after resists.
• The defender chooses the time when the reinforcement ends, attacker chooses the day at which te reinforcement ends.
• The ±3h variation in the reinforcement exit times will never cause the fight to "roll over" to next day. The time of shield reinforcement fight will determine the dates of armor and structure timers.
• The reinforcement times are determined from the moment repair timers start. Wether the fight lasts for 20 minutes or 10 hours has no impact on the reinforcement times.
• Structures can be fitted only when it has full shields. The fit can not be changed while the structure is anchoring, onlining, repairing, under attack or reinforced.

While vulnerable the current status of the Citadel is shown on the damage indicator.

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  Citadel damage indicator

The outer grey/red circle shows the current damage. It has one section for shield (top), armor (lower left) and structure (lower right). In each section a dot represents 1/12th of full health. A grey dot means intact, a red dot means damaged. So in our example there are only 2 grey dots left on the lower right section, which means the Citadel has only about 17% (2 x 1/12 x 100%) hull left.

The inner yellow circle shows the repair timer. In our example it has about 2/3 of the 15 mins left. One can hover with the mouse over the Citadel damage indicator and it will display how much time is left on the repair timer and whether it is running or paused.

Deployment cycle

When a structure is deployed it has only structure HP. It has no armor or shield.

Immediately after deploying the structure will start to anchor and is vulnerable to attacks. At this stage the structure can be killed without any timers.

The anchoring timer lasts for 15 minutes. If the structure is receiving damage more than 10% of its damage cap the anchoring timer is paused.

Once the anchoring timer reaches zero the structure is reinforced and becomes unattackable.
This reinforcement lasts for 24 hours.

Once the structure comes out of reinforcement it again becomes open to attack, and once a Quantum Core is inserted it starts a 15 minute long onlining timer. If the structure is receiving damage more than 10% of its damage cap the onlining timer is paused.
While onlining the structure has only structure HP. It has no armor or shield and it can be destroyed without any additional timers.

Once the onlining timer reaches zero the structure fully heals its structure, armor and shield HPs.
At this point the structure is fully operational and can be fitted.

Reinforcement cycles

The owner of the structure sets the reinforcement hour for the structure. This is used for determine when armor and hull reinforcement cycles end. Structure and hull fights will always occur at this set time ± 3 hours.
Attackers can see the reinforcement hour by hacking the structure with a data analyzer.

The default state of an upwell structure is to be at full shield. At this state the structure is attackable.

Once damage has been taken the upwell structure will begin a 15 minute repair timer that upon completion will fully repair the structure. This timer however is paused while the structure is taking damage at least 10% of its damage cap.
Once the shields are depleted the structure is enters armor reinforced state and becomes unattackable.

The armor reinforcement will last until next reinforcement hour that is at least 24 hours away with random ±3 hours jitter. In practice this means that the reinforcement will last 21-51 hours. If the structure has no online service modules (so it is in low power state) there is no armor reinforcement. Instead the armor can be immediately attacked.

Once the structure comes out of armor reinforcement it will start a 15 minute repair timer that upon completion will fully repair the structure to full shield. Again the timer is paused by dealing at least 10% of the damage cap.
Once the armor is depleted the structure enters structure reinforced state and becomes unattackable.

The structure reinforcement lasts until next reinforcement hour that is at least "minimum" time away with random ±3 hours jitter. The "minimum" duration depends on the area of space: 1.5 days in wormholes, 2.5 days in low/null and 4.5 days in high. In practice the reinforcement lasts.

• 2d ±6h in wormholes
• 3d ±6h in low/null
• 5d ±6h in high
• If the structure was in low power state (no armor timer) the structure timer can be up to 12 hours shorter and the variance is ±3h.
• If the structure is a War HQ, the structure timer is always 24h.

Once the structure comes out of structure reinforcement it will start a 30 minute repair timer that upon completion will fully repair the structure to full shield. As you may already guess you need to deal at least 10% of the damage cap to stop the repair timer.

Once the structure is depleted the upwell structure is destroyed.

FLEX structure reinforcement cycles

FLEX structures have fewer cycles than normal upwell structures. They have no armor timer at all. And if they do not have online services the structure timer is skipped. As a result unused FLEX structures can be killed in single attack.

See Also

• Upwell Structures Vulnerability States