Home › Forums › Gameplay › Suggestions and Ideas › Conquest – The players input thread
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| Author | Posts |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2389 | |
 Cunk Player
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[quote=ronin]Swords/shields/armor would be another option for upkeep (which almost has to exist in some form). What would be used for mages to pay upkeep? Would you prefer to raze the buildings that your attacking or just somehow disable them?[/quote] |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2390 | |
 Karik Player
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Karik’s Conquest System: Guard Towers There are two types of guard towers (Guard Towers and Mage Towers) The Quality of the building dictates the amount of time needed to hold the tower, and also the HP of the tower (thus dictating the time it takes to destroy/capture said building, depending on attackers goals). It should be quicker to capture the tower, because the other faction can take it back. The amount of gold spent on ‘recruits’ dictates the quality of the guards. Factions will be able to build guards skill lay out in the tower menu. Guards to not automatically respawn. Factions have to have money in their vault (maybe the vault can be captured when the keep is taken over) to fund future recruits. A ‘que’ of recruits for each building can be set up. If a Small Guard Tower provides 2 guards, for example, you could have 20 guards ‘que-ed’ up. Guards come auto-armed with copper weapons/armor or in the case of mages copper jewelry. If you assign weapons/jewelry/etc to a guard on their ‘build’ menu (where you select their skills) they will auto-draw said items from the vault. If there are a lack of weapons/etc to draw from the guards will use the copper version if they can. You could also assign mounts in this way perhaps. The same goes for mages. City Building Control towers currently come with a control zone, which seems to be a region of a world cell. Control towers zone of control should be expanded by Guard Towers (the control tower is the central ‘law and order’ building, but with guard towers you can better maintain a city thus extending the control) if the Guard towers are built on the edges of the city. This allows for attackers to have a reason to keep the city whole and not destroy everything on the way in. It is 1) Quicker to capture guard towers, 2) could give partial control of some buildings in the Guard Towers extended zone of control (if it has one) 3) Will allow the attacker to have a bigger zone of control when/if they capture the city, and also get control of the outlying buildings that had once been under the Guard Towers extended zone of control. These extended zones of control need to be taken over before the central control building can be taken over. (This means that guard towers that do not offer extended zones of control can be ignored, though they still might spawn guards so might want to be removed one way or another). Conquest When an attacking faction declares a siege/what ever you wish to call it, the attacker has to front a percentage of the citys ‘worth’ (dependent upon the type of buildings, the quality, and possibly the ‘value’ of the natural resources) as a warprize. This keeps one man factions from sieging vast cities all alone. Once a siege has been declared there could be a (insert number of hours) break between which the defenders have time to prepare. There should be on the defenders screen off in a corner a ‘under siege’ symbol with the name of the Control Tower that is sieged (assuming control towers are allowed to take names to name the ‘city’ they control). Anyone entering the sieged city’s control zone should also see a ‘siege’ symbol, as well as the name of the faction declaring war and the faction defending. Capture points (Guard/Mage Towers and Control Towers) need to be taken. First the Extended Zones of Control (Guard/Mage Towers that extend the Control Towers zone of control) need to be taken. These should not take too long to capture (maybe an hour) and perhaps more to destroy (though all of this is just throwing out numbers). To capture you need to enter the building and go to the capture point in the building (marked by a flag). There a person is able to set the ‘flag’ (which flies above the tower) to the attackers or defenders flag. Thus a person in the defenders allied faction could set the flag to the defenders flag (or the attackers if they are devious back stabbers). An option at this point is also to allow for ‘third party flags’. These ‘third party flags’ could allow for more of an interest from other factions to join in on the fun, perhaps taking the siege over for themselves even. This could potentially extend the siege and make a two day battle last a week. Though this is optional, not sure how well it would work. Once all Extended Zone Guard Towers are taken the sieged city goes into a Second Stage. In the Second Stage all of the Guard Towers are ‘locked down’ and remain under the control of the attackers (at least the extended zone towers). The attackers now have to take the Control building itself. Up until this point the attackers could have raided the Guard towers at night, with only minimal resistance from Guards (though then again Guards could be quite tough). In order to ensure the defenders have ample time to have a chance to Defend the city the Control Tower’s capture point room (possibly located toward the top, or maybe a basement room) is kept sealed shut (the only way it can be opened in times other than war are by officers possibly). For up to twelve hours it is left sealed, though the Officers/Guild Leader (Faction options can dictate who, so custom ranks can choose the option) can choose when to open said room during these first twelve hours. Why open the Control Tower’s capture point room? Why not leave it closed for twelve hours? Because once the room is opened the 24 hour timer begins. At the end of these 24 hours the person who controls the Control Tower wins. This allows the Defender’s to ‘choose’ the timing of the battle. Thus the Attackers get an advantage initially, and the Defenders get an advantage towards the end, in regards to choosing the time. The 12 hours before opening the control tower up for attack can be shortened to 6 or something of the sort, to give the Defenders less of a say in when the battling happens. ———————— That is essentially it for now, it’s a rough sketch of ideas I have had that I wrote up on the fly so it’s going to have points where its not quite clear. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2391 | |
 m0user Player
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[quote=Mehowic7]One idea we tossed around in my faction would be using a food upkeep to maintain the guards. This gives food an additional purpose to its current quasi-useless state. An idea would be to allow the faction to control how many guards it can maintain based on its ability to keep them fed. Quality of food could also affect rate of guard production, or guard quality. Are they any intentions of making it possible/necessary to provide guards with armors/weapons? Wages?[/quote] Have structure ie “barracks” with a fixed number of guards. Want more guards build another barracks, of course this could be tied to having to upgrade to the next level of settlement to allow another barracks. Now npc requirements – Certain quality food, armor, weapons and currency must be stocked in each barracks for each quality level of guards. Food and currency will require weekly restocking while armor and weapons will be tied to guard deaths in the event of an attack and npc losses. Apply this formula to mages and even npc laborers for different quality levels Also these structures cannot be damaged until all npcs associated with that building have been killed. Npcs will respawn at a set rate once killed until the building is destroyed. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2392 | |
 Gurbak Player
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It will be important to learn from the failings of city siege in games like Shadowbane. In SB, one of the main issues was that cities could take months and much effort to develop, but could be razed to the ground in less than a day. Often the attackers were a large alliance of guilds (many of which did not even conform to the lore in terms of racial compatibility) that could easily overpower the defenders. In many cases, after the defending town was destroyed the defenders had little choice but to just quit the game as there was little chance for them to re-build from scratch. So, it should be a setback for the faction that loses their city, but not so devastating that it basically forces them to quit the game. If the penalties for losing are too harsh then you will wind up with another problem that occurred in SB. On some servers there was almost no sieging occurring as people were too frightened that they may eventually lose their own city if they get too aggressive with neighbors. So basically the whole server was almost forced into a no-aggression pact – a silly concept in a game that was designed for city sieging as the primary activity. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2393 | |
 Tablix Player
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I think the idea of having different grades of barracks, requiring varying materials and upkeep is a good one. I understand that having 24hr manual defence is a real issue as factions tend to be all playing in similar time zones. This could be negated by making declerations of war ect, but that then makes PVP very planned and there is little room for sneak attacks, which to me is as much of the game as any other. Perhaps NPC upkeep is the way to dictate the strength of NPC’s so that if everyone is going to be offline for say a 6 hour period an officer or faction leader can dump lots of gold into defending for that time frame, still leaving room for stopping wandering players looking to cause trouble but not putting up enough defence to stop .organised faction devastating a town. If buildings are damaged to a “ruin” state then if the attacking guild/faction can hold the area for maybe 3 hours they can then either destroy it gaining some salvaged goods or rebuild it with materials and gaining control of the area. This would actually give motivation for attack and create PVP. Should the owning faction return in the 3 hour window and push the attackers back they would then be able to rebuild at a reduced level of resources. Attacking factions could then choose which builings to totally destroy and which to repair should they win. I like the idea of using food to support the NPC’s strength, gradually depleating over time similar to players endurance, where as the gold cost, wages, would set the toughness of the NPC’s or their damage capabilities. @ the Dev team….. thanks for allowing player input at this stage its refreshing :D |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2394 | |
 ronin Developer
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[quote=Gurbak]It will be important to learn from the failings of city siege in games like Shadowbane. In SB, one of the main issues was that cities could take months and much effort to develop, but could be razed to the ground in less than a day. Often the attackers were a large alliance of guilds (many of which did not even conform to the lore in terms of racial compatibility) that could easily overpower the defenders. In many cases, after the defending town was destroyed the defenders had little choice but to just quit the game as there was little chance for them to re-build from scratch. So, it should be a setback for the faction that loses their city, but not so devastating that it basically forces them to quit the game. If the penalties for losing are too harsh then you will wind up with another problem that occurred in SB. On some servers there was almost no sieging occurring as people were too frightened that they may eventually lose their own city if they get too aggressive with neighbors. So basically the whole server was almost forced into a no-aggression pact – a silly concept in a game that was designed for city sieging as the primary activity.[/quote] This is definitely a concern. I like the idea of slowly destroying a building at when it gets to 25% the original strength it crumbles. At that point you can either spend a lot more time destroying it, leave it, or build it back up as your own on the cheap. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2395 | |
 Xerri Player
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That’s my main concern also; some large guilds will take cities for the express purpose of destroying them and thus months of the former controlling faction’s combined work in building them. A simple solution to this would be that at the point the last control building is taken and the attackers flag is raised over the city, then the declared war for that town is over. The results of this would be: 1. The factions are no longer in declared War, so any further attacks by either faction’s members on members of the other faction will be treated as “murder” just like any other attack upon a person while not in declared War status. 2. The attacker now has control of the city and can set rules on who is allowed to place new buildings just like normal town control rules, but existing buildings are not immediately destroyable. Instead, at the time the control building is taken and the war is over, the existing property-owners now owe “Fealty” to the new controlling faction. The effects of “Fealty” are this: 2A. The conquering faction now has the option to set “rent” or “landholder tax” on all buildings within their new zone of control. This rent or tax could be a set amount based upon the building type and size. Any personal residences that were inside the zone of control are taxable as well. All the military buildings and warehouses naturally become the property of the new rulers to keep or destroy as they wish. All non-military buildings are taxable. Production buildings like mining shacks, farms, etc fall under a special category as the ruling faction can set on the town screen a production tax percent of the buildings production that will automatically go to the control building or the warehouses controlled by the rulers. 2B. In the event property owners decide they’d rather move away than pay tax fealty to the new town ruling faction, then the first time the fealty tax for a building is not paid, the building becomes the property of the ruling faction to keep or do with as they wish. This includes residences; this prevents the game from getting cluttered up with houses that have been abandoned by the owners either from them moving away or from them leaving the game. 2C. Any building owner that is in Fealty who gets murder-flagged (or possibly thief-flagged if that exists) under that town’s laws outside of declared War or declared Revolt (see below) , is considered to have revoked his Fealty and his owned buildings are then forfeit to the ruling faction. 2D. To handle the paying of fealty tax, a line could be added to the individual building menu’s (the menu where the building owner sets permissions and handles maintenance upkeep). The new fealty tax or rent line would include a space for the building owner to maintain a pool of coins to cover automatic fealty tax or rent deductions on the rent due date or time. The building owner then simply has to keep an amount of money stored on the building menu sufficient to cover the next due fealty rent or tax to be able to keep the building. 3. This fealty system instead of a “scorched earth” system would be of benefit to both the conqueror and the former controlling faction members as well: 3A. Under a fealty system, the conquering faction adds that town to their area thus expanding their kingdom or empire; thus this system promotes the expansion of virtual kingdoms or empires by strong aggressive factions, rather than the present “scorched earth” system of being able to immediately destroy whole towns, which will only result in strong factions operating out of one city and destroying every other town in the game leaving the vast majority of the world almost as empty as it is on the first day of release. The big benefit to an attacking faction which gains control of a new town is that under a Fealty system, that faction would be adding both money income and resources income from every building within the town they have conquered. This makes for long term benefit to the conquering faction rather than a one-time thrill and quick loot of destroying each town they take. Should a conquering faction decide to simply not maintain the upkeep of the control building hoping they can destroy the town by decaying the control building, then to prevent this, if the control building decays a certain percent, then the control building automatically reverts to the control of the former faction along with any military buildings and warehouses. This makes it so that a conquering faction has to actually rule and manage the town if they want to keep control of it. 3B. For the conquered town’s residents, the major benefit would be that they can keep their buildings (except the control, military, and warehouse buildings) and be able to keep their shops and businesses going as usual as long as they pay the fealty tax or rent to the new ruling faction. Under the present “scorched earth” system of a conqueror being able to utterly destroy a town and simply walk away, the former controlling faction members will in all likelihood quit the game rather than spending months building a new town knowing that it can be utterly destroyed in a day or two by a larger faction just like the old one was. Most players, especially crafters, roleplayers, and socializers will probably be far more likely to accept paying fealty to new rulers than in having months of gameplay wiped away and having to start again from scratch. 3C. For the world history and economy as well, a fealty system would keep towns and businesses in place and promote the rise and fall of competing large kingdoms or empires as time went on, rather than the only permanent towns being a few scattered home towns of a few strong factions with the rest of the world being a barren wasteland. Another benefit is that a fealty system rather than a scorched earth system will aid in helping keep huge “steamroller” factions in check by forcing them to further divide their members’ strength to maintain control of each new city instead of being able to operate as a horde out of one home city to destroy each town they come to. Even a huge “numbers” faction will become spread out and diluted in strength as they take new towns; if even a huge faction takes too many towns, there will come a point where the former controlling factions of all the conquered towns will be able to coordinate a revolt in many towns at once thus bringing down the empire of the huge faction, much like many empires have risen and fallen in real life. 4A. A faction that is in Fealty to another faction cannot be declared War upon by the faction they are in Fealty to, unless the faction in Fealty builds a new control building elsewhere. This resolves any conflicts with the faction War system. Thus, if the faction that is in Fealty builds a new control building elsewhere or already has another control building elsewhere at the time of that town being conquered, then the faction members who still own buildings in the conquered town would be wise to leave that faction because their buildings in the conquered town will then be subject to seizure by the controlling faction and they themselves will become freely attackable by the controlling faction and the town’s new npc guards inder the declared War system. 4B. A faction that is in Fealty to another faction may declare a special kind of War called “Revolt”. This is special in that it is a revolution from within to overthrow the conqueror. The town residents would have to defeat the npc guards and any of the ruling faction’s members on hand and sieze the control building. The revolting faction would then have to maintain control of the control building for 24 hours like normal War. Should they succeed, then they have control of their town back; after this, the former conqueror would be free to declare normal War upon them again. Should the Revolt fail, then all the buildings within the control area become forfeit to the ruling conqueror, so a faction whose town has been conquered should consider carefully how much chance they have of succeeding before they declare a Revolt. 4C. To make a Revolt more interesting, the ruling faction’s npc guards (who are presumably recruited from the local town’s npc population) could be tested with a random roll to determine if they join the former faction in Revolt or stay loyal to the ruling faction which hired them. This also could be spiced up with an option for a conqueror faction to be able to hire higher cost npc guards from the conqueror’s own faction home town which would be guaranteed to be loyal to the conquering ruling faction for higher pay since they are serving away from their home town. A name for these special loyal and higher-paid guards might be “Home Guard” or something like that. 5. One added idea here: to add spice for a faction taking a town, it could be coded that a town’s owners has to maintain a treasury of funds to pay their town guards and resources to meet their control building and military building’s maintenance upkeeps; to keep a faction from simply withdrawing all the npc guards’ pay and upkeep resources if they saw their town was going to be taken, then make it so that money and resources may be placed in the town deposit for this pay and upkeep, but may not be withdrawn. This will provide a pool of treasure for the conquerors along with whatever they find in the warehouses once the town is taken. Possibly even add to this by requiring a one-time advance Fealty payment that must be paid by building and residence owners within 24 hours of the time the new ruling faction took control of the town; this would be a manual fealty payment, perhaps made at the control building, unlike all future fealty payments which would automatically be paid each time from each building’s pool as long as the owner kept sufficient funds in it. 6. On declaring War or declaring Revolt, there should be a timer of at least 24 hours between the conclusion on a War or Revolt at a town before another War can be declared at that town. Otherwise, factions with large numbers of low PvP-skilled members would simply use their numbers to declare War after War continuously to wear down the real life players of the smaller but more skilled faction because they would have to find time for sleep, work, and real life obligations in addition to continuous human-wave attacks in the game by the low-skilled mega-faction. Everyone who has played in Eve Online or some other open-PvP mmo’s know the type of guilds I’m talking about; achieving a very high kill-ratio over them is easy but they eventually run over you with continuous waves of their cannon-fodder so their core members can take all the loot rewards. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2396 | |
 crumpnya Player
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Siege Declaration: In order to declare a siege, one must first have a “siege building”. This building could include some of the following: 1) Siege Weapons like cannons/catapults/trebuchets/battering rams The first two things are pretty self explanatory. The third, however, may not be. When one builds a city, in order to protect it from being overrun, a “keep” or something of the like must be built. You don’t have to build one, but without one, anyone can destroy your property whenever they want. I’d say that you wouldn’t be able to attack it while it’s being built, but that doesn’t mean others can’t stop you from giving it materials. Who can place a Keep? Who can create the deed? Who can place a siege building? Who can create it? Who can use the building skills? So you’ve built up your Keep first, now what? To Summarize What would city protection really do for the city? What if city protection wore off? You’ve clicked dispel guard tower protection from the siege building… Key Points Who gets the city? Balance Issues |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2397 | |
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Tablix Player
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<---- thinks Xerri has met goonsquad ;) |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2398 | |
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Xerri Player
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I wasn’t saying their name first, but you nailed it Tablix. :) In Eve Online, I’ll never forget one battle where my one ship destroyed 9 out of 12 attacking Goonsquad ships and the other 3 managed to flee. The majority of them were way smaller ships than mine; numbers over quality as usual and they didn’t appear to have any concept of coordinated teamwork. But I’ll drop it there since we’re off topic. :) |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2399 | |
 jeremy142 Player
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Well first let me say hello and say from what I have read and heard it looks like this might be a very good sandbox style game. Alot of the issues with seiges with current games such as AOC is having to field a 48 man team to defend or a 48 man offense. Let’s face it games need to gear themselfs toward medium size guilds now instead of the huge guild we have seen in the past. Even with a 100 man guild it is sometimes hard to field a 48 man seige or raid depending on the time of day or which day of the week it is. I would prefer to see no more than 24 vs 24 man seiges. #2 I would like to see the abilty for smaller guilds to have and be able to hold small to medium size cities so they are viable in the game. I think if you could pull off making smaller to medium size guild viable you would be more successful here.. I think it’s key to getting good numbers.. If you have 3-5 huge guild running the server it will run away allot of your player base… I’m not saying we can’t be hardcore but make it fun and viable for small guild I assure you that you will get may more players once the word gets out.. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2400 | |
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jeremy142 Player
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Everyone has good ideals here.. But I stress make if viable for small – medium guilds to own and run towns as well.. Might not be as big as that 250 man guild but atleast they can be proud of a nice town or city and be able to defend it.. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2401 | |
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crumpnya Player
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With the idea of having keep skills, you could make a city that is very small, but can be protected for a lot longer time than larger cities would be. In other words… the bigger the city the greater the risk of being attacked. You could have a very small crafting/goods hub … etc. You’re not going to be able to restrict the player amount I wouldn’t think. I say the game will be n players vs y could be 1 vs 200 could be 1000 vs 1000… never know. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2402 | |
 uthanan Player
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You might look to history for a neat “declaration” mechanic, If I had an army in which I would want to siege your castle, I have to first defeat your patrols, isolate the fortification, build siege equipment, began the attack. This would require a siege camp, something I have to protect until finished, protect while equipment and men are being readied. In game, maybe require the attacker to create a “Camp”, protect that camp for specified time deemed “fun” and “challenging for phase 1, then during phase two siege equipment can be constructed and moved into place, phase 3 is the attack. This should give a defender a few opportunities to “sortie” out and defeat the camp, or the engines, and defend during the last phase. The declaration is the building and maintaining the camp. This is also gives some risk factor to the attackers, and the defenders have certain objectives to destroy to slow the build times down. Having scouts harass the gatherers, builders, or guards of the camp, which adds to how long the whole process would take, maybe interfere enough that the attackers give up before the attack. Just a quick thought on the declaration mechanic. |
| June 28, 2010 at 3:56 pm #2403 | |
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Xerri Player
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[quote=ronin]Swords/shields/armor would be another option for upkeep (which almost has to exist in some form). What would be used for mages to pay upkeep? Would you prefer to raze the buildings that your attacking or just somehow disable them?[/quote] Being able to outfit the guards has always been a good and fun idea. On mage guards, the upkeep for them would be outfitting them with focus clothing/jewelry/staffs which would make them useful for longer just like with player mages. Perhaps an option to pay different amounts to get different types of mage guards as well, since there are different schools of sorcery that different types of mage guards might be specialized in? Any thoughts on archer-type guards for wall defense? (or can you give regular guards bows and arrows which they will fire instead of charging out of the keep to attempt to melee the enemy outside the town?). Also on that thought, will regular melee guards be able to be commanded to patrol or defend within the town walls or will they immediately charge out of town to their doom uselessly the first time they are fired upon? Common practice in DAOC was to pull all the roving and wall guards out of the keep to kill them easily before placing a ram on the door. |
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