City Conflict Concepts

Xith

These thoughts were sparked by the piety/rites discussion in another thread, because of Shallam's lack of infiltration ability.
Pick a section and read it alone if it helps. Lot of text here.

So, city destruction was a good start, but ultimately it still doesn't quite cut it. Need more mechanics for brute assaults. Battering rams and contingents of more than 6 people to overtake a city. Just not enough large-scale troop movement I think. There should be more potential for a struggle within the walls.

A) Offensive raid denizens
Picture mobile denizen raiders. Expensive, but the city can employ 3-5 at one time.
- They'd have a minor individual advantage over city guards, so that they hold their own before dying.
- The "raidizens" and city guards would have to be programmed to attack each other first before engaging adventurers.
- Can be ordered/called by MoW and aides.
- MoW/aides can assess and heal raidizen health by a sacrifice of a tiny portion of their own experience.
- "Raidizens" take an amount of time to train so that the 5 max can't be replenished fast enough to spam the enemy city with attempts. Alternately speed up training with a gold penalty.
- 5-10 minute deploy timer so that when the first raidizen dies in the raid, it can't be reinforced instantly.
(1.) So if you have a raiding party of 6 plus 5 of those guards outside the enemy city, the defenders would think twice about engaging outside the walls and would wait for conflict within and seek to defend their own guards. Then the raiding party steps into the gate room and you'd have a party of 6 + 3 vs 6 + 5, instead of 6 vs 6 + 5 like now. Most likely, these raidizens will serve as a sacrificial buffer against enemy NPCs while pvp proceeds as normal, allowing the chance to either defeat the defenders before your raidizens die and then gain turn on the guards to gain your foothold in the city, or fail and retreat.

(2.) If the raiding party succeeds and has one or two raidizens standing, the aides would likely heal them up or let them regenerate, and then move on to either kill more guards, or summon spark somewhere, or both.

(3.) Just like adventurers, raid-npcs would have to receive a detriment the longer they remain in a city, to prevent continuous occupation.

This added expense for a raid would have to have a greater reward perhaps, like an xp bonus for number of "raidizens" in the room when it's destroyed, or just the simple greater chance of success. But since guard stacks can't exceed 5 now, it's probably best to cap the npc raiders at 3. So 5 or more in the city's employ, but only 3 deployed at one time.

Battering rams/siege weapons

There is an approved suggestion for allowing cities to lock their gates and stuff. So... battering rams and stuff, yeah?
- Game item: Battering ram. Adventurers pull it up to the gates. The lack of element of surprise is probably what would alert the defenders to close their gates
I'm thinking PUSH RAM <direction> to move it.
- PULL RAM and PUSH RAM swing the thing on a 10 second ram balance, dealing the gate 15% damage each time. (aka. 1 hit every 20 seconds)
- Defender-soldiers can buy time for defense to assemble with REPAIR GATE, on the same balance per individual (10), repairing 1% of the damage each time an an endurance and inventory gold cost.
- 8 people would thus effectively halt the breaking of the gate, but at the cost of their gold and stamina.

C) Counter-siege

I know there are ballistas mounted in those random parapet rooms in Ashtan. Not sure what's up with that, but assuming battering rams and fort lock-downs, I think adventurers with bows should be able to man parapet/guardhouse rooms and view the siege/ram room safely, sniping select adventurers to make them temporarily abandon pushing the ram.
- Aiming and other archery-help wouldn't be available here, but SHOOT <adventurer> GATES would loose an arrow toward them and credit any kills as normal.
- Weaponry skill: Shielding. Yet another twist, ram operators may hide between their own balances with a skill that would function like an extra SoA but be broken by performing actions. While wielding any shield, BRACE SHIELD raises the shield defensively to give a 50-66% chance of absorbing blows. The catch in this scenario is that pulling/pushing the ram would take 4-6 personal balance, leaving openings.
The thing I also like about including Shielding is it could help stop all the LoS and ranging everybody loves so much and encourage more melee fighting.
- What you would then see here is raiders only sending their weaponry-capable people in with shields to break the wall, and then the extras to rush in when it's breached. (Just like real siege!)

To tie up and C), all inhabitants of a city would see "The foundations of the city tremble upon impact from a powerful battering ram swing [from Xith]." where the bracketed info is only visible to parapet archers, allowing them to identify the most vulnerable target.

And that's all I've got for now. Agree, disagree, expand, revise.

Nizaris

Honestly, I'd like to see more emphasis be placed on one-on-one combat, rather than less. I kinda feel like classes that were once balanced around one-on-one interactions are now being combined in new ways that, while valid tactics, reduces the utility of others.

Alternatively, look to each of the classes and see what can be done to make them more viable in group combat. Perhaps these siege and counter-siege elements shouldn't be able to only be used by archers? Perhaps they should be usable by anyone, even those of low-to-no might, to increase the sense of urgency and/or purpose that they feel. Archers would retain the added benefit of being mobile LoS platforms, as opposed to stationary ones in the battlements.

Right now, you have certain classes that are basically worthless in group combat beyond mashing their hunting alias, or throwing bombs. I say that we ought to find a way to involve more people.

Xith

Perhaps these siege and counter-siege elements shouldn't be able to only be used by archers? Perhaps they should be usable by anyone, even those of low-to-no might, to increase the sense of urgency and/or purpose that they feel.

1) I actually forgot to include that idea, but did think of it. Commoner bows that can be manned by your average militia, and/or boiling oil. I know cities sometimes discourage newbies from getting involved in combat, but the described saferoom wouldn't place them in harm's way or make them a nuissance. Their bows of course would be slower/weaker but would always reset to the rooms in limited quantity.

2) About 1 v 1, I'd like just as much to see 1 v 1 during raids, but the presence of guards definitely hinders that for the attackers.
(Seperate idea: "God-mode" temporary quest item that allows one adventurer to play the Hero-raider, an Aragorn-type role who goes off on his own mission in the middle of sieges like a badass. Wanted to make this D) but avoiding that anti-Tanris campaign for now)
(Seperate discussion: 1 v 1 is a viable thing and 6 v 6/raid combat is a thing, but outside the arena there isn't much that tailors to 2 v 2 or other small-group situations. Would be nice to see the Mark orgs somehow expand that possibility beyond arranged duels)

EDIT: 3) The 3 "raidizen" limit. 6 + 3 vs 6 + 5 is actually 6 + 3 vs 6 + 5 + rites + vibes + totems. So the defenders have the clear advantage as usual, but the successful raid party should probably have increased xp benefit/plundering to balance as necessary. It may also be that my npc-raider cap is just too low, or should be based on the number of citizens in realms of the defending city. 1 raidizen deployed toward that city for every 4 or 5 in the enemy city
Or .... R = D/A*5, so that if the defender:attacker ratio is 1, attackers get a full 5. If the ratio is 0.8, they get 4. If it's 1.2, they can deploy 6.

Soma

Take out summoning sparks and adding this. Then put like 5 checkpoints or something in the enemy city, and if you can basically lay siege on the city, then you can get the points and the similar reward for destroying rooms, without it feeling so pointless.

Tanris

One v one is the rarity, not the norm now really. The advent of systems has made one v one have a much steaper offensive learning curve for a lot of classes, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Focusing more around balancing for teams and accommodating one v one is probably a more reallistic way to go.

Aktillum

Put Icons inside cities.

Bam.

Nim

Soma said:

Take out summoning sparks and adding this. Then put like 5 checkpoints or something in the enemy city, and if you can basically lay siege on the city, then you can get the points and the similar reward for destroying rooms, without it feeling so pointless.

I personally hate super large scale group combat (10+ people); it gets absurdly spammy. So, if you drop the number down to maybe 3, but required the attacking side to control all of them at once or something, so that offensive and defensive forces have to split up a bit, I think that would be pretty cool. (Probably, there'd have to be some incentive for the defending side to control all of the positions too, or they'd just fall back and protect one and ignore the rest.)

Xith

It would be interesting to have a reason for people to fight group battles on a pairs basis. Instead of 'everyone kill this guy' you'd have separate spars and only gain the advantage when someone dies.

Tvistor

Objection, half my House would be useless.

Xith

It's also a nice change of pace to defend your city against incoming denizens whereas usual denizen fighting is only hunting them down in their own homes. (unless the denizens also bring a super-dragon and sink your city)

So a part of my idea here is to change the process from just a group of 5 or 6 guys against an entire city to something that can include more participation from the city's actual npc military. But I'm an RTS-junkie also, so there's a bias.

Mannimar

Your idea is sounding strangely similar to the original city conflict system which was scrapped, and they likely had their reasons for that. Old war

Xith

Yeah, don't want it to go quite that direction and make a giant Risk board. This is more just having a couple of extra troops going into battle, so that the whole conflict doesn't revolve around avoiding rooms with enemy guards.

Kakotas

B and C I like. Icons inside cities I liked... Except for the constant 5 people raiding an entire city nonstop.