City destruction changes

Dunn · November 2013

What's this about group xp...?

The whole room gets xp for disarming or destroying a room. That's how it was before.

Antonius · November 2013

They're talking about group xp for player kills, Dunn. So if I kill you with three other people in a raid, we'd all get 1/4th of the experience.

Dunn · November 2013

Certain classes and roles have always been relegated to a lesser level of experience in group PvP. It's a choice. I don't see a reason to change it now. Dragons/monks/knights have always done better in melee and that's just how it is. (Done better in the sense that they land killing blows often)

Imperian has a method of tracking PvP assists and awarding XP accordingly, but that's because they balance their whole system around small skirmishes like 4v4.

Silas · November 2013

XP gain is already too easy. Adding group xp for PK just means the number of dragons will increase more rapidly. People should worry less about their xp, and more about playing their role in Achaea.

I'm all for introducing a comparison between the number of city soldiers online as a requirement for starting a sanctioned raid if the number of kills isn't met within a certain timeframe, because cities refusing to defend, rather than being unable to defend, isn't something that should stop a raid in its tracks. If a city wants to collectively qq to avoid a raid, they can lose guards or whatever. I wouldn't worry too much about RP considerations here, since OOC enjoyment/sensibility has to be prioritised in situations like this to make the game worth playing.

Should at the same time introduce a penalty for not maintaining a standing army constituting x% of your city's population.

Iocun · November 2013

Delete xp.

Cahin · November 2013

Makarios said:

Its possible we can do something with checking how many online citizens compared to raiders, but something like this is hard to implement in a way that doesn't seem contrived. "Your enemies don't have enough people to be raided" or such doesn't really make much sense from an in character perspective.

The key point really is that if we want to make the system not off hours workable we have to require some kind of interaction between raiders and defenders.

I don't see why the raiders count would have to be compared to the online citizens, considering no system past or present has taken this into account to my knowledge. A somewhat high number of citizens online to be able to force a mini raid would be nice, though. 15 (10 in city instead?) or so just to prevent situations in which the defending city should be capable of mustering a defense. Enough time to do a room with adjacent would be enough to force a defense that could turn into a legitimate raid (by adding additional time with deaths) or allow the defenders to make the decision not to defend, but still incur some loss. Perhaps limit how often this could be used with a timer, as Santar suggested, so that raids can still take place primarily in the way they were intended.

Rinzai · November 2013

Arditi said:

Hell, Cyrene would honestly be better off by working out a time-share agreement with Targossas: Cyrene defends Targossas, Targossas defends Cyrene, neither city actually gets rooms destroyed because Mhaldor and Ashtan can't charge the tanks off of the people doing the defending.

There. Hire me as your new minister of security, Cyrene.

Sorry to burst your bubble on this one, but with in hours I was telling the Senate and Lord Phaestus that I wanted to become and arms dealer and sell our full tanks to Cities that were using them left and right.

Oh look Eleusis I dropped a tank, please please don't capture it, that would be silly, oh hey where did this 100,000 gold come from, strange well back to Cyrene, I have a tank to fill!

Decan · November 2013

My suggestion:

There needs to be incentive to Defend while also preventing the Attackers from having too much advantage. Because of the number of people on either side can fluctuate drastically, its hard to use as a focal point for raiding purposes.

A few things to consider:

Exp loss for defenders should always be waived. I think exp gain should stay for defense the entire time.

Exp gain for raiders should only be up until the sanction and stop during (This is how it currently works)

Exp loss for Raiders should stay for the entire time. (Currently stops at start of Sanction)

This clearly gives incentive to defend with no risk of individual loss.

Another idea is to limit the number of raiders who can be in the room of a tank while its charging. The problem then feeds back into the sometimes large variance in numbers for one side or the other. Potentially, if the number of people in a room of a tank were set to 10, yet the defense party has 25 people, its obviously a no win for raiders at the tank.

While there could be new strategy arising that involves extra raiders to form a 'buffer' one room away, I think avoiding the 'digging in' approach is wise. If I would suggest that a group number be set (something in range of 4-7 maybe?) Id also say allow for 2 tanks to be going at the same time, meaning there is a more logical reason to split an attack group up and potentially more strategy involving how the two tanks interact (cant place within x rooms of another, if within xx rooms, create arc which damages one additional room, etc).

Lower groups of raiders gives defenders a better chance at rushing. Couple that with no exp loss and only exp gain for defense, no matter when, and you will likely have a better participation level as it starts to become viable for participation to be more beneficial than non participation, while still allowing the raiders to do some initial damage, and thats what we want as an end result, right?

@makarios

Santar · November 2013

Rinzai said:

Arditi said:

Hell, Cyrene would honestly be better off by working out a time-share agreement with Targossas: Cyrene defends Targossas, Targossas defends Cyrene, neither city actually gets rooms destroyed because Mhaldor and Ashtan can't charge the tanks off of the people doing the defending.

There. Hire me as your new minister of security, Cyrene.

Sorry to burst your bubble on this one, but with in hours I was telling the Senate and Lord Phaestus that I wanted to become and arms dealer and sell our full tanks to Cities that were using them left and right.

Oh look Eleusis I dropped a tank, please please don't capture it, that would be silly, oh hey where did this 100,000 gold come from, strange well back to Cyrene, I have a tank to fill!

Sent you a message IG.

Kenway · November 2013

Just because I was curious, I checked all of the cities for where a level 3 tank would do the most damage room-wise.

Numbers on that:

Cyrene: 14

Hashan: 16

Eleusis: 11

Ashtan: 18 if the explosion ignores doors, 12 if it's standard LoS

Targossas: 13

Mhaldor: 11 if ignores doors, 8 if normal LoS

They seem somewhat proportionate to the size of the respective cities which makes sense. But I'm not sure what the consequences are for repairing rooms aside from the three month wait. If they're somewhat severe, like economy crippling gold costs that would end a war, maybe there should be a ten room cap or something. I dunno, just thought the numbers would be interesting to some of you. Do what you will with them.

Santar · November 2013

Ok, now do level 2's. Then send me your work for Mhaldor/Ashtan. Thanks.

Cooper · November 2013

With how infrequent they are supposed to be, and how they are supposed to be very damaging, I see no reason to put any sort of cap on it.

If it looks like it's too easy to do they'll tweak the numbers so you don't see a level 3 tank blowing up every 2 days.

Cooper · November 2013

Dunn said:

Certain classes and roles have always been relegated to a lesser level of experience in group PvP. It's a choice. I don't see a reason to change it now. Dragons/monks/knights have always done better in melee and that's just how it is. (Done better in the sense that they land killing blows often)

Imperian has a method of tracking PvP assists and awarding XP accordingly, but that's because they balance their whole system around small skirmishes like 4v4.

It's not a choice of less experience or more experience. It's a choice of what class you want to play. You shouldn't be heavily penalized experience in groups because of this.

The reason to change it is that gaining levels is good for people. Losing levels and experience is not fun. More people will be interested in fighting and defending if their overall experience is a gain instead of a loss, meaning more fun for everyone involved.

You got to Dragon nearly entirely off of PK. Imagine if you were an alchemist or another low-kill class. You'd probably be level 90 instead of 10X. Haven't you had more fun getting experience in fights and becoming a Dragon instead of losing experience a lot?

'Too many Dragons' isn't really a valid argument anymore. When there was only 10-20 Dragons, or even 50 or 100, it might have been. But now in every raid there are going to be Dragons on each side. There have been changes put into place (mainly bite) to make them not so powerful.

We have more areas to bash all the time, areas are updated frequently, and if bashing ever truly gets too competitive (too many people in the areas), Tecton can always tweak respawn times.

Cathy · November 2013

If you have x city soldiers on the PMP, yet no one is engaging with the enemy after 10 minutes (basically, holding up the raid starting), your city guards all stop defending too, because, why would they if the soldiers wouldn't?.

Arditi · November 2013

Have guard shifts like icon phases.

Paying guards to work more than 12 Achaean days in a row causes them to become fatigued and have reduced effectiveness. Guards require at least six uninterrupted Achaean days of rest to remain at full combat effectiveness.

The Minister of Security must set guard schedules and shifts.

Thus, you can have maximum guards at Thoth-hour times where you don't have defenders, and when you have defenders, you can give the little guys a break.

Silas · November 2013

Can we have automatic promotions in the army toggleable? I assume the reason you automatically gain rank is to stop a city keeping their soldiers at rank 1 to minimise losses, but cities that use the army properly shouldn't have to just deal with everybody eventually being rank 5, since it stops ranks being used as anything other than a designation of your value in priming enemy tanks. It should be possible for army ranks to be given significance to the army/city they belong to, instead of just to their enemies.

Jarrod · November 2013

I believe Makarios changed it to 1-4 is automatic, and 5 requires promotion.

It results in the same thing at rank 4, but requires a lot of participation.

Nim · November 2013

@Dunn and @Makarios: Your thoughts ignore the fact that this entire system is, in fact, designed for group combat.

If the war system and Achaea conflict in general favored one-on-one skirmishes, then sure, let EXP go to the killer and suffer the rare kill steal. However, in group combat, one-on-one tactics generally become outright unfeasible in favor of working as a team.

Deciding that only one person gets rewarded for what is essentially a group effort is ridiculous.

Most of the time, one-on-one conflict usually happens as a result of a duel or maybe a side effect of no one else being around. In those cases, the group experience system shouldn't have any impact anyway!

That said, it sounds like @Makarios thought I was suggesting a flat division. I think only people who contribute in some way to someone's death should be considered. That's hard to track, considering mechanics like illusions, and even closing a door could lead to their doom, but it doesn't really have to be perfect!

Shirszae · November 2013

Cathy said:

If you have x city soldiers on the PMP, yet no one is engaging with the enemy after 10 minutes (basically, holding up the raid starting), your city guards all stop defending too, because, why would they if the soldiers wouldn't?.

Because guards are paid to do so?

Blujixapug · November 2013

Give people battle standards. Make them charge up based on PK assists etc during raids. Once they're charged up you can redeem them for positive affirmation or whatever other reward (exp).

Echald · November 2013

You can trade in 30 PK assists points for a pat on the head by the city guardian.

Nim · November 2013

Echald said:

You can trade in 30 PK assists points for a pat on the head by the city guardian.

Worth more than any crazy text EXP!

Kuy · November 2013

I do not understand why people are so snide about the idea of experience on an assist in group PK. Note that this is my short, short experience here but quite a lot of experience in other IREs, but often times, the reason a group is winning is because of the people who aren't doing the killing. Why shouldn't they be rewarded for performing their allotted role to the best of their ability? After all, anyone can hammer a high DPS alias while one or two supporting people are working their butts off keeping a target from moving or curing.

Cooper summed it up pretty splendidly, really. I just don't understand all the remarks mockingly proposing opposition without anyone saying, you know, why.

That, or they're just sarcasm and the people saying them do agree with sharing the experience. If that's the case, my bad; I'm terrible with sarcasm.

Echald · November 2013

It does seems like a peculiar majority of the people complaining that players are too much focused on xp and that shared exp on PK is bad idea are already up to dragon themselves. The old city destruction certainly didn't involve PKing directly, although this new one does. So it might be a way to bring it up, I guess.

Jonathin · November 2013

I don't have a problem with a sort of group xp for killing people, but it's a fine line because we do not want to open up the door further for people to PK farm all day.

The restraint is much better than it used to be, but give the majority an inch, and a bunch of them take a mile each.

That said, I think that the system is already somewhat in place with accurately recording kills from bleeding or ents.

Daklore · November 2013

Arditi said:

Have guard shifts like icon phases.

Paying guards to work more than 12 Achaean days in a row causes them to become fatigued and have reduced effectiveness. Guards require at least six uninterrupted Achaean days of rest to remain at full combat effectiveness.

The Minister of Security must set guard schedules and shifts.

Thus, you can have maximum guards at Thoth-hour times where you don't have defenders, and when you have defenders, you can give the little guys a break.

Jeez, what are we doing. Turning cities into Dwarf Fortress? I can't even figure out the damn military there, how do you expect people to figure it out in Achaea?

Nellaundra · November 2013

Would unironically play Achaea Fortress.

Silas · November 2013

Jarrod said:

I believe Makarios changed it to 1-4 is automatic, and 5 requires promotion.

It results in the same thing at rank 4, but requires a lot of participation.

Yeah, I still don't like the automatic progression. Maybe a Patron-only toggle to stop cities deliberately keeping their military low ranked to abuse the system, without punishing cities who don't.

Kinilan · November 2013

Nellaundra said:

Would unironically play Achaea Fortress.

Achaea Fortress would have been 1000x better than Earth Eternal...

Jarrod · November 2013

Silas said:

Jarrod said:

I believe Makarios changed it to 1-4 is automatic, and 5 requires promotion.

It results in the same thing at rank 4, but requires a lot of participation.

Yeah, I still don't like the automatic progression. Maybe a Patron-only toggle to stop cities deliberately keeping their military low ranked to abuse the system, without punishing cities who don't.

I'd personally prefer auto to 3, then something like capture at rank 4 you can't move down, and something else at rank 5 to make it worth promoting a handful of people to, but not something you'd want everyone to have.

Hail, Stranger!

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