New Siege Implementation: Siege Claims

[yozzik111]

Another thing i wonder why we still do not have here is ability to faster destroy things on our own claims (village and personal). I understand it undermines realism a bit, but in the light of upcoming update this might help us to deal with it and not to dump resources on a shitload of wrecking balls.

[Hrenli]

To be honest, some level of planning for future upgrades is to no small extent on your own conscience.

I have to agree. Did not plan to build a brick wall in the near future but left an extra row for it under the claim (and made sure it's buildable terrain) anyway. Feel like a smartass now.

[Hrenli]

Another thing i wonder why we still do not have here is ability to faster destroy things on our own claims (village and personal).

Maybe to make it harder to run inside jobs?

[Potjeh]

Anyway, please read at least the first chapter of Code Complete. It's free, it's well written and it's insightful. Come on, what do you have to lose

A self-help book presenting abstract solutions to abstract problems, spending a lot of time simply dwelling on, and analyzing said abstract problems, to then present platitudes as solutions. Trying to learn how to write good code by reading books like these are like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle by reading a book about it.

And reading an anatomy book to learn about surgery is also like reading a book to learn to ride bycicle, amirite? Because intellectual pursuits are exactly the same as muscle memory tasks. Hubris, thy name is Jorb. How can you learn anything if you think you're already smarter than everyone else? Dismissing wisdom of people with a lot more experience just sets you up for reinventing the wheel over and over again. Along the same veins, your "feel free to come up with better suggestions" isn't a genuine invitation, it's a challenge meant to prove how you're smarter than anyone here because your ideas are better, as you usually just dismiss player suggestions without giving them much consideration. Inb4 banned from forums again for wounding Jorb's ego (you guys should really put that in forum guidelines).

To begin with, I wouldn't go so far as to say that "shell obviously isn't working". It could honestly be worse. For all its flaws, I don't think the siege system of the last world was totally bad. Improving in-depth defense is definitely desirable, but I do have to admit I don't consider it totally critical, or that any system that doesn't significantly improve on that aspect isn't even worth considering.

I disagree entirely with this assessment. I'd say the current siege is every bit as unfair to the attacker as base "defense" was unfair to the defender back in world 1. And I'd say that defense in depth *is* critical, because as Avu points out hearth vaults are stronger than real villages. This is a problem that's plagued H&H since walls were first implemented, and has had an enormous negative impact on the playerbase.

I haven't found anything reasonable to copy either, though.

Have you played Rust? Obviously the genre differences make direct copy impractical, but they have a lot of solid principles that you could apply in your own design:
- High material cost of raiding coupled with imperfect information makes raiding a risky proposition and limits the number of bases you can raid. They suffer from the problem of stockpiling raid resources, though, but your implementation of decaying resources seems like a good solution to the stockpiling problem.
- Placing traps as defender and overcoming them as attacker is a contest of skill between the two parties that happens even if the defender is offline. Well-placed traps can cause the attacker to lose a lot of valuable resources quite suddenly, and according to their roadmap these resources are going to be transferred to the defender even if he's offline.
- Larger bases are harder to raid because defense strength is of similar consistency throughout the base rather than concentrated in the outer shell. This solves the problem of hearth vaults.
- Material upkeep makes optimization of defense superior to just bruteforcing it. In Haven terms, you can solve the problem of palisade layering by having them require upkeep in glue which rises with the number of palisade tiles on claim at a faster than linear rate. Ain't nobody gonna stack five palisades if it means they have to feed the claim twenty glue per day. This also places a limit on how many separate palisaded bases you can have, so it alleviates the problem of hearth vaults and palisaded local resources.
- Consistent toughness throughout a base makes total destruction raids an impractical proposition. Most bases are recoverable after raid. Sure, they can grief it with a walled in TC, but you can destroy this wall and reclaim the base. Griefing it to the point where it's impractical to recover would require investing almost as much resources as the base itself is worth.

[shubla]

People who say that siege sucks should suggest some better system instead of just blaming the devs. A good siege system may be impossible to implement. Strong people will always have advantage and there will be ways to build some crazy vault

I mean that it may be impossible to make a good siege system.
Though how would we even define a good siege system?
In a good siege system, you dont get raided but your enemies will?

[ErdTod]

What if the siege equipment can only be damaged if the sieging party is online (they are added just like into village) or at least 1 member has been offline for sum of 24 hrs. Claimed things can also be damaged only if there is at least 1 person online that is part of said claim (owner if that's a PClaim, and/or any person from village that is being attacked), or if no one on said claim was online in past 24 (48?) hrs.

In case sieging party goes offline with siege alts, you can just camp them near the siege claim (make so that you can't log in ON the siege claim). Siege damage also should be somehow scaled with character stats, so siege alts should be a major investment and loosing them to be not pleasant. I.e. minimum requirement to stats/lp/exp/whatever to be added to sieging party.

This addresses issue of players not playing 24/7
- Basically, active sieging can be done only if both parties are online
- If one of them is offline (i.e. siege party goes offline to camp out with combat alts around equipment) - they lose time, after which their effort can be destroyed.
- If villagers go offline, they also loose time after which they can be destroyed.

This allows free raiding of inactive claims, but active claims can be raided only if both parties are active.
People with huge time difference might never have a "window" together, but, well, then most likely they also would never interact under normal circumstances. It's a game after all.

This is not realistic, but real-life warfare is not fun at all. And we need fun in the game we play.

[Hrenli]

When a siege machine would (criminally) deal damage to a wall object, a siege claim is created

So, do I understand it right that with that change we should be able to remove unwalled claims with siege machines quite quickly? Or does attacking a personal claim pole or village idol create siege claim too?

[pppp]

- Basically, active sieging can be done only if both parties are online

So one can never log in to avoid being raided ?

Also consider two overlapping claims, vclaim slightly larger than pclaim. Pclaim overrides vclaim so everyone inside have permission to pclaim and live normally. The village has only one member which never is online. except to reload curio. Outer wall is on vclaim but not on pclaim. 100% immunity.


I like the idea of an attack window, which can be defined at claimstone or at idol.
One note is that an attack window when there is a pclaim on vclaim should be union of both windows rather than an intersection. Attack window for a pclaim could be somewhat (30%) shorter than one of village claim.

[unicron]

What if being in a siege state, villagers will be able to attack everyone (and everything) in the claimed area without any crimes, even without the rage skill?

[shubla]

- Basically, active sieging can be done only if both parties are online

So one can never log in to avoid being raided ?

I suggested earlier that there could be a time window that the defender can decide.
This way defender would have more chances to be online when the siege happens.
Attackers can plan out their attack beforehand etc. so its not a problem for them to siege at the time the defender wants them to.