Fix to Raiding (as well as Brickwalls).

[Mario_Demorez]

With the math I mentioned in the idea raiders would be able to start a raid Monday at 4 pm. Raid for 3-4 hours. Leave, come back the next day at whatever time they pleased, let’s say 4 again and repeat. They would be able to break the claim in 4 days. The regeneration is not high enough to stop concesscuitive daily raids. Drying time is not included so it will take longer if you do it by taking breaks, however if you do it in 10 hours without breaks you could easily organize it where you have enough catapults and rams to break the shield without missing damage.

This will be heavily abused to siege people with obligations outside playing a video game.

Which part?

[Ardennesss]

With the math I mentioned in the idea raiders would be able to start a raid Monday at 4 pm. Raid for 3-4 hours. Leave, come back the next day at whatever time they pleased, let’s say 4 again and repeat. They would be able to break the claim in 4 days.

[Mario_Demorez]

With the math I mentioned in the idea raiders would be able to start a raid Monday at 4 pm. Raid for 3-4 hours. Leave, come back the next day at whatever time they pleased, let’s say 4 again and repeat. They would be able to break the claim in 4 days.

This is for a palisade. The total amount of time needed for this raid including drying would be around 22 hours. I do believe if someone spends that much time guarding their siege weapons they should get something.

A possibility for a fix for someone finding when someone works and only raiding during that time would be Adding some village “defenses” that makes the village impervious to damage during a time span repeated every day. If someone found out I worked at 7-3 and decided to raid me during that time I could defend my self during these hours with this defense. This would be preset and could not be changed while the shield is not max. A max of 7 or 8 hours window as well. I do believe a lot of people would just set this window when Russians play the most though.

[Ardennesss]

Honestly, I think we're way over complicating the fix for the current issues.
1. Sieges are pointless because if they know they can't defend, they'll just port/vault the good stuff before you even get in.
2. Sieges are pointless because if they defend, it requires dedicating 20+ hours of your time.

Point 1 can be fixed by deactivating charters much earlier than currently, and deactivating roads that are on claim as well.
Point 2 can be addressed by front loading some of the siege time, by reintroducing dry time on common siege weapons. You move dry time from 1 hour to 8 hours for siege weapons built on claim, and take 7 hours off the overall siege time investment requirement. Once a shield goes "under siege" the dry time is then reduced back to 1 hour for further siege weapons built on the claim. This would require that all claims be extended out to protect themselves with this mechanic, which is an obvious downside as people not inclined to read patch notes could be negatively impacted.

End result: People can once again place siege weapons and not invest the time to defend them if they so choose, hoping the claim they're targeting does not find them. If they do invest the time to protect the siege weapons, overall siege time stays exactly the same. Everyone still gets the same "overall" time to defend their village from a siege, either by finding the drying weapons and bashing them, or breaking the active siege.

As far as making palisades easier to siege than brick walls, I don't think there's really a clean way to do it that doesn't require a mechanic change on Jorbtar's part to detect what type of wall is enclosing the outside perimeter of a claim. It'd be simple to do for shots that were placed directly at the wall, but this would just result in people shooting over the wall to target things that aren't brick walls to do increased shield damage.

Every suggested system is going to have pros/cons to weigh, idk.

[CaddoPuma]

There are some questionable moments for me. ...Now onto the stat buff change.

You make a lot of points about things with which I have no experience. However, this idea was inspired because of my insistence on protecting people who dont want to pvp by giving them a way to defend themselves from what would normally be higher statted aggressors. So I can speak to your objections concerning this mechanic

The first way to cheese this system I found is the ability to symbolically raid oneself for the stat buffs. You can temporarily double the strength of your crafter, or set up small claims on the mountain to cheese mammoths with double stats on your tank character. Granted, these may be not significant enough and there are currently more efficient ways to cheese PVE encounters, but the potential of abuse is there.

There is no potential for abuse in this matter for a number of reasons. 1) The buff is bound to the VClaim or PClaim which is under siege. Chars on other claims owned by the defenders will not be buffed as a result of "the main village" being besieged. 2) The buff is not a permanent value applied at the beginning. It's a variable based on a constantly updated difference between the "fighting stats" of the defender(s) vs those of the attacker(s). 3) The buff only applies against player combatants. The defender's stats will remain the same as ever vs mobs, even if fighting a mob on the besieged claim at the same time as the siege.

Here is an example: Attacking team has 5 players at initial siege. Each player has 500 Melee and 300 Str (I know there are other stats which affect combat but for the sake of example, we'll only use those.) So this "team" has a total of 2500 MC and 1500 Str. At the time of the initial attack there are 2 people online with permissions in the defending claim. One of them has 200MC and 150St and the other hase 700MC and 800St. Their total is 900MC and 950. Because this is an unfair fight, "Righteous Indignation" is applied to bring the stats of the defenders up to 400MC and 300St for the first and 1400MC and 1600St for the second (because the buff is capped at +100% of the player's existing stats). Now these 2 guys manage to contact their offline designated fighter who has 5000MC and 7000St. Suddenly the defenders have the advantage so "Righteous Indignation" goes away.

Secondly, if comparison considers total sum of certain stat of all characters on the claim then it basically incentivizes defender to spawn inside as much alts as possible without giving them perms, thus skewering numbers to their advantage regardless of actual stats ratio. If comparison would consider average scores of all characters, then similarly you spawn a lot of alts but give them the perms this time. Even without alts, in a scenario where, for example, there are 5 attackers versus equally statted 5 defenders the first defender would do would be to remove perms from 3 people of theirs, granting big stat boost to remaining 2.
And there is vaguely threatening possibility of instantly knowing when someone steps on certain claim, by sieging it yourself and automatizing reading of buff numbers on naked alt with reporting any such occurrence to nearby death squad.

This seems to me to be a specious argument, as the defender's buff (Righteous indignation, as I like to call it) is capped at +100% of each combat-related stat of each defending char.

With the math I mentioned in the idea raiders would be able to start a raid Monday at 4 pm. Raid for 3-4 hours. Leave, come back the next day at whatever time they pleased, let’s say 4 again and repeat. They would be able to break the claim in 4 days. The regeneration is not high enough to stop consecutive daily raids. Drying time is not included so it will take longer if you do it by taking breaks, however if you do it in 10 hours without breaks you could easily organize it where you have enough catapults and rams to break the shield without missing damage.

This will be heavily abused to siege people with obligations outside playing a video game.

It's not abuse. It's real world siege mechanics. If villagers under siege offer absolutely no defense - not even logging in to repair siege damage - for 4 days; they should join another, more active village rather than trying to operate their own village. In the ~3 hour discussion our village had with Mario before he posted this idea; I being the carebear, peacenik, non-pvper that I am; took the role as defender's advocate. It was my objections to all the ideas he came up with to make sieging easier which led to the idea of "Righteous Indignation" (the term I created for the defender's buff). With these mechanics designed to spread the siege out over multiple sessions, rather than demanding the siegers do it all in one session no matter how long it takes; They also give the defenders an opportunity within those intervals while the attacker is taking a break to actively do something to repair damage taken by the shield, the walls, and defensive siege engines. Personally, I hate participating in PVP because it almost always comes down to the experienced and/or those with disposable RL funds bullying and destroying the game for the newbs and poverty stricken. And yet, I respect the rights of other to enjoy their game their way, so long as it doesnt affect my game enjoyment in a negative way. For me to support any change to the PVP mechanics, it has to have ways of balancing defense for the unskilled fighter who is unjustly attacked. I believe this idea as a whole does that in multiple ways or I wouldnt be commenting on this thread, much less so strongly supporting the idea.

[neeco]

I would also point out that the only thing stopping bigger players from seiging hermits is the fact that it takes so long and so much focused effort to do so. With who-knows-how-many brimstone nodes, a single titan character could siege any average village without the inhabitant being able to do anything about it.

There is a delicate balance between too hard and too easy.
While this change is perhaps a change in the right direction, I hope to eventually see a system where every player, hermit or village, can have a meaningful effect on defending their base from seige. Not every seige should fail, not every seige should succeed.
And most importantly, tedium should not be the primary protection from seige of weaker players.

[Ardennesss]

It's not abuse. It's real world siege mechanics. If villagers under siege offer absolutely no defense - not even logging in to repair siege damage - for 4 days; they should join another, more active village rather than trying to operate their own village. In the ~3 hour discussion our village had with Mario before he posted this idea; I being the carebear, peacenik, non-pvper that I am; took the role as defender's advocate. It was my objections to all the ideas he came up with to make sieging easier which led to the idea of "Righteous Indignation" (the term I created for the defender's buff). With these mechanics designed to spread the siege out over multiple sessions, rather than demanding the siegers do it all in one session no matter how long it takes; They also give the defenders an opportunity within those intervals while the attacker is taking a break to actively do something to repair damage taken by the shield, the walls, and defensive siege engines.

Did I miss the part of his suggestion where he says you can actively repair shield? I only see a reference to the passive shield regeneration that already naturally occurs, so I don't see how you could ever counter a hit and run tactic if will eventually deplete the shield completely.

[CaddoPuma]

It's not abuse. It's real world siege mechanics. If villagers under siege offer absolutely no defense - not even logging in to repair siege damage - for 4 days; they should join another, more active village rather than trying to operate their own village. In the ~3 hour discussion our village had with Mario before he posted this idea; I being the carebear, peacenik, non-pvper that I am; took the role as defender's advocate. It was my objections to all the ideas he came up with to make sieging easier which led to the idea of "Righteous Indignation" (the term I created for the defender's buff). With these mechanics designed to spread the siege out over multiple sessions, rather than demanding the siegers do it all in one session no matter how long it takes; They also give the defenders an opportunity within those intervals while the attacker is taking a break to actively do something to repair damage taken by the shield, the walls, and defensive siege engines.

Did I miss the part of his suggestion where he says you can actively repair shield? I only see a reference to the passive shield regeneration that already naturally occurs, so I don't see how you could ever counter a hit and run tactic if will eventually deplete the shield completely.

I don't know if in his efforts to avoid a TLDR scenario he left that part off or if after further thought he rejected it. But the idea of being able to manually repair shields was mentioned. I personally do think it should be a part of this whole siege rework idea if it is implemented - whether that is part of Mario's suggestion or not. The reason I think this is exactly what you said, "...I don't see how you could ever counter a hit and run tactic if will eventually deplete the shield completely." There must be a method by which if a defender comes on and finds the attackers inactive, said defenders can make repairs at a limited rate, just as the damage is done at a limited rate. That way, the final outcome is not a foregone conclusion, but a result of who was most effective at being there and protecting their interests.

[Granger]

How does the claim determine whether it has a palisade shield or brick wall shield?

At the moment something in the game lets a claim know that a complete wall is around the claim.

Are you sure about this? How do you reach that conclusion?

On the general topic I agree with sieges needing to be easier to make them fun (and feasible) for an attacker, on the other hand an easier siege mechanic also needs to be fun (and not game ending) for a defender.

[Mario_Demorez]

How does the claim determine whether it has a palisade shield or brick wall shield?

At the moment something in the game lets a claim know that a complete wall is around the claim.

Are you sure about this? How do you reach that conclusion?

On the general topic I agree with sieges needing to be easier to make them fun (and feasible) for an attacker, on the other hand an easier siege mechanic also needs to be fun (and not game ending) for a defender.

You have to break the outer wall to commit crimes no? To break the outer wall you have to destroy the shield. It might not be around the claim but more to do with visitor debuff but something is there.