New Siege Implementation: Siege Chess

[Kaios]

Good job. Stick it in. Keep a eye on feedback and alter accordingly.

That’s the biggest problem with most of their implementations though, they go all in and then ignore the feedback allowing the issues to get worse until the mechanic is so engrained in the world that removing or changing it would be more difficult than simply leaving it in and unchanged despite any feedback or complaints. See any posts discussing the merits of seamark for example, majority agrees the way they’ve implemented it is stupid but guess what the devs waited a bit too long on that and now there are single realms with huge portions of land claimed all across the map because of how easy it is to expand realms.

[Sevenless]

Good job. Stick it in. Keep a eye on feedback and alter accordingly.

That’s the biggest problem with most of their implementations though, they go all in and then ignore the feedback allowing the issues to get worse until the mechanic is so engrained in the world that removing or changing it would be more difficult than simply leaving it in and unchanged despite any feedback or complaints. See any posts discussing the merits of seamark for example, majority agrees the way they’ve implemented it is stupid but guess what the devs waited a bit too long on that and now there are single realms with huge portions of land claimed all across the map because of how easy it is to expand realms.

Not sure it's a great time to criticize them for not taking feedback in a thread where they decided their last idea (put up for criticism) got shot down so they tried again, also asking for criticism again. I know there's a balance of not listening to your community because they ask for the wrong things (ie the forum population is skewed and not properly representative of the game population), and partly listening because you fucked up but lets encourage them for trying to connect on this topic at least.

Also I'm 90ish % certain that there hasn't been a proper C&I thread for giving criticism about sea claim mechanics and how they should be replaced.

[Kaios]

Obviously it’s good that they are asking for feedback but I already pointed out to jorb that they rarely act on many of the given suggestions when they do that, they usually just come up with something entirely different from their own ideas.

You’re right about there not being a proper C&I thread but you could always use the announcement thread for that discussion. I made plenty of valid points, so did others that never receive any response. Of course the people abusing these mechanics aren’t going to point out how bad they are, they would rather go out and exploit them for their own gain instead until they have made it impossible to fix the issues. Realms are such a powerful tool, you can get so much benefit from them when you cover enough people and start earning auhority in large amounts and I know it’s not the right thread for that discussion but fuck it pisses me off when they do this shit.

[Aceb]

I would like to test it somehow, before it goes live, with maybe 25x speedup.

[boshaw]

You’re right about there not being a proper C&I thread but you could always use the announcement thread for that discussion. I made plenty of valid points, so did others that never receive any response. Of course the people abusing these mechanics aren’t going to point out how bad they are, they would rather go out and exploit them for their own gain instead until they have made it impossible to fix the issues. Realms are such a powerful tool, you can get so much benefit from them when you cover enough people and start earning auhority in large amounts and I know it’s not the right thread for that discussion but fuck it pisses me off when they do this shit.

It doesn't help them when some of those same people also try to mislead the devs with ideas by pretending things are harder than it really is for their group size and robot helpers.

[rye130]

massive post that you should have made its own thread

You said a lot of words and suggested a lot of things and none of it does anything to fix the issues with the siege system. Requiring brimstone for the defender is a complete nonstarter.

Also I think a lot of people are missing the point that this makes defending noobs much easier and doesn't do much to make raiding experienced players possible.

[Raffeh]

massive post that you should have made its own thread

You said a lot of words and suggested a lot of things and none of it does anything to fix the issues with the siege system. Requiring brimstone for the defender is a complete nonstarter.

Also I think a lot of people are missing the point that this makes defending noobs much easier and doesn't do much to make raiding experienced players possible.

You are forgetting cost vs reward. Plus kingdom protection for the small villages or hermits.

Just need to make sure everyone is aware of the changes to siege in an obvious way like in game notification... plus forum warning etc

[rye130]

You are forgetting cost vs reward. Plus kingdom protection for the small villages or hermits.

Cost for raiding a hermit is still 1 ram, pretty cheap for developed players. The ram is now harder to break than before, the cost to destroy it is increased, the effort required to keep it safe is decreased, and the window of timer where the ram is vulnerable is decreased. If a hermit puts up a ton of defenses and the reward isn't it worth it, all I lost was a ram worth of materials and it cost the hermot a bunch of supplies. The hermit probably lost more than I did.

Meanwhile the amount of effort to raid a well established, organized, and properly designed village hasn't decreased nearly enough to make raiding them possible.

Would you rather build 1 ram to level a base, get some curios and materials, or build 5 Rams and 14 catapults to waste some supplies of a big village and still ultimately get nothing. Cost versus reward is not a good argument for this system.

And what the fuck are you even talking about with "kingdom protection"? You're telling me that each kingdom is going to patrol all the bases for all their authority slaves and make sure that they don't get raided?

[stickman]

I think the suggested system might be abusable from both an attackers and defenders perspective. You guys are forgetting that most players will loose access to brimstone in a few months and only the major factions will have it (unless they find underground supplies). So requiring a defensive catapult in certain situations means you will have no hope.

I think you need to look around at the different continents and realize that some areas literally have NO brimstone at all. What are the players without brimstone supposed to do? Is raiding/defending just not part of the game for them now? IMO hermit johhny should be able to try to raid a major faction if he chooses to and should be able to defend without needing a catapult. the major factions are bullies and WILL harass hermits even if their is no loot to gain.

Also what about island vaults? i made my village traditionally on super defendable islands. How are you supposed to use catapults against someone who has built to the VERY edge and left only enough room for a Ram to be placed?

Am I alone in preferring the sneak attack raiding methods that had to be used in old worlds over this? I would prefer doing wall checks then play never ending chess games as resource exhaustion will definitely be a thing for small defenders.

My suggestion i thought about for 1 whole hour before posting:
-stagecraft moved out from under Rage.
-you can hand bash siege equipment but requires siegecraft to damage it
-remove automatic siege alerts... you have to click your claims/idol and do a detection.... if your perc is too low vs your opponents int*stealth you may not be able to get a detection notification unless its closer or something?
-Catapults no longer require brimstone, must be build on a village claim. dont break down when firing. they dont hurt structures anymore (can shoot siege equipment though) and will be modified so they are basically for hitting attackers and defenders who are hanging around sitting still /unlucky
-rams still take 24 hours to dry and take a very along time to break through a wall (like maybe 8 hours or more?)...
-you can repair a damaged wall if it has not been damaged in the last 1 hour

My idea is that you can still sneak rams in for people not checking... but the actual bashing of the wall takes along time... and if you spot it you can shoot at them with your catapult to try to make them stop or you can run at it with alot of developed characters... if they setup a siege village outside your village they can try to roll catapults in close enough to try to pick off yours (real time catapult shooting battles!)

Just a thought.

[pppp]

What should decide the outcome of a siege?
- resources,
- skill,
- presence (time in game)

If any of these is taken into account then newbs are unavoidably screwed because they have no experience, way less resources and very few can outcompete bots pvp groups in terms of presence.

So the only defence for newbs is cost of siege vs potential gains, as rye130 has mentioned. Then, even with gains balancing out siege costs there is also satisfaction resulting from griefing (IDK, just guessing, but there must be something, since in every game there is a sizable griefer population), so in a basic scenario raiding a a palisaded hermit claim with a few stacks of metal and some random useful stuff, should be still a net loss, resources and time-wise.

In the OP idea I like the part where siege costs are defined by limited resource (brimstone) and defense costs are limited by grindable (bottable) resources but defense can be improved by using rare resources. What I do not like is prebuilding defensive towers minus last piece of stone and finishing these when siege begins.

I am favoring siege windows because otherwise a siege turns into nolifing competition. If someone is looking for a fight, he should try several claims and find one where defenders both defenders and attackers are available at the same time. I imagine successful defense as surviving until the end of siege window, while both repairing damage done and trying to damage siege engines. I do not expect a half-naked newb to open his gate and go outside (with master keys, ofc) and fight against fully armed pvpers. Repair vs damage race makes more sense. Basically a hermit should be able to survive 2-3 siege windows to make siege costs unacceptable for attacker. That implies fixed cost per siege machine and per day (measured as hitting a siege window).

For example siege engines should be rearmed (aka repaired) once per siege day, at any time when siege window is closed (optionally: exclude last 15-60 minutes before window opens), and used while siege window is open. Rearming here means more than just one shot, it means some amount of mixed actions (attack/move/whatever), limited per day per machine. Drying machines would be replaced by waiting until beginning of the siege window. The amount of machines defines daily cost of siege and gives defender an idea against what they should prepare. Machines unused during siege window should be rearmed anyway (to keep siege costs per day fixed). Timing of defender actions should be limited as well and building defensive engines should be prohibited within siege window. That splits siege action into two phases: preparation and actual fight creating a kind of tower defense minigame. I would aim for maximum 1 hour to break a single palisade and 1h30m for a brickwall. It is up to discussion if some minimum time to start siege shall be defined, so a siege started less than x time before siege window is postponed until next siege window. The window itself should be quite short, 4 h at max, given the defenders still need some time before it opens to build defensive machines. Drying times shall be adjusted so it is not possible to fully rebuild walls when siege window is closed.

I would like to see variable shoot range of siege machines (catapults only ATM) with varying cost (damage done to machine) and maybe varying damage as well, making it a meaningful choice to shoot deeper inside defender territory or to shoot more times with more impact.
Then to reduce binary result of sieges destroying claimed structures should be possible only with siege machines in order to make it a costly decision to drive someone out of the game.