Some thoughts on Siege

[jordancoles]

Losing fighters can be funny, losing a crafter is a kick in the balls. Losing a base is not funny or fun and rebuilding is basically unheard of.

Half the cost of brick walls, remove 80% of the energy drain and fep rape for manual labour, bring back learning ability from pearl gear, buff all foraged curios but glimmermoss and fix roads

Then the rebuild and general base disposability wouldn't be as bad in terms of regular sieges around the map

[maze]

Losing fighters can be funny, losing a crafter is a kick in the balls. Losing a base is not funny or fun and rebuilding is basically unheard of.

Half the cost of brick walls, remove 80% of the energy drain and fep rape for manual labour, bring back learning ability from pearl gear, buff all foraged curios but glimmermoss and fix roads

Then the rebuild and general base disposability wouldn't be as bad in terms of regular sieges around the map

+1

other then pearl gear...pearl gear was for big villages or highend trades- pearl gear keep the mighty mighty.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

Maybe each act of destruction should be more costly for the attacker than the last, idk
Of course that would just open up the possibility that you can defend yourself absolutely with enough blocking objects...

Unless you find a way to have the siege incorporate such structures can be used by the defenders of the section of the city is captured by the attackers then it would cause people to give second thought of onion layering their village because all of a sudden, if the attackers are able to gain control of it, then it can end up being used as a forward base of a sort. Again this is just discussing concept but one that is trying to find a way to make it so that one side can't easily cheat victory before it starts.

[Kaios]

Some people might dislike it but for this to work and for lack of a better term you are going to require some kind of "Trial by Fire" object. I don't know if I like the idea of putting time-gates on the actual destruction or repair of walls and other stuff but besides that I think it might be better to extend the process during the setting-up portion of the siege. Though I do see the point in time-gating those things of course as it seems we want to avoid the "total destruction" scenario as much as possible.

This is why I suggest that a Trial by Fire (or whatever you would call it) be required, not only would the appearance of an enemy claim actually "announce" the siege but this would allow you the opportunity to create further steps in the attacking process. As an example, in order to do damage the claim needs to cover the part you want to destroy. Alternatively, you need to claim all portions of an attached wall before being able to damage it at all. Take it a step further and require the building of a Siege Tower(s) to extend the claim.

Honestly though I'm not sure what to suggest, I saw someone post about sieges needing to cost a massive amount of resources and I do think that regardless of you raiding a big village or a tiny hermit the resource cost should be substantial either way.

[MightySheep]

There's honestly so many parallels between this game and Wurm and when I see talk of implementing proper siege system, Wurm is all that comes to my mind.

Hard to think of times when I've had more fun in a game than on Wurm when we would organize a raid on a city which required like 20-30 people who are all willing to stay up all night and commit to destroying a city.

The amount of time and effort that goes into creating villages in that game and the extent to which you can destroy all that work in 1 raid far exceeds Haven yet the people in that game didn't act like pussies in this thread, I think that partly has to do with the fact that people can respect the difficulty and scale of the undertaking required to destroy a city. When you have a requirement of lots of manpower + lots of time and you give the defenders a big defender advantage, then it is hard to complain when you get raided. It would be epic if Haven could get to a similar point with the siege mechanics.

I think its boring and stupid to make "time" the limiter in sieging, to say "come back in x hours" is so lame, it honestly just feels like a lazy implementation which minimal thought went into. Makes a lot more sense to me that sieging should require a big investment on the part of the attackers in terms of time/effort, and the speed of the siege should be dependent on the power of the attackers, not just uniform for everybody (why should a 20 man army have the same attacking power as 1 man?). For instance if the attackers have to set up catapult and then fire stones at the wall which do like 1% wall damage per shot, then it would require 100 shots with some kind of time delay powering up each shot, which potentially could be many hours of work (especially if you have a catapult accuracy level which is dependent on perception) but if you have enough people to man 5 catapults it would be 5x quicker. Also would be more interesting if the quality of the materials used to build the catapults and the quality of the stone fired is taken into account. All these things make the game more immersive and give you reason to actually be logged in which this game lacks.

[jordancoles]

Another thing to consider when talking about constant or frequent sieging is cows
It doesn't matter if your ovens and shit are easy to rebuild if your top q cows are completely slaughtered

2 years into a world going back to q10 is probably the post crippling thing that could happen to you, and at that point, why bother doing anything meaningful again?
What keeps people content and willing to rebuild after the the largest form of your village's grind is taken from you?

The majority of the server is keeping their animals alive and logging out right now. If people have that responsibility taken away from them, then what is their motivation then?
To kill bears and boars and shit for a few hours and then only get to eat 4 out of the 30 sausages you made because 300% FEP is just too good to move out of?

Before you consider regular siege you need to consider what will be lost, the time investment and the setbacks caused by the raid, and then ask yourself, "will the average person would be willing to continue player after losing it all?" and if you think so, then "why would they?"
I'll post a video soon showing you how easy it is to level people's shit, and it will also show you exactly what I would do in the case of timers getting in the way of my destruction

[loftar]

Another thing to consider when talking about constant or frequent sieging is cows

[*] Strike a cow. The cow falls prone. 6 hours later the cow can be struck again. Three strikes and the cow dies.

[MightySheep]

Sounds to me like you are just against pvp and raiding in general JC. It doesnt make much sense to me to use the "people might quit if they lose stuff" argument in a perma death pvp game.

If you think sieging should remain basically impossible as it is now then theres not much point in posting in this thread because this is a thread for brainstorming how to move forward with implementing a working siege system, not to debate whether or not siege should be in the game in the first place.

I think the defenders can't complain if it is set up so that the attackers have to put in a lot of time and effort and the defender has some kind of big advantage. Losing entire village seems like an appropriate outcome to me. The whole point of perma death is the fun of the risk factor, I dont see why it should be any different for villages. A village raid should be a big event that people would be willing to skip work for

[jordancoles]

Another thing to consider when talking about constant or frequent sieging is cows

[*] Strike a cow. The cow falls prone. 6 hours later the cow can be struck again. Three strikes and the cow dies.

Can the same person mark every cow in the pen?
Also, 18 hours to kill a cow

Can they be treated in between damage ticks to remove their damage?
Protection of livestock is definitely important, but also what happens when the cow is brought off of claims?
If it's fair-game off claim we could simply rebuild the pen and create airlocks and then shoo them off claim to kill instantly

[jordancoles]

Sounds to me like you are just against pvp and raiding in general JC. It doesnt make much sense to me to use the "people might quit if they lose stuff" argument in a perma death pvp game.

If you think sieging should remain basically impossible as it is now then theres not much point in posting in this thread because this is a thread for brainstorming how to move forward with implementing a working siege system, not to debate whether or not siege should be in the game in the first place.

I think the defenders can't complain if it is set up so that the attackers have to put in a lot of time and effort and the defender has some kind of big advantage. Losing entire village seems like an appropriate outcome to me. The whole point of perma death is the fun of the risk factor, I dont see why it should be any different for villages.

They can change the siege system however they like, but it's important to look at it from multiple perspectives

What is there in the game right now for people to do once they have everything?
Once your daily chores are dealt with, what are you going to do?
Hunt? Get a few more glimmermoss for The Pile?
And after you lose all that you have, would you find it fun to do the grind all over again just to get to that same point, where you do daily chores and little else?
Many people simply quit at that point because the rebuild isn't worth the effort all over again

Engame is raiding and killing.
Once you find yourself on the losing side, you quit or you rebuild.

The game's pop is dropping and I highly doubt that more frequent destruction would draw more sheep to the game
I'm fine with constant siege, and I'd participate in it, but unless it's properly balanced with the rebuild motivators the game will die as a pvp circlejerk with no new players to fill the gaps