W9 Siege System

[Beezer12Washingbeard]

I find resource cost not a good restriction as high level factions are most likely going to be hitting the cost easier; it is not a matter of if they can afford the cost, but when. You'd have to kind of push the cost to border-line or even beyond impractical.

Good point. Well, preferably the ability would be an expensive or prohibitive action somehow, so that people didn't do it willy-nilly. Or maybe it could only be executed under certain conditions (no idea what those would be).

But implementing a "Salt the Earth" mechanic would be fun, hilariously dickish, and could have some really big and interesting effects gameplay-wise.

[Granger]

It already exist in the meta of breaking through the walls, killing everything that moves, looting anything of slight interest, replacing all locks if a masterkeys are found, destroying everything destroyable (including crops on the fields through harvesting and dropping them) and then waiting onsite for all the items spilled on the ground out of broken containers to despawn.

[Beezer12Washingbeard]

But if some newjack rolls through and decides to use the area as the basis for their new settlement, or if the old player decides to make another go at the same spot (for whatever reason), there's nothing stopping them from at least making an attempt, if the ground is still good for farming. True, things that were there aren't anymore, but you can always rebuild.

Salt the earth, however, and it's done. Nobody's gonna want that land for anything, for a long while. Like, 3-6 months of realtime is what I'm thinking.

[Granger]

Either you're really new to this game and have no clue how the world would look after a short while or you're trolling.

Your idea would enable even more rampant griefing than already available and would backfire even for assholes who like to fuck people up as it would reduce the amount of people to mess with even more than the current options to drive them away.

Sorry, I'm strongly against it.

[Beezer12Washingbeard]

Either you're really new to this game and have no clue how the world would look after a short while or you're trolling.

Your idea would enable even more rampant griefing than already available and would backfire even for assholes who like to fuck people up as it would reduce the amount of people to mess with even more than the current options to drive them away.

Sorry, I'm strongly against it.

You don't have to apologize for being against it, haha. God knows there's legit reasons to oppose it. It's just an idea I'm throwing into the aether, I figure if the devs like it enough they could find a way to balance it since they know the world a lot better code- and culture-wise. The backfiring would be the best part, imo, and is part of why I think it'd fit so well with the world as it already is, because anyone who got too heavy-handed with it would end up only fucking themselves in the end. It'd be somewhat self-regulating in that regard.

And I am pretty new, but believe me I'm already pretty well acquainted with how things work, both personally and from reading the forums for a bit It's how I got this idea in the first place lol

edit: well, that and history of course. Carthago delenda est.

[MrBunzy]

Just going to post a few ideas i've had about fixing the siege system.

Limit walls to one shield each:

Claim shields have become a pretty central part of sieging, but it seems quite unintuitive, especially when one wall can have multiple overlapping village and personal claims. Aesthetically it gets quite ugly in larger villages with many walls and p-claims (even multiple v-claims), and can also cause newer players to unknowingly leave gaps in their defenses by not claiming the entirety of their walls. My idea for this is to simplify the system by limiting walls to one claim/shield each. Make players choose which claim shield a wall will be connected to when it is constructed, and make walls only build-able on their designated claims. This would mean at most, sieges would involve breaking through one village claim wall, and then any p-claim walls inside it. Instead of looking at all the overlapping claims and figuring which you needed to damage and where you could damage multiple shields at once, you could simply look at the wall and see how much effort would be required to siege that. A system could be made for reassigning walls to different claim shields, as long as there was a significant time gate on it, and the wall was completely within the new claim. Unclaimed walls should be useless, decay quickly or even be hand-bashable.

Remove or nerf the shield given by village claims:

An alternative solution would be to simply remove claim shields from village claims. Initially, villages were just an efficient way to claim large amounts of land, but with the addition of the shield system their role became much more convoluted. It has changed a few times so I may be wrong, but I think currently if a village shield is reduced to 0 all the personal claim shields within them also stop working. This means that the best course of action for a village under siege is to wait for the village shield to be depleted and then bash the village claim, effectively giving a 12 hour buffer to any p-claims not within reach of outer walls, at the cost of a substantial amount of cloth. This again is a rather unintuitive system which requires you to sink a rather odd resource into village security, and I think it wouldn't be hard to think of an alterative to give extra capacity for claim shields. In the new world when localized resources cannot be p-claimed, village claims will also become the only means of claiming them, but a full 12+ hour siege seems a little extreme just to steal someones salt or icicles, and a different system is probably needed for protecting these anyway.

Bring back hearth fire summoning:

A final problem that has become common is the use of multiple villages/vaults to avoid the consequences of a successful siege. Equipment can easily be alt vaulted or transported elsewhere, and scented characters have ample time to vacate a village under siege and find a claimed palisade with a full claim to hide in. I don't think there is any way to force a village to give up its valuables when it is sieged, but this is not really a problem as siege is more about inconveniencing the enemy than personal gain. However, if you are trying to kill a scented character, track them to a village or vault, and commit to sieging it to get to them, it should be more difficult for them to escape than simply hopping to another vault. To do this, I propose:
1) a way to summon scented characters if you can get to their hearth fire, and
2) that scented characters should not be able to move their hearth fires, or atleast it should be much more difficult for them to do so.
I know hearth fire summoning was removed because of a number of silly abuses, but I think giving players a fixed location they need to defend if they leave scents is a very effective way to solve the current vault-hopping problems. Summoning could of course be a little more lenient. There could for instance be a one hour timer on it, and a player would be given a notification that they were going to be summoned, giving them some time to try and get to their hearth fire and fight off the attacker. Summoning a perpetrator with no hearth fire could also give this notification, and the summoning could be canceled if they built a hearth fire within that time (the hearth fire then could not be moved for the duration of their scents and would need to be defended). Some repercussion would be needed for characters that had their hearth fires destroyed repeatedly, maybe they would be unable to build new ones, or would just die?

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, but I think sieging really needs more love, and a new world is an excellent opportunity to improve on some of the mechanics.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Here's a suggestion from a conversation I had with Jorb a number of months ago:

http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=702721#p702721

Kingdoms were an awesome addition, and I applaud you for all the other minor changes you've made since I last played actively.
I still think the game is a few steps away from a "sustainable endgame" driven by sustainable conflict.

As you said, siege system balance is probably one of the most difficult things to "get right."
My major qualm is that currently, it requires far too large of a time investment. Understandable, however, as losing a siege is rather devastating.
I understand you are balancing the effort in sieging a city, vis a vis the time investment that a regular defender need spend to defend his city, and what the defender has to lose (most of everything).

Here's yet another proposal:
1. Defender picks a defense window of 2 hours (any time), on either Saturday or Sunday.
2. Passerbys may inspect any object or tile on claimed land, and see the defense window.
3. Attacker arrives and constructs a ram on the property, with a 30 minute drying time, and attacks the wall for some moderate amount of damage during the window.
4. If Attacker passes the damage threshhold, the claim receives +1 to a progressive debuff from the following list:

0. No Debuff
1. The claim is frozen (it may not be expanded or deleted.)
2. Attackers may hop the wall at any time by using a "Rope and Hook," which requires 15 minutes to attach (remains 1 hour), and 15 minutes to climb up. However, they still have a visitor debuff that stops them from performing any criminal acts except up to 15 thefts per day (globally on the claim, not per visitor.) Defenders may still attack them, in which case they and their party may fight back.
3. The visitor debuff now allows 1 vandalism act per day.
4. The visitor debuff now allows assault/murder, and there is no theft limit.
5. The claim loses all of its defensive power for 1 day, and the outer wall may be breached by the ram.
6. The claim ownership switches to the last individual to do damage to the claim.

5. If the city passes a defense period without the damage threshhold being met, the debuff value ticks -2 until 0.

Brimstone/siege engines/etc, should be balanced so that this remains available to smaller groups, putting the onus on the larger groups to actually defend against them, and cheap enough that it removes a lot of the benefit that could be gained by simply setting up your claims to have many smaller ones (which would force the enemy to burn down many more resources for no reason other than the fact that the defender used many small claims.)

Ultimately, this would still make a total victory from siege a substantial time/resource investment that would not be easily accomplished, but it would spread that out over a period of 6 RL weeks with perhaps an hour or two at each "stage", rather than a period of 48 hours of nolifing semi-afk.
It would allow conflict to occur at all sizes, rather than reserved for large factions.
It would allow ample time to appeal to others (swear vassalage in return for protection from a larger group?) from those that wanted it. It would have interesting play/counterplay with thiefs jumping your walls. Perhaps you let them in, thinking they are going to get some nice loot, but instead you have a new road system built to your big brother's city, which promptly retaliates as they go through your cupboards?
It would allow land (and real property improvements) to actually change hands, rather than necessarily causing salting of the earth on successful breach in order for the attackers to maximize damage on property they can never wrest control of.
Defenders would have more than enough time to mitigate losses by transferring themselves to another location if they felt they were unable to respond appropriately.

[Massa]

But if some newjack rolls through and decides to use the area as the basis for their new settlement, or if the old player decides to make another go at the same spot (for whatever reason), there's nothing stopping them from at least making an attempt, if the ground is still good for farming. True, things that were there aren't anymore, but you can always rebuild.

Salt the earth, however, and it's done. Nobody's gonna want that land for anything, for a long while. Like, 3-6 months of realtime is what I'm thinking.

why

haven is a game of risks and crime i get that but that's just

like

why

[calebsnow]

Id like to see it more similar to beginning worlds, not quite as easy but not as ridiculous as it is now raiding and pillaging was great fun as an end game activity, something which this game is lacking in at the moment

[Granger]

Id like to see it more similar to beginning worlds, not quite as easy but not as ridiculous as it is now raiding and pillaging was great fun as an end game activity, something which this game is lacking in at the moment

Feel free to come up with a suggestion that makes raiding&pillaging and being subjected to it a fun experience.