Theifs and Soldiers, Ending Binary Sieges

[MooCow]

I read the lastest topic of sieging, and many others. I have tried my best to incorporate all of the ideas.

The biggest problem with Sieges is that they either result in the total destruction of somebodies game, or they fail to break through the walls. Because there are a few different reasons a person might want to get inside somebodies wall, I suggest splitting the needs into two different types of attack.

Burglaries and Sieges

Burglary Purposes

• Killing AFK Red Handed People
• Stealing stuff
• Quick and low Impact surprise attacks

A player can become a Thief with the proper skills by right clicking their hearth fire. Thieves can pick gate locks, but can't carry much. They have reduced attack and move slower when on an enemies claim and can't fast travel at all. They must return to their hearth fire to stop being a theif. Thieves look visually distinct.

Details

The idea with burglary is to enable people to enter other villages while greatly reducing what they can do when inside.

Locks

• When picking gate locks, they take the same amount of a time as a normal lock +1 hour. This adds a minimum delay for even the highest stated characters vs the weakest noobs possible
• After you having picked one gate lock, all other gate locks gate lock times gate reduced the total amount of time you have spent successfully picking gate locks. Non-gate locks are unaffected. This deincentivises multiple walls.
• Only the character that picked the lock can enter, and only one person per side can pick a lock at the same time. Locks picked by other players can be picked be new ones. This limits the number of people that can reasonably enter a lot at the same time

Thieves

• In order to become a thief you must be at your hearth fire, while it is on a friendly claim. Thieves can not fast travel in any way The idea is that a player should have to know where they are going to steal from, and then walk there. Waling around as a should be a bad idea
• When you are a Thief your inventory is reduced from 4x4 to 2x2, you can not equip traveler sacks, wanderer bindles, or backpacks. Nomad and verify/subscribe functions as normal
• You can't pass through gates while carrying items over your head
• You combat ability is cut in half, you can't wear Armour, and defenders get a +500 bonus when attacking you. The idea is that thieves should want to avoid being in combat, except to assassinate afk players
• You move slightly slower while on unfriendly claims
• You can not destroy things while a thief. If a wall has no gate, you can climb over it
• You can not build a hearthfire while a thief, and must return to your original hearth to change back into a normal hearthling again
• If your hearth is destroyed while you are out thieving you drop all your items, are KOed, and after the normal KO delay are teleported to a random wilderness spawn as a normal hearthling[
• Stolen items should not despawn as long as there is a sent linking them

Siege Purposes

• Removing Unwanted Claims/Villages
• Making bad neighbors leave you alone
• Guarantee defenders can be prepared

A player can with the sieging skill can place a Attack Proclamation on a claim, other people that want to participate in the siege must sign on within 1 hour of the bulletin being placed. The attack is scheduled exactly 1 week after it is placed. Within the first 24 hours defenders can change the attack time by up to +/- 9 hours of the original time. The siege window is 2 hours, and Only people signed onto the proclamation can participate in the siege

Details

The main idea with the week delay, is it allows you to ask for help, secure your valuables, or just run away. The would allow players to lose a siege and not lose everything. if you want to get somebodies valuables, or want to kill red handed peeps, try burglary instead.

Basics

• In order to participate in attacking you must be signed on to the Attack Proclamation. Villages can sign the Villages name which automatically allows all all villagers to participate
• Defenders must also sign on to participate. Attackers must sign in the first hour, while defenders have until the siege starts to sign. The Owner/Law Speaker decides who is defending
• At any time any player can see all the people attacking and defending in the proclamations that they are a part of
• There is no claim shield, instead, a hearthling must walk up and touch something to 'flag' it to be targeted by a catapult
• When a all is broken during the siege, it turns into a broken wall. Only attackers and defenders can pass through these tiles. This is especially important because it prevents non-participants from getting involved
• Battering rams, catapults, and wreaking balls all take 2 hours to 'dry' so if the are knocked out of commission during the siege, they cant be used again. This also allows defenders to quickly see if the attackers are going to show up. If they have no equipment at the start of the siege they cant do shit

Attackers

• You can create as many Attack Proclamation as you want, and be signed onto all of them simultaneously. After you have signed onto an Attack Proclamation you can't sign one against the same claim for 2 weeks (1 week after the attack). This allows players to attack any strange assortment of donut claims and stacked bullshit. You as the player figure out what claims you need to target fully attack
• Attacking a claim allows you to hit all claims under it that overlap it's tiles
• During the siege, attackers can destroy the personal or village claim they are fighting against
• All attackers must have siegcraft to participate

Defenders

• During the first 24 hours after the siege is declared the Defenders can change the time the seige time. The time can be set forward or backwards up to a maximum of 9 hours. This allows the defenders to pick a time that they can actually participate
• A Defender can use a catapult on the sieged claim to attack any claim during the siege, but they can not destroy the claim they are fighting against
• When the siege is over all attackers still on a defending claim get a visitor debuff
• There is a 10 minute grace period after the attack finishes where defenders can rebuild their walls

Please let me know why you think this idea is bad, harsh critique can only make ideas better.

[Lojka]

even if it takes me 2 hours to pick lock to get inside and 2 hours to get outside

then still i can get there overnight and steal anvil

[azrid]

The real problem with thieving ideas are that you can steal anything.
There has to be a system in place where villages willingly put something up for theft, at some benefit to them as long as those things are not stolen, for this to work.

[MooCow]

even if it takes me 2 hours to pick lock to get inside and 2 hours to get outside

then still i can get there overnight and steal anvil

You cant steal anvils because you can't pass through gates while carrying items over your head

The real problem with thieving ideas are that you can steal anything.
There has to be a system in place where villages willingly put something up for theft, at some benefit to them as long as those things are not stolen, for this to work.

My hope is that having to walk all the way from their base to yours would be a large deterrent for the more petty crime, and if they were close by then you could easily strike back. Because they can only steal 4-16 items they can't really rob you blind. Additionally you can put locks on most containers and all houses making the whole process very slow.

[jorb]

Good effort here, OP. We have discussed burglarly type effects before, and the problem we've seen is that burglars would basically have to be able to pass through not just walls, but really any object, because otherwise it is easy/possible to create a wall (of some type of object) which locks them out of a compound.

[Jackwolf]

Lifting would still be possible, though without an inclusion of absolute vandalism it does make it hard with what you say.

[Embers]

So whats the difference between 20 alt "burglary" covered by warriors and a "siege"?

[Sevenless]

The problem is a lot of unreplaceable permanent progress can be stolen, which leads to a lot of bullshit alt vaulting. That or some super safe storage that hermits will never be able to afford. Only factions would afford proper defense. Otherwise either everyone would be vulnerable = 24/7 online requirements, or no one would be vulnerable and it'd be a pointless mechanic. This means that realistically a "balanced" system would just fuck over hermits and casuals, while adding a defense requirement for factions.

Don't get me wrong, there are players who'd enjoy this type of mechanic. But it would suck balls for everyone else, especially hermits.

[KwonChiMin]

u pick lock and get visitors debuff - fu in current system
devs remove visitor - u pick lock and find pole fence (no gate) right after gate picked (the gates are just to the side of broken ones to disable wallclimbing) - fu if we don`t permit vandalism.

this just add some headache to villagers, but will keep base safe at night.

[Mr_Bober]

I see a few major issues with a burglary system:

1. Attackers have a huge advantage over how burglary works in reality: once the 'victim' goes to sleep (offline), you can do whatever you want without alerting them. Burglary should require stealth and should take just a couple of minutes from when you get in to when you get out; without the risk of waking up your victim, there isn't much of a risk.
[Scenario: you add me as Kin. Study my online/offline patterns for a few days. After that you can easily steal from me with your their alt, when you know that I won't be online, taking all the time you need.]

2. Burglary allows too much griefing. The idea of stealing a few objects is fine, but what about the other stuff? Thieves could dump everything you have to the ground, remove fodder from coops, empty all your barrels and garden pots, picking stuff from growing trees... That's a lot of potential damage, most of which can't be prevented as long as they are allowed to pick up items. Even if stuff didn't disappear immediately, it would still be greatly damaging to whoever has to pick it up again and sort it, with items getting mixed, going under unmovable objects, and so on.

3. Alt vaulting would become the norm. People already do this with stuff like keys or very valuable items. With such a system in place, everyone would have several alts just for that. The longer the game goes on, the stronger these alts would become, since equipping them would get easier (verified account + backpack + 2x traveller sack + merchant robe has a 9x7 inventory, just 1 slot short of a cupboard. And that's without subscription). That means any valuable would be hidden, making it a pain for both burglar and villagers.

4. Gate lockpicking would allow anyone to enter. You could have 1 thief open it, and a bunch of warriors run in with rage to kill everyone. No thanks.

5. No matter how small your inventory, you can just get outside the claim, give the item to an alt, and teleport with him. Sure it takes a bit more time, but the stolen items will be gone on a non-thief alt who can even logout with it.


I like the idea of separating theft and siege, but not unless players have a new way to defend themselves from thieves.
I see two things that should be introduced to do so: first, burglar shouldn't be able to fight, even if attacked. That would make burglary a lot more dangerous, even when you're going again a single farmer hermit. Second, we would need an automatic defence, like guard dogs (tamed wolves?). That way even an hermit could have some kind of defence while he's offline. But that would require a lot of tweaking to make it effective at defending while still giving a chance to skilled thieves to do something.