on the removal of hearth vaults

[bmjclark]

Make it possible to summon people at their idol and idol-less people anywhere (ie replace hearth with idol).

I like this

[MagicManICT]

How about a bunch of us just all get together with one goal in mind: Smash any hearth vault found in the world. We'll protect ourselves behind the only remaining HV, of course, cause who wants to die when doing the rest of the world a favor?

[Jeebus]

Some of my ideas to defeat HV's would be that one could not build ANYTHING within a 7x7 square around the idol (Tiles can still be plowed/paved), hampering HV design somewhat, although this first idea is weak. It may be cheap, but it might allow wall jumpers to get in.

Attackers shouldn't have to wall-jump to kill the perpetrators. Hearthvault designs are tiny and will only hamper some locations for one. Wall jump can still be prevented by dropping liftables such as cellar boulders to fill the interior of the vault.

Only reason I mentioned wall jumping is that in this world climate of despair HV's create, sometimes it feels like wall jumping is the only way we're going to make leeway.

The next idea is a bit better, and defeats small vaults: Attackers that can get within 50 squares of the idol can erect a special "Invader's Tunnel," a structure that acts like a crossroad that links up to any village idol within 50 squares, and demolishes structures inside if necessary to make the exit point. It would require materials like a minehole, but slightly less. It would require six continuous hours to build, though, and uses 50% weariness to travel each way.

This is going to destroy small villages and many village layout, aka a huge majority of the villages in the game. Even large villages isn't going to be happy with this change. Beside that, 50 tiles is a huge distant to have walls be useless.

Hmmm, I guess 50 tiles would be a bit much, now that you put it that way. Maybe 20 tiles... I just worry it'd result in vaults adapting by becoming multi-wall vaults to beat 20 tiles... Another version could be a reverse minehole, where you could tunnel under the vault in the level below, then build a minehole ladder up to the level above to get access to the vault. To balance gameplay, paving the surface would slow down construction time and increase the cost of making the upward hole below. Stone would up time and cost 25%, brick by 100%, and gold would up construction costs and time by a staggering 500%. However, mudflats would be easier to pierce, and thus would need half the materials and time to build.

The third option to beating vaults I have would be a siege item I'd call the "Roadblocker" (Name subject to change. May just call a "Siege Tower"). It would be a tower-like siege device that could be pushed in place outside a wall, and would have an AoE 50% larger than a beehive. It's function; it disables ALL teleportation in it's effect radius. Heart fires and crossroads would cease to work in the AoE. It would keep vault dwellers from porting out (They can still port in... Heh heh), but the flip side is you couldn't port out either while in the area of effect. Surround a vault and you could make a killer's vault their prison. However, it probably wouldn't screw over big legit cities too bad since villagers inside could flee to the city center and port from there.

Gates render this ineffective against hearthvaults and that is just only one way to counter against it. What about village idol? It is theoretically easy for some joker to go around the world and build blockers all over the world and paralyze teleportation to many people.

I figure it would disable the teleporting powers of village idols too. I also figure most heart vaults won't have gates. In addition, I figure the radius could be nerfed to +25% that of a beehive. I would like though, to hear more about how this idea could be countered, so I could evolve the concept.

Or just make HFs buildable only on the surface, outdoors

Never gonna happen.

Make it possible to summon people at their idol and idol-less people anywhere (ie replace hearth with idol).

I like this

I concur. This should happen.

[Chakravanti]

This really shouldn't be solved like this. Battering rams are a cheap patched game mechanic. There's really no solution till combat and warfare have a useable system. Whats stands now is fubar and if you try to patch it like this it'll just lead to another hole, another whiner, another patch, etc.

Rather, play it out like it is while you got it. Exploit the fuck out of everything you can (Except bugs >.>) and then turn the analysis in. When a better system get written the more legible data available the better the new mechnics will be.

[MagicManICT]

Hmmm, I guess 50 tiles would be a bit much, now that you put it that way. Maybe 20 tiles... I just worry it'd result in vaults adapting by becoming multi-wall vaults to beat 20 tiles...

By the end of world 3, most villages had multilayer village walls with the walls spaced far enough apart to make ramming them a huge pain in the ass. (One note: players could bash brick walls in w3, so even then this wasn't a huge protection. The fact that that a brick wall can't be bashed now is part of the reason vaults are the way they are now, however it's better than having 0 safety at all.) There's a big difference between this and a hearth vault, though the idea is pretty much the same: protect those that dwell within. (Side note: nobody tends to 'dwell' in a HV as they're designed so that others can't exploit bugs to access them, just spend a week or two breaking down the walls to get to the HF of anyone occupying it.)

This really shouldn't be solved like this. Battering rams are a cheap patched game mechanic. There's really no solution till combat and warfare have a useable system. Whats stands now is fubar and if you try to patch it like this it'll just lead to another hole, another whiner, another patch, etc.

Exactly. And I could have sworn it was mentioned already, but there is already a siege update planned. We just won't get to see it until w6 after Salem is done. (Assuming that w6 isn't so full of updates being brought over from Salem that they don't have time to do the siege system, which will just suck big balls IMO.)

[Hourai_Chimes]

uuu when vaults gets broken i will need new things to break x.x;;;

still the new siege game will be fun and there is bound to be something broken about it ^_^

[Chakravanti]

When warfare actually comes in I'd like to see a system of throwing up some kind of War Banner outside an enemy village that gives you a 'war claim' and overlaps to create a 'contested area'. THe further away form the claim of origin and the amount of contested land claimed should cost progressively more authority from village of origin. Contested claims still leave scents as usual but simply allow construction of war engines as war claims would do. Therein, indestructible for up to 48 hours (or reasonable time frame). The amount of authority invested through formula of distance and aggression for each siege construction: walls, rams etc. as should need a war authority provision under the erected war banner where cost is fixed and then scaled to time and distance). The time factor is fixed for the beseigers but mutable for the defenders and the same for both teams. As, the besiegers pay the full time cost but are reimbursed for the difference in what they paid and the actual chosen ETA to live time of the defenders.

Estimated time of Arrival to Live is the point in (real world ) time at which all war machines are usable.

Not that because of server lag applying small adjustments to in game synchronicity with real time that these mechanics should neatly sidestep all in game concept of time except as an estimate to cost which may be recalculated and reimbursed Ex post facto as async progresses toward fewer in game iterations of time expected and is never faster than (neatly avoiding any underestimations).

ETA2L should be chosen by the defenders by spending their authority (time x distance with distance 1 making it cheaper as well for defenders).

This is more or less how it worked in ShadowBane but i've tried to tailor it to H&H and outline a more cost-relative process. No I don't want H&H to be shadowbane but their warfare system was the shit. Admittedly it was the only thing shadowbane had going for it besides charecter diversity which is what made Warfare possible such that every battle was unique, tactically rich, but almost always imba in such a way that could never truly be resolved until the game was horse-burger as all reference was purely subjective until it became statistical enough for people to lose interest.

Still, it meant we all got on to fight at the same time to protect our settlements and resources.

One in game day should cycle before defenders default to 0 time giving the seigers another 24 hours to log in and check the ETA2L.

After that authority can be further taxed to prevent Rams from decaying inside an expanded war claim (a further cost for a seiging nation).

Essentially the idea is to make Warfare progressively more expensive for the attacker based on the investment of defenses on behalf of the defender. Special 'Siege Rams' might even need to be built in order to be used in certain contexts an require steel, wrought etc. if they are meant to have less decay ( and thus break through more walls and not be limited by the 20 margins which would be less necessary with an agreed pvp time)

War claims should cost nothing at all and have no wait when constructed without contest, thus enforcing the necessity to claim all walls an inability to obfuscate your village name and claim (I'ven seen peoplen do this, though not for that purpose, it effectively served for it).

Also remove minimum distance between claims.

This also depends on mobile claimage and the ability to defend wagon trains/caravans. With Trade Caravans being virutally indistinguishable from a war band both for the security of the Caravan and the paranoia of everyone involved in trade.

A Registrar would be a nice moveable objects where players might 'sign in' and automatically add themselves to a village's kin/customer list and therein give themselves permission to enter the claim without trespassing and purchase from stalls. Therein, scents may be compared to the registry and the offender at least partially identified.

I've heard suggestions of cooldowns. However, I like the totem summonable scents. Rather than have a cooldown, a scent becomes permanantly linked to all affiliated scents.

This then includes any village the offenders hearthfire has been placed under the authority of. tHIS MAY ALLOW PEOPLE TO FAKE VILLAGE ALLIANCE. Makes for good drama though as dropping a banner might lead to negotiations. If you could confirm a death by scent then a beseiged village believed to host a criminal can summarily summon and execute the offender to the confirmation of the beseigers to be satisfied and withdraw though scents may still be tracked to alternately affiliated idols. I see idol spamming as a weakness here just because you could rack up hundreds of fake affiliations with no investment to keep stolen goods safe at the expense of making it easy to kill your charecter. As it should be a sort of poetic justice that a criminal never be able to enjoy the spoils of his own efforts and only their children.

All around, it would significantly reduce the number of Soloist or at least unaffiliated violent types. Evil and griefing would still abound but you'de have to have a real village a multiple players with some system of access to/sharing of a full resource tree and enough people to log in and fight at the same time.

Combat and equipment should be put together so that it favors the majority more at lesser numbers and the investment more at larger numbers (2:1 would favor 2 regardless of investment whereas 8:16 would favor investment more than the showing so the a more developed village with more players will be defended by their work and investment just as much as it is by their presence at critical moments.

Dettermine this by simple having a war circle encompassing everything (perhaps another factor in determining the cost of making war in authority. From the establishment of the first banner which may be abstracted (or artfully depicted) to detail the parameters of the siege.

Things like attatchment of a scent to a banner can relate it to a crime or a sieries of crimes and a body can be eplicitly and automaticlaly claimed upon the offenders execution such that a delivered execution may be 'inspected by the beseiging nation and a found scent further applied.

These things serving as a sort of in game catalog of proof that may become a valuable commodity in its own right (winners get to rewrite history and the truth always has a price for acquisition). A circle established at erection would include all fights and executions applied to the record. I see skeletons serving some purpose here.

Just some abstract thoughts on the possibility of making a more relative world. Pvp needs to be a foundation for actual war but war will always be imba without some form of expense being incurred for its actions rather than establishing it all on the premise of the expense of going to war.

I should note that at the highest level this already exists in the form of just being able to brick off a ram outside someone's home (giving essentially 48 notice of invasion). However, this leads to no procurement of stolen goods which may be alt vaulted because of this window. Using scents to summon at an idol any charecter HOLDING the item (and likewise being able to 'track' items by having them highlighted if per*exp>int*stealth of the crime) so 'hot items' etc...drama...

Even without all i've detailed above. A very small few patches to things like making sure neither a thief nor an alt can't dissociate their scent from a totem from a totem and can easily associate (hearthing inside a vclaim) even without being sworn then we actually have mechanics for all this already. The only thing most of that would allow is the log and establishment of a narrower window for the enforcement of a common negotiated PvP time and the inability to secure stolen goods without the ability to defend a player pissed off enough to spend the necessary amount of retaliation to secure a return of the items.

Some people might not see it but I can, given the pre-production of enough bricks good enough units and totem summonable scents. The only problem lies in that scents will easily expire in the time required given enough layers of brick walls to the totem.

In fact you don't need any special exploits or preventions if you just build enough layers of brick walls. It's even more insane if you caqn do it deeper. However its done, the decleration of war can also dictate the range at which a ram will not decay making it impossible to not alert an enemy but impossible to build a thoroughly impenetrable undefended hearth vault.

[M_So]

has anyone ever thought that they should make brick walls take double damage when attacking a open wall section and be able to destroy by hand? I have seen a lot of hearth vaults and it seems that most use a open ended wall so they can build onto it for only 10 bricks a section and keep everyone out vary easy.

(by open ended I mean it must be attacked from the side you build onto, so a normal wall would need a ram still)

if you are able to get to the main corner post and seal it they would be unable to build more wall sections.

[Radiant_Maelstrom]

You're only going to get mountain vaults with that. Most other basic vaults are closed area.

[M_So]

You're only going to get mountain vaults with that. Most other basic vaults are closed area.

Are the basic one's really the problem? Thought it was the mountain ones that everyone was worried about since they can be easily defended and repaired in no time flat.